This is just ongoing propaganda from big tobacco trying to stop us doing whipits.
this post was submitted on 14 Aug 2023
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@gerikson This is a thing divers have known for decades—nitrogen narcosis is a known problem, it's why they use different breathing gas mixes at depth. NASA verified it too as their early (Mercury/Gemini/Apollo) spacecraft used pure O2 at 0.3 bar pressure (with no nitrogen) to save hull mass. As do current spacesuits (low pressure makes it easier to move/flex in them). It's not a huge cognitive load at ambient pressure/mix, though—we evolved in it!
this is a secret plan to make orange posters speak funny
also don't, helium is nonrenewable resource and pretty useful (for MRIs and such)
How about Argon? (Not that I'm going to waste money on Argon when I don't even have a gas welding rig.)
if they just want to improve reaction time, they could simply do meth like more normal people instead of squandering nonrenewable, industrially critical helium on wanking off to yudkovsky
argon is heavier than nitrogen, meaning that narcotic effect would be even stronger. if you go down periodic table, xenon is almost potent enough to be used on its own as anesthetic
how this all actually works is one of bigger open problems in medicine, but i'm pretty sure that simplified hypothesis of lipid solubility, recalled by some orange posters is mostly wrong. my guess is that because 1. chiral anesthetics exist and have different potencies while having exactly the same physical properties, 2. there are compounds that look like anesthetics, but have opposite activity, and 3. this very neat paper ~~that i can't find right now~~ https://www.jneurosci.org/content/jneuro/21/6/RC136.full.pdf where authors identified pocket on membrane side ( = greasy) of GABA receptor that when filled just the right way with anesthetic will open this channel, meaning narcosis if you put enough of it. they found it through directed mutagenesis study ie when that pocket was artificially filled with bigger aminoacid side chains no change was observed. we know that similar effects appear in other channels, for example NMDA
This reminds me of that incredibly long series of blog posts by slime mold time mold that claimed that the rise in obesity and associated medical issues in the US was caused by lithium pollution in US waterways and food chains. Their solution to this allergen problem was no, not to demand regulation of lithium mining, no, not to lobby for lithium heavy sites to be given superfund cleanups.... But to move to a high altitude state where there would be less lithium in the water supply. Really.
These guys are big into pseudoscientific fad diets ala ray peat. Also they claim canola oil causes sunburn now. Just bizarre.
(i figure a lot of this is covert status display stuff - class signals etc)
The seed oil / sunburn thing is something I saw going around online just this week. Is there /anything/ behind it at all or is it just another chunk of LessWrong science by anecdata?
I’m not sure but am personally very skeptical because its associated with health grifters.
oh no this is bad https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37124654
also i'd like to see high pressure or cryogenic installations made by orange posters and OSHA's opinion on them