
Brain in a Jar - deafcalculus
http://stephaniehurlburt.com/blog/2017/4/15/brain-in-a-jar
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fujipadam
I really needed this! While you know these things, it takes constant reminders
to not fall back into bad habits. I constantly skip on sleep and I can see my
body falling apart. This was a great and simple article to remind me

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pfd1986
I'd make the crazy (/s) argument that the mindset, not the eat
well/exercise/sleep is what matters.

I tried endlessly during my PhD to eat healthy, sleep well, and such but this
only worked when I truly realized 'ok, my normal routine is killing me', like
OP did.

It's scary because that's how you know yourself to be / work but once you have
no alternatives it is easier to risk a productivity deficit (.:. it's also
easier when you're more confident about your achievements so far and don't
think you have to prove as much of yourself to others).

Luckily for me the marginal productivity deficit is totally compensated by
living a burnout-free life. (I hope. Ask me again in 5-10 years)

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chvid
Anyone reading this and going "3 cups of coffee per day" ... how is that a
lot?

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beobab
I was drinking 10 a day when someone offered me "Java" coffee. Oh my days.
Pale, shaky, heart palpitations. I couldn't touch coffee for almost a year
after that mug.

Apparently, you're supposed to drink it in teensy cups.

Who knew.

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huxley
Perhaps it was a Java espresso? Would explain the teensy cups, Java beans are
normally middle of the road when it comes to caffeine content.

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ggambetta
_Eat well and rest._ \-- and exercise. The best natural anti-depressant and
life-extension technique (fine, maybe tied with caloric restriction).

TL;DR: Exercise.

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ams6110
I dislike exercise. It makes me tired, grumpy and sore. Don't generalize.

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jcoffland
What's your BMI?

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SubiculumCode
I thought this 'Brain in a Jar' article was going to be about the
philosophical 'Brain in a vat' question. Disappointed.
[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brain_in_a_vat](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brain_in_a_vat)

oh and, don't work too hard young people. Burn out is the worst.

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kevin_thibedeau
A site with nothing but static text content and yet it is completely unusable
without Javascript.

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Rumudiez
Absolutely awkward. You can load the site with JS enabled, but if you disable
it then suddenly the entire page disappears, and yet it still scrolls. What's
the point?

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wimagguc
Being smarty pants here, but I wanted to point out that "Brain in a Jar"
usually refers to something entirely different: _that one is a victim of
thoroughgoing error induced by a God-like deceiver_.

Hypothesis, skeptical argument etc in detail:
[https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/skepticism-content-
extern...](https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/skepticism-content-externalism/)

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goldenkey
The common mistake in "hippy philosophy" is assuming that since we are
ultimately subsets of the universe, we ARE the universe, here and now.

Problem is, things are made up of a bunch of components. And operate due to
internal and external mechanisms.

Objects exist as causal sets.

We all might be one, when it comes to that we are manifestations of
electromagnetic energy. But that's a superset of the here and now.

We're physical beings at the bottom rung, and maybe more when you take the
russian doll nested sets apart. But that doesn't change the fact that each
part is just as integral to identity in the here and now, or well, the
physical human part might be even more important in the here and now.

So yeah, we're all "one" as members of the universe. But don't let that fool
you into thinking you're transcending right here and now. Everythings made
from components. Everything has supersets and subsets that keep it going. You
are not a brain in a jar here and now. But you may be a brain in a jar there
and far. So keep a level head. And don't dismiss the philosophy that grounds
you.

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sametmax
I read you, but I really don't get the point you are trying to make.

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goldenkey
I'm saying that the poster is trivializing the "brain in the jar" argument by
providing something just as overfitted. His argument is just as trivial. We
are a mixture of timeless things and expiring things. So for sure, don't
forget you're rotting flesh. But don't dismiss brain in the jar either.

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sametmax
Thank you for the clarification.

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goldenkey
Gotta love how one day HN is for drugs, another day HN is against them. One
day HN is for the "steve jobs" LSD hippy vibes, and the next day, HN is
against them. HN has schizophrenia with regard to spirituality's duality with
technicality.

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fsiefken
Could the 'psychiatric medicine' be modafinil?

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nxc18
Could just as well be adderall or ritalin, doctors hand out prescriptions like
candy on Halloween, especially to people who are currently or were recently
young.

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m-j-fox
> 3+ (actually, I didn't count, it was a lot) cups of coffee per day

My God. You monster.

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gexla
One person she knows takes care of himself and is successful. She doesn't take
care of herself and she's not successful. Now she takes care of herself and we
don't know if she's now successful but the added rest fixed some things in her
life.

Seems like a small sample size. Luck helps some along more than others and
it's spotty in its distribution.

She doesn't say if her friend is a business owner. She mentioned she wanted to
start a business but she doesn't say if that was part of what she was working
on.

Her friend doing 5 hours of coding in one day is a lot. It's probably more
than a typical 9-5 office coder puts in. Especially working from home with
relatively few distractions.

But when you own a business, once you have finished putting in your 5 hours of
coding, you still have the rest of the business to take care of. One full time
job is done, then you start the next one.

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m0nty
> Now she takes care of herself and we don't know if she's now successful

I get a bit tired of the generalisations in OA. Sometimes there is far more
wrong with life than just not taking good enough care of yourself in terms of
sleep, diet and exercise. Sometimes you need professional help and (even if
not) what is good for one person might not help you one bit.

My personal bugbear is mindfulness: tried it, didn't get on with it, do not
see it as the holy grail of wellbeing -- as some people seem to claim it is.
It works for them, that's fine. Doesn't mean it works for everyone.

[https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2016/jan/23/is-
mind...](https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2016/jan/23/is-mindfulness-
making-us-ill)

> Claire, a 37-year-old in a highly competitive industry, was sent on a three-
> day mindfulness course with colleagues as part of a training programme.
> "Initially, I found it relaxing," she says, "but then I found I felt
> completely zoned out while doing it. Within two or three hours of later
> sessions, I was starting to really, really panic." The sessions resurfaced
> memories of her traumatic childhood, and she experienced a series of panic
> attacks. "Somehow, the course triggered things I had previously got over,"
> Claire says. "I had a breakdown and spent three months in a psychiatric
> unit. It was a depressive breakdown with psychotic elements related to the
> trauma, and several dissociative episodes."

Of course, people will say she clearly had deeper issues but that's my point.

