05/2016 Brainstorming Thread
I thought it'd be good to start a general brainstorming thread regarding new Grinds. For this thread in particular focus on generating ideas with a balance between speculation and being realistic. It's ok to shoot out ideas here without significant evidence.. i.e. can we make gills? I'd say it's unlikely but perhaps it'd be lucrative to bounce such an idea around. On the other hand, avoid H+ bullshit like uploading etc. unless you've got some fantastic idea about making it happen.
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1. We should be working as a community keeping up to date on research which we may bend to our purposes. This could be accomplished via a Journal meetup.. basically each person chooses a journal article and reports back to the community regarding things they think might have potential.
2. We should also be working from a ground up approach by identifying needs/wants and then trying to figure out ways to accomplish these needs/wants.
Addressing the second, there is so much possible that it might be useful to use specific filters in order to think about what we might want to do. For this thread, I suggest we use the "Universal Self-Care Requisites." These are actually from a nursing theory developed by Dorthea Orem. I'm not a big fan to be honest, but I think the list gives us something to work with. These are the requisites:
1. the maintenance of sufficient intake of air, food, and water
2. provision of care associated with the elimination process
3. a balance between activities and rest
4. a balance between solitude and social interaction
5. prevention of hazards to human life and well-being
6. promotion of human functioning
As you can see, these are general enough that we can probably fit nearly anything under each category. Cognitive filters like this aren't a reflection of reality but rather a means by which to perceive it. The map is not the territory. I figure we can start a new brainstorming thread each quarter or month or something using a different filter. For example we can do a list of the senses (not just 5, I'm talking about at the receptor level), or a list of the organs, or a list of organ systems. We can use communication models like Communicator, Reciever, Interpreter etc.
1. Air/Food/Water:
How about Micro-biospheres? We try to figure out the minimum size unit containing a number of specific organisms to produce the biomass needed to feed/maintain a person. Basically, could we make greenhouses that only need sunlight and produce everything we need? Obviously, there are issues.. I'm not going to stay stuck inside so every dump, piss, exhale, sweat etc. is a loss of mass.. What critters/greens are the least efficient? Can we gene mod them to increase efficiency? Can we do some of the needed transformation of material chemically rather than biologically to increase efficiency? Would we increase efficiency through tech? Like careful modulation of temp and light with solar panels and arduinos?
2. Elimination Process: Enemas and Colonics.. do they have a role in Grinding? Ok, so enemas are unsual in the healthcare field now. They are primarily used to treat constipation, BUT they used to be super common. The rectum is large semi-permiable membrane. An enema can be used to rehydrate a person with nearly the same efficiency as an IV. Also, drugs absorbed through the mucous membrane don't get a first pass through the liver.. this is why people die from alcohol enemas etc. Would taking nootropics up the asshole make them more effective (enough that it would be worth it). Coffe enemas are pretty fantastic. Also, there are "detox" programs that advise crap like an enema a day for 30 days. Is there any evidence this is really "good". (Most things labeled detox are bs.)
3. Activity and Rest: This is obvious to me... a Grinder version of Polyphasic sleep. Polyphasic sleep is ok. I did it for 6 months at a total of 2 hours per night. There are some things about it I like, but there are some serious downsides as well. Plus, there is a ton of research about the importance of sleep. For example, night shift workers don't live as long. BUT, it's been found that supplementing with melatonin can moderate how rough it is on the body. (I read this somewhere but as this is being written loosely I'm not giving a source yet). Can we make a version of polyphasic which lives up to the promise of minimal downtime with increased cognitive ability? How? Ok, supplementation.. melatonin vs. seratonin. The cautious use of stimulants. Meditation. Sensory deprivation. Binaural Beats. tDCS?
4. I think my phone fucks me. I check it all the time. I waste time playing on it. I think it'd be way better if I just checked it like 3 times a day or something. Or at least had some kind of plan regarding its use rather than demonstrating kind of compulsive behaviors playing with it. Perhaps we could outline something.. even just an app to check how often we fuck with our devices and the amount of time we are on them. Perhaps we could make some kind of app to increase efficiency? Also, meditation. I bring this up as there are studies regarding increased cognitive function following certain types. It might just be a period of solitude does the same thing. Like Gardening instead of yoga or something.
5. Prevention of Hazards: I'd really like to see some externals that interact with our internals. One of these could be a security system. Kind of like the dead drop magnetic field thing.. we could make a device that you place close to where you sleep.. maybe under mattress or something. It could receive data from your doors and windows or even a motion detector and then pulse magnetic waves to alert you while you sleep. Seems like an easy thing to do and marketable.
6. Promotion of human functioning: Well, if we ever get a new site... I think it might be good to actually make a Nootropic Wiki. Yes, I understand that there are tons and tons of resources out there. Reddit and whatnot. I'm not looking to replace that or anything but nootropics and cognitive enhancers are not going away in the community. I think we could make a very concise dry wiki. If people want experiences and such go somewhere else perhaps.. but the wiki could give a bunch of basics from places like Physician Desk Reference, actual journal articles etc, and links to other sites that we think have done good writeups. I think it could simply be a Grid with the listed sources, the claim, and a rating of the level of support. Piracetam - Bob's Racetam Study - Claims increased verbal memory - 5 (cause n=50k people).
We'd need to break this down into smaller projects. The first I think should be waste processing.
