From: Anders Sandberg (asa@nada.kth.se)
Date: Sat Jul 21 2001 - 04:38:53 MDT
On Fri, Jul 20, 2001 at 02:21:42PM -0700, J. R. Molloy wrote:
> When uploading yourself to that immortal computer in the cyber sky, don't
> forget to do a scan of your enteric nervous system.
>
> 'Gut Feeling' May Be Connected to Past Experience
> http://dailynews.yahoo.com/h/nm/20010718/hl/gutfeeling_1.html
> ``The bottom line is that sometimes when people get a hunch, it's not
> mysterious,'' said study lead author Dr. Edward S. Katkin of the State
> University of New York at Stony Brook. ''It's because people are in a
> situation that has been associated with some event in the past--they might not
> consciously remember it but their guts do. And so they get a sense that
> something is going to happen.''
Bad interpretation! Bad interpretation!
The study showed that people that are good at noticing their visceral
signals are better at detecting conditioned aversion, not that this has
anything at all to do with the enteric nervous system. It is a nice
support for Damasio's somatic marker hypothesis for emotion, though.
Your subconscious emotional learned reactions affect the vagus nerve
(which innervates both the heart and the guts), and this creates a
somatic response you notice as a feeling. No need to have the gut learn
anything.
That said, the enteric nervous system is pretty cool. It seems to have
some learning abilities and might even have limited pattern recognition
for different food types. It is crammed with transmittor substances (if
you can find a substance used there, then it is usually used in the
brain too) despite having a fairly simple worm-like layout.
When uploading, it might help to make the virtual body feel normal if
you upload the enteric system.
-- ----------------------------------------------------------------------- Anders Sandberg Towards Ascension! asa@nada.kth.se http://www.nada.kth.se/~asa/ GCS/M/S/O d++ -p+ c++++ !l u+ e++ m++ s+/+ n--- h+/* f+ g+ w++ t+ r+ !y
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