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NancyLebovitz comments on Open Thread: May 2010 - Less Wrong
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I have a (short) essay, 'Drug heuristics' in which I take a crack at combining Bostrom's evolutionary heuristics and nootropics - both topics I consider to be quite LW-germane but underdiscussed.
I'm not sure, though, that it's worth pursuing in any greater depth and would appreciate feedback.
I'd like to see it pursued further. where does alcohol fit in your schema?
I don't know terribly much about alcohol, so take this with a grain of salt.
I think I would probably put it as an out-of-date adaptation; my understanding is that alcoholic beverages would have been extremely energy-rich, and also hard to come by, and so is in the same category as sugars and fats - they are now bad for us though they used to be good. ('Superstimulus', I think, is the term.)
Given that, it's more harmful than helpful and to be avoided.
I'll admit that the issue of resveratrol confuses me. But assuming that it has any beneficial effect in humans, AFAIK one should be able to get it just by drinking grape juice - resveratrol is not created in the fermentation process.
Fermented beverages also had the advantage of usually being free of dangerous bacteria; ethanol is an antiseptic that kills the bacteria that cause most water-borne diseases. (And water-borne disease used to be very common.)
That's a good second way it's an out of date optimization.
You might find this paper interesting.
In a sentence, it suggests that people drink to signal trustworthiness.