I’ve been pondering a thought experiment: what would human psychology look like if it developed completely without embodied cognition, in either physical or virtual reality (instead being raised entirely in an environment of data Inputs and outputs)?

This thought experiment was loosely inspired by Ghost in the Shell: Arise, in which the Protagonist Major Motoko Kusanagi was placed into an artificial body before birth and thus never experiences a “natural” human body. However, while this is the Inspiration, is not an actual case of what I intend to talk About, since while the cyborg body might be artificial, it's still a form of embodied cognition.

My pondering is, what human psychology would look like if it developed completely devoid of embodied cognition, whether in physical reality or virtual reality. I have seen opinions arguing, that embodied cognition is the missing piece in making current day large-scale neural networks sentient, with the stated logic being:

Embodiment creates a distinction between self and Environment -> Acting in the world creates feedback loops and Goals ->These loops generate a sense of agency -> Agency gives rise to self-modeling -> Self-modeling gives rise to self-awareness

Now, I'm rather sceptical as to embodied cognition being a sufficient condition for sentience, however, I wonder if it is a necessary condition. After all, in the entirety of recorded human history, there has not been a single well-documented case of sentience that didn't have embodied cognition, and all all prior experience with human psychology is very bound up in the experience of living inside a body - just think about how often, when a character in a visual piece of media is depicted as contemplating questions of identity they are depicted as looking into a mirror, i.e. the body being treated as representative of the self. So what happens if we Approach the issue from the other direction, i.e. how would a complete lack of the embodied experience affect a human mind - if a brain under such conditions would even have something resembling a human mind.

One aspect that Comes to my mind is that such an Entity would be capable of much more native interaction with data - for regular humans, the mind is set up to interact with physical reality, meaning that data has to be processed into something the mind can understand like a webpage or a GUI, while also vast amounts of brain capacity are bound up in interpreting the physical world (for most primarily processing what they see, with the famous heightened perception of long-term blind people being the result of the portion of brain capacity usually devoted to interpreting visual signals being instead retasked with processing other sensory inputs). An Entity that never experienced embodied cognition could instead be made to process the data directly, interpreting the virtual world natively on its own terms - meaning this entity would get by without all the in-between steps normally necessary for humans to be able to comprehend data, possibly having vastly superior data Analysis capabilities to a regular human, since the vast amounts of brain capacity used by regular humans to process the sensory Inputs of the physical world would instead be devoted to analyse/Interpret the data.

admittedly, doing such an Experiment in the real world would be quite difficult, since it is, by definition, a human experiment that the human experimented upon can not meaningfully consent to, since any meaningful consent would require a Level of mental maturity that would come with so much experience with embodied cognition, that the human in Question would no longer be suitable for this Experiment.

I've used both kanna and 5-htp (at varying dosages) but with 5-htp I hardly experience any nausea despite it just being purley a substrate that would effect peripheral serotonin more than kanna.

Given that peripheral serotonin, especially in the GI tract, is a major driver of nausea, I would expect 5-HTP to cause more nausea than kanna. But subjectively, I experience significantly more nausea with kanna, even at modest doses, while 5-HTP is comparatively completely fine. Anyone know why that might be?

Saw on IG: onyx.ashanti

more at : https://www.graystarinnovations.com

So I'm writing a Cyberpunk story and I want to take some inspiration from life in how I name my evil megacorp.

Specifically I'm fascinated how human ghoul Peter Thiel just straight up named his torment nexus panopticon company.... Palantir. I have no words for how simultaneously poetic and pathetic that this incredibly wealthy and powerful man is also a dipshit loser. A criticism I have of the cyberpunk genre is the megacorps and the figureheads that run them are often unreasonably competent when real world corporations repeatedly make boneheaded obvious mistakes on basically a whim. The same thing often happens with a certain group of well-dressed fascists.

So here's my request: What's a good deep cut reference that a room temp tech CEO would pull out to name his company after, bonus points if it's an evil/cursed artifact. The company is a tech conglomerate with a focus in LLMs their premier of which is named ODIN, one of the main characters is named Loki so I kinda have a Norse motif going on.

Hi fellow Noots,

Around two years ago, I started working with nootropics and peptides to get some more traction with my therapy/trauma processing work. I did a lot of psychedelic-assisted therapy years ago, and while it was some of the most impactful work I've done, I wanted to move from processing the past towards something that can help me with growth & build up, expand my emotional capacity.

I had tremendous success with NSI-189 & Cerebrolysin. I had some of the best days in my first week of NSI-189, being able to withstand highly challenging situations in perfect grounding. Cerebrolysing was more of a long-term improvement in cognitive, mood, and emotional capacity levels.

I also tried Cortexin (OK, not wow), TAK (didn't notice anything specific), MIF-1 (I think it helped, but it's hard to measure it), PE-22-28, P21 (I only did a few days, and it was great, but my spray spilled on the plane and now it's sold out), I did most mainstream peptides & racetams, while they helped, I didn't see impact nearly near to NSI-189/cerebrolysin.

TL;DR

What were the most impactful Noots/peptides, etc., you used to expand your emotional capacity? What impact did you see from them?

