[HN Gopher] Chronically lonely flies overeat and lose sleep
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Chronically lonely flies overeat and lose sleep
Author : gmays
Score : 94 points
Date : 2021-08-20 17:07 UTC (5 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.nature.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.nature.com)
| Rd6n6 wrote:
| Humans look to others as sources of truth and use them for
| examples to base their behaviour on. If there were no other
| people around and a person had no emotions at all, their eating
| and sleeping would become irregular, just like these flies,
| because there is nobody giving them cues about how to act. This
| isn't really evidence of depression imho, but does show they have
| social awareness which is neat and which makes sense
| noman-land wrote:
| Is there anything particularly bad about irregular sleeping or
| eating? Maybe it would be better to eat when we are hungry or
| sleep when we are tired instead of looking to others to decide
| how to feel.
| xyzwave wrote:
| > I find it wholesome to be alone the greater part of the time.
| To be in company, even with the best, is soon wearisome and
| dissipating. I love to be alone.
|
| and
|
| > Men frequently say to me, "I should think you would feel
| lonesome down there, and want to be nearer to folks, rainy and
| snowy days and nights especially." I am tempted to reply to such,
| --This whole earth which we inhabit is but a point in space. How
| far apart, think you, dwell the two most distant inhabitants of
| yonder star, the breadth of whose disk cannot be appreciated by
| our instruments? Why should I feel lonely? is not our planet in
| the Milky Way? This which you put seems to me not to be the most
| important question. What sort of space is that which separates a
| man from his fellows and makes him solitary? I have found that no
| exertion of legs can bring two minds much nearer to one another.
|
| Both by Thoreau in Walden.
|
| I do wonder if interaction is a requisite to a happy life. Or if
| the perception of being a misfit is the true cause of these
| unhealthy outcomes. For those who are content to be alone, is the
| need for interaction still as important or can this be offset by
| a greater comfort with one's self and a deeper connection to all
| of Nature?
| shrimp_emoji wrote:
| To reinforce Thoreau's sentiment:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=379oevm2fho&t=5s
|
| What messes with me most is the socially-programmed expectation
| that I _should_ feel lonely, and that it 's not okay to be
| isolated (and that it's somehow like smoking 5,000 packs per
| day or whatever).
|
| It causes me to constantly feel surprised at how okay I seem to
| be with being alone and like something's wrong with me or I'm
| not feeling the bad effects yet or something. :D (And the
| latter is true if you consider the erosion of your
| relationships as a bad effect, which I do.)
| wombatmobile wrote:
| If you don't know what flies have got to do with humans, discover
| Seymour Benzer.
|
| https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2235899/
| dang wrote:
| That would make a great HN submission sometime! - just not
| right away (it's always best to give time for the hivemind
| caches to clear). If you wait a while and submit it, email
| hn@ycombinator.com and we'll put it in the second-chance pool
| (https://news.ycombinator.com/pool, explained at
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26998308), so it will get
| a random placement on HN's front page.
| the_only_law wrote:
| Well I certainly lose sleep, but I actually eat less and am not a
| fly.
| del_operator wrote:
| Not sure how I read "files overeat and lose sleep" but I was
| intrigued.
| tpmx wrote:
| So I googled "the social life of flies" and found:
|
| https://phys.org/news/2018-03-social-life-humble-fruit-revol...
|
| _Humans aren 't the only species with a well-developed drinking
| culture. The social life of the humble fruit fly also revolves
| around alcohol._
|
| _Their favorite food, rotting fruit, ferments into a beer-
| strength quaff. Courtship often involves swarming boozy locales
| and getting frisky after imbibing. Flies also use alcohol as a
| palliative, taking to drink after repeated sexual rejection. And
| like humans, flies develop "drinking problems."_
| certeoun wrote:
| > But even as we wait for the fly to help us combat the complex
| effects of social isolation, Li and colleagues' study reminds
| us that there are benefits to everyday interactions with
| others.
|
| > And like humans, flies develop "drinking problems."
