hacking your gut bacteria to get smarter
My latest piece and something you guys might find
interesting – using the gut microbiome as an attack surface for augmenting the
brain. Still very early days, but evidence hinting that diet changes the
composition of your gut bacteria, and the composition of your gut bacteria has
significant effects on your brain – mood, behaviour, cognition, etc.
Not seen any discussion of tweaking microbiome as a body
augment in transhumanist circles, so it’s something fresh to consider.
http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20140221-can-gut-bugs-make-you-smarter
UK proxy: http://www.bbc.com.nyud.net/future/story/20140221-can-gut-bugs-make-you-smarter
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TL;DR, my roomy has gut troubles and a bad mood.
It is my understanding that the garden-variety gut bacteria is responsible for our delicate balance. And after talking with my roommate it is DELICATE. What bacteria could be used to increase cognition? Should the gut bacteria of contemporary geniuses be harvested, cultured and distributed? Let's say this is plausible; what do we do with this information to benefit humanity?
If we want to be in fantasy land and say we had probiotic promoters for each good attribute (cognition, stress tolerance, anxiety, over eating), we'd still likely have to negotiate composition. Boosting one may well come at the cost of another.
my opinions all the time." Engineers make terrible sales people so I'll
hold on to that.
Promoters would totally become a thing. Each
would claim they've got a proprietary, patent-pending, super recipe that
will improve memory, penis size, bust size, strength and sexual prowess.
The
Divergent book/movie and its sequels deal with the issue of people who
have been genetically tampered with to increase their compassion,
daring, intelligence but at the cost of becoming incomplete people. The
strong are cruel, the smart are cold, the compassionate have no sense
of self-preservation.
I'd like to be rich, who wouldn't, but I
don't want Donald Trump's hair or Bill Gates' physique. Do you think
that if we found a magic recipe that made people level 11 we would
become susceptible to particular diseases that could tear through the
upgraded people like a plague?