Here's a thing:
http://www.powerknot.com/liquid_food_composter.html?gclid=CjwKEAjwjca5BRCAyaPGi6_h8m8SJADryPLhena7A7ebvwZWQAn5zLKNl4Cap_WQhBmRiCXIuhMnmxoC51bw_wcB
It's a food composter that does its job in like 24 hours from what I understand. Types of waste we should consider:
Liquid - Urine, Greywater (like from sinks etc.)
Food and loose biowaste like plant matter - easily composted.
Feces, meats, and complex fats - these are difficult. You don't mix with other compost as stuff like shit is very slow to compost generally and you want possibly more than a year before reintroduction into soil etc. Also.. it's a possible vector of parasites and disease.
So project one: Urine processing. We could look at the specific bacteria that do commonly do this. I forget the details right now, but I know there are multiple steps yielding things like ammonia etc. Maybe we could make a vessel that has multiple chambers and a nice healthy culture of each bacteria type for each stage. Piss enters chamber one and a few drips hits the piss. The chamber is at the optimal temp and conditions for that species. Then it passes to chamber two and so on. We could look at useful chemical yields as well. For example, is there a use for ammonia in our chamber? How hard would it be to seperate out? (Not very.)
Can we process urine to drinkable water via a method like this? Of course, we could alternatively set up a solar still system to reclaim the water. What do we do with the dried piss? What are the exact constituents?
Basic goals: No outside supply type products... unless it's going to be yielded from some other thing in the greenhouse.
1. Re: cellularizing organs etc. Agreed. Essentially we need a mammalian cell lab setup for this. I was inching towards it but I'm not sure if I'm going to commit. It's rather pricey; however, tons of potential.
2. Brainstorming is good. In this case though, I think that you need to refine your idea and do a bit of research. For the most part, the nervous system is only electrical in the strictest of senses. It's really not like a conductive wire and electrons aren't being passed along from atom to atom.
The reason we say it's electro-chemical.. and no I'm not going to try to be exhaustive here.. is each neuron has a process by which they keep a lot of negative things inside and pump positive things outside. When the neuron "fires" there is a big change with positive and negative things moving around. This is the "electrical" part. This change in voltage travels damn fast too! Saltatory conductance can travel as fast as 150 m/s.
I'm not saying this can't be improved on.. electricity travels at 2.998e+8 m/s so if you could somehow make this a strictly electrical event..
3. Gene Mods. Yikes. Yeah, also need a whole lot of lab to work with. In this case you'd need both the modified gene and vector by which to place it. I really do think the recent Bioviva thing is pretty awesome but gene mod stuff is still a tad scary. I'd personally prefer a mixture between your idea 1 and 3. Basically, can we make an implant to express certain enzymes? The one you discussed probably wouldn't be a candidate because you'd really need those genes in the active cells. You'd want lysis of fatty acids occuring in say muscle cells or something I think.
Not trying to shoot down ideas here. I'm just discussing to open further dialogue.
Crazy. Ok, so do we have any actual journal articles written by these authors? Unfortunately, I think Sci-hub is down and I can't get it now.
While TMS is really promising and awesome, has anyone ever done anything with peripheral magnetic stimulation? Because this we can do easily. I'm not ready to crack open anyones head but I would install peripheral magnet near nerve cell bodies.
I think the wearable would work brilliantly maybe even add in a sleep monitoring or alarm clock ability so people have a little bit more push then the simple "it just wakes me up in an emergency.."
That's the idea behind the magnet pill that could be guided in/around the brain. There by non invasive, matched with a massive amount of data storage I see a limitless future.... Plus B2B communications.... After 4cm of penitration into the brain there's no benefit right, just stuff vital to life beyond that right? I will do some digging on the journals.
Sincerely,
John Doe
Sincerely,
John Doe
this company here http://www.btech.com.tr/ BTech innovationbydesign successfully added a partial jaw plate to help a turtle eat, it was 3-d printed.
i was wondering how possible it is to do an entire jaw/mouth on a human, teeth and everything, 3-d printed, bionic, hydraulic whathaveyou, maybe graphene-coated steel or some other metal, is this a real possibilty at the moment? or is that farther out of the reach of what can be done right now?
It does concentrate metals etc from the water, making it toxic to eat if the water is not clean, the most common problem with it in the diet is kidney stones from increased calcium levels.
This might sound silly but when I was younger and studied martial arts seriously a lot of my fellow students worked very hard to toughen the skin on their hands and feet.
I was looking at duck weed for a biomass generation system and I came to that conclusion that due to the fact that it is mostly water that the biomass that is there is almost unusably small, granted you plan on eating it, while I was planing on burning it.
Sincerely,
John Doe
My own design is for "sub" micro system, rather than a single micro tank of 50L to 100L capacity for the fish I am trying to build a system of networked tanks each with only 2L-3L capacity so it can be built to make use of unused space in a house (e.g. hanging on the inside of a window).
I'm building my first prototype garden now, and I'll be growing snow peas.
On a different topic, everybody talks about implanting this and that but how many start with wearable versions to test out the idea without so much pain and risk? Some kind of arm or leg bands could hold a lot of electronic sensors and also transmit information to your body using magnets, vibrators, or light electric shocks. Lights or displays would be easy enough maybe all sent to a helmet with more enhancements possibly including a TDCS device.
Why put the machine in the body? Why not put the body in the machine? Heat, cooling, protection, air filter ... Size would still be an issue if you need to carry it around but external repairs and modifications would be a lot easier than needing surgery.