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We say things like "time is money" but really the most valuable thing you have (and which everyone covets) is your attention. (crazypeople.online)
submitted 9 months ago by to c/showerthoughts@lemmy.world
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[–] 10 points 9 months ago (12 children)

Attention is a function of dopamine & serotonin production over time.

Almost everything about being human reduces down to a handful of neurotransmitters.

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  • [–] 3 points 9 months ago (4 children)

    Those neurotransmitters just release electrical impulses so if you want to break it down everything about humans reduces down to electricity traveling through out meat

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  • [–] 1 point 9 months ago (2 children)

    Yes, but the key detail is governance. There's specific molecules that, without them, there is no attention to be sought. Paying attention or "having willpower" is causally linked to these specific compounds being present in the meat.

    Much of "free will" boils down to regulation of these neurotransmitters.

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  • [–] 1 point 9 months ago (1 child)

    If your goal is to boil it down to the fundamental levels it’s the ion that’s that cause action potentials that are actually causing thought

    If you want to look at it holistically it’s due to the connections of the dendrites and how those interact with each other

    We have no control of our neurotransmitters and they are only released in response to stimuli from another cell

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  • [–] [S] 0 points 9 months ago (5 children)

    And what are neurotransmitters?

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  • [–] 1 point 9 months ago (4 children)

    If you typed this into your address bar youd have an answer instead of a downvote. lol

    Neurotransmitters are chemicals used by terminal buttons to carry information across the synaptic gap to the dendrite of the recipient neuron.

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  • [–] [S] 1 point 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago) (3 children)

    And what are those? There's actually a few reasons I'm asking and not just looking it up online.

    One of the reasons is that a 5 second search on neurobiology does not give me actual understanding. It just gives me a free-floating data point. And I wouldn't offer that data point to others because it's not coming from a place of real understanding.

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  • [–] 1 point 9 months ago (2 children)

    You're reading words on a screen either way.

    Who do you think is a better source:

    1. An unverified, inaccurate, low effort, and low quality idiot 😁
    2. or Britannica?

    Unless you mean something else that I'm not receiving.

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  • [–] [S] 2 points 9 months ago (1 child)

    I appreciate that you seem to think that my brain is any better than that an low-effort and low quality idiot but it's not.

    The neurotransmitter person gave a quite confident account about the nature of attention and nature of human psychology. They clearly felt it was relevant to the point I was making. Surely someone like this has an university level degree in the subject and isn't just a random computer nerd who occasionally consumes some pop-science content online. It makes more sense to me to dip into their reservoir of knowledge instead of making a feeble attempt at reading some AI Summary on the topic.

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