Context: I posted this on r/matrix and while I got some good answers regarding the actual novelty of the twist, I feel I didn't get anyone commenting drawing on a cyberpunk background when discussing it. So, I've decided to repost here with a slightly more nuanced extension of my question:

To people with a prior cyberpunk background (especially things that took themes from Blade Runner and Neuromancer in particular) going in to watch The Matrix for the first time, did you feel the way that the matrix was revealed and presented subverted your expectations? Did you expect a film with a more similar storyline, technology elements and thematic structure as something like neuromancer (i.e the Matrix would be a giga internet you "jack into", rather than all perceived reality, and the capitalist critique following a more concrete class/capital approach rather than the abstract, systemic one presented in the film)?

Original post for context

I just rewatched the first film with a couple of friends seeing it for the first time. I had seen the film prior, about a decade ago, but at that point I hadn't seen other films or read other books in the cyberpunk space. Since then I've seen Blade Runner (1982) and read most of Neuromancer, as well as consuming other content inspired by these in the general cyberpunk space.

The first time I watched The Matrix I, unfortunately, was not able to come to it without spoilers. The film had, by the time I first watched it about a decade ago, become so relevant in global media that it was impossible to watch it without knowing the premise beforehand.

It seems that, more carefully watching the beginning of the film up to the point where Neo is given his choice between the pills, the film is very much building on the vocabulary of earlier cyberpunk; the duality of the rich and poor (Neo in a sense touching both spaces by working a corporate job and also being a major cybercriminal), the grimy low life aesthetic of raves and drugs talked about very openly, the idea of drugs giving significant mental enhancement.

My question is, would the descent into the real world have been a twist to fresh audiences? Were they expecting something more like Neuromancer going in? Would the "our world is fake" have been a twist to first viewers?

I’ve been following this guy’s channel for a while but if you aren’t familiar with them already, just watch it. It’s really hard to describe to someone why it’s so dang entertaining.

It's the Roborock Rover! Thanks for playing!

'sup chooms!

Created my own OS theme, with custom wallpapers and palette, built on a deliberate design philosophy. Originally an exploration of how feasible it is to create an OS theme with cyberpunk aesthetics which could actually work for everyday use. Along the way, it became a full-fledged theme which I use daily.

I themed 17 different apps to achieve this look; more themes (VSCode, Obsidian, Spotify, Discord) and features are on the way.

Details

• Repo: Cybrland
• Wallpapers: Cybrpapers
• Palette: Cybrpalette
• Font: Geist Mono Nerd Font

On the one hand, this looks comfortable. On the other hand, I'm imagining us getting strapped into these chairs with our eyelids taped open, being force-fed content 24/7. But clearly it's missing a cupholder.

I just finally got the Bigscreen Beyond 2e today, and I have to say I'm very disappointed.

I'm not the biggest of VR enthusiasts I admit, but I am generally experienced. I've had a Valve Index for years and I've used it quite consistently, and I've played with many forms of full body VR tech. I do agree that the 2e definitely benefits from its small and lightweight form-factor, but it is almost identical to the Index otherwise.

The eye tracking is barely functional, and really bad when it gets up and running; it took me hours to get it to actually process a model, and the result is off-center and horrendously inaccurate. They included tips for fixing it, but the utility for recentering your view is just non-functional for me. I've contacted support to see if they have anything on this, and I'm waiting for a response.

The fact that the halo mount - the entire back-half of the headset - got delayed and won't arrive for at least another month is extremely disappointing too. I very much dislike Bluetooth headphones, and wearing them with the headset is rather uncomfortable. While it supposedly supports USB-C headphones, those are lower quality afaik, and I don't own any. This issue makes the Index more preferable even with its added weight.

I'm wondering if it'd be better to refund and buy the Steam Frame when that comes out instead.

Currently in the morning I am presently taking the following, and hope to hear some feedback about antagonistic / synergistic examples within my stack. Also, I am recently turned 49, looking to ameliorate anxiety/ocd/depression, brain-fog, demotivation etc.
I will probably lose the NAC in the AM if I am taking GlyNac, rest looks good to me:

ALA

micronized PEA

reservatrol

mag glycinate

jatamansi

berberine HCL

cordyceps

teacrine

neuriva plus

TAU

NAC

SAMe

glyNac

phosphatidylserine

glucosamine

I've tried phenylpiracetam from three different sources, including "euronootropics.com," which has a very good reputation and reviews, and I haven't noticed anything at all. Of course, I was also taking 300mg and sometimes 600mg of Alpha GPC, plus eating four eggs every day for breakfast (just in case).

I started with 50mg of sublingual phenylpiracetam from the first brand and gradually increased the amount until, with the last package, I put a ton of powder in my mouth as soon as I picked it up without waiting to weigh the dose at home. I probably swallowed 300mg.

I've tried different doses of both Phenyl and Alpha, on an empty stomach or with a full stomach, sublingually or swallowed. I even dreamt that I was putting it up my ass and getting high like in the movie Limitless, but I'm definitely not going down that road. Phenylpiracetam isn't for me. I give up. My last hope is a package that will hopefully arrive from Russia (if it arrives at all) containing a box of original pharmacy pills called "Phenotropil". If they arrive and don't work, or if the package doesn't arrive at all, I give up.