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A comment on How Caffeine Can Cramp Creativity (2013). Parent comment

Re:How Caffeine Can Cramp Creativity (2013) by 12423gsd on Monday November 10, 2014 @10:25PM (#8588133)
Unfortunately our perceptions can't be boiled down to chemicals in the brain. You can be depressed and have normal chemical levels. Just because increasing some chemical will make you happier, doesn't necessarily mean that's the only way.

Until we're able to analytically evaluate perception (which we are no where close to understanding), what you're describing isn't possible

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Re:How Caffeine Can Cramp Creativity (2013) by elwell on Monday November 10, 2014 @10:50PM (#8588200)
> You can be depressed and have normal chemical levels

Maybe if you only consider the chemicals that are normally considered.

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Re:How Caffeine Can Cramp Creativity (2013) by hvidgaard on Tuesday November 11, 2014 @03:29AM (#8588869)
There is no reason that chemicals are the only actively defining part of our mind. It may very well be that chemicals are everything we need to messure, it may also turn out that we need to messure a lot of other things. Point is we do not know, and have a growing problem to figure it out.
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Re:How Caffeine Can Cramp Creativity (2013) by elwell on Tuesday November 11, 2014 @05:30AM (#8589191)
What exists in our biology but chemicals?
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Re:How Caffeine Can Cramp Creativity (2013) by jdietrich on Tuesday November 11, 2014 @07:04AM (#8589415)
Structure. An integrated circuit is just doped silicon, but understanding its chemical composition tells you practically nothing about how it actually works.
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Re:How Caffeine Can Cramp Creativity (2013) by neohaven on Tuesday November 11, 2014 @09:26AM (#8589909)
This "chemical composition" is like reading packets off a broadcast network. It's not the full state, but it's good enough to reverse-engineer what's going on at a high level.

Blood work, including blood neurotransmitters and hormones, can tell you a lot about someone's state of mind specifically because of this.

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