|
| Am I like a fly now? :/ (I observed similar behavior on me with
| similar circumstances.)
|
| Yeah, I know community is good[1], but I am estranged from
| family and have 1 friend who is busy with his own life.
| Possibly it is because of me being weird around people? Or me
| being socially awkward? I will screen myself for ADHD, but
| every attempt to connect with people failed. :( I seem to
| connect with people on platforms like HN, but I cannot connect
| outside of platforms like HN for some odd reason. Furthermore,
| I really tried to connect with real people, but I got rejected
| many times. I am afraid that I am an annoyance to people and
| that's why they don't want to connect with me.It is stressful
| to be alone.
|
| Anyhow, I was chronically lonely and still am, and I can
| confirm the stress reactions that flies experience when they
| are chronically lonely.
|
| It is stressful to be alone. At least HN gives eases a bit of
| the stress for me. HN is essentially providing me a venue to
| connect with people. I am happy about that.
|
| [1] > Harvard study, almost 80 years old, has proved that
| embracing community helps us live longer, and be happier
|
| https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2017/04/over-nearly-8...
| thoughtstheseus wrote:
| Welcome to HN! :) thanks for contributing to the community.
| fouc wrote:
| I assume they're using a throwaway account to make this
| particular post, since they alluded to making connections
| on HN before
| nick__m wrote:
| I would not be so fast to classify him/her/them as a
| throwaway account, they don't usually post insightful
| comments like this one:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28239106
| elzbardico wrote:
| Hey man. It gets better as you get older, both because you
| learn more social stuff, but also because you deal with older
| and more experienced people that become more tolerant of our
| differences.
|
| Also some of the skills you get in the online world dealing
| with people are transferrable to the physical world, well, at
| least it worked like that for me ;-)
| fouc wrote:
| Interesting, I assumed the poster was in their 30s or even
| 40s, but you seem to be assuming they're young instead.
| elzbardico wrote:
| Yes. It is fascinating how our brains try to fill up the
| blanks in ways that are probably related to our
| experience and knowledge.
| the_only_law wrote:
| I decided to stop going out alone the other weekend thanks to
| Alcohol. I don't have any sort of chronic issue, but notice
| if I end up at the bar by myself, I tend to overdo things by
| a lot.
| sillysaurusx wrote:
| You sound like you're in your 20s. Even if you're early 30s,
| life is long.
|
| Listen. I felt similarly to you. Then I was put on Prozac. I
| stopped having those feelings.
|
| There's a data point. Any time I recommend that data point,
| people lose their minds. So I'll just state it and leave it
| up to interpretation. What worked for me won't work for you.
| (Are you sure?)
|
| My point is, get your ass into the doctor's office. I'm sorry
| to phrase it bluntly, but if no one told me that bluntly, I
| never would have. I wrote about it here.
| https://twitter.com/theshawwn/status/1392213804684038150
|
| The doctor's appointment was _the_ pivotal change in my life.
| Before doctor, unhappy life. After doctor, happy life.
|
| The problem is, most doctors don't seem to really care deeply
| about you. Or at least me. I lucked out big time by finding a
| small sleep clinic with an elderly doc. As I say in the post,
| she took to me like a mother hen, and she seemed genuinely
| pained when I expressed the sorts of feelings you're saying
| here.
|
| Let me put it a different way. You're unhappy with your
| current trajectory, and you don't see it changing any time
| soon. I was unhappy with my trajectory, and the only thing
| that changed it was getting my ass into a doctor's office
| repeatedly until one of them cared about solving the
| underlying problem.
|
| In hindsight, there was one other important mental shift.
| You're not broken. There's nothing "wrong" with you. That
| would be like saying you're a broken person because you have
| a broken leg. That makes no sense. And it makes no sense to
| go through life without taking care of it, or feeling like a
| crutch makes you less of a person. My crutch was Prozac.
| Yours will be what works for you.
|
| Good luck. DM me any time, 24/7. Happy to listen about
| whatever you want to vent about.
| [deleted]
| guerrilla wrote:
| This gives a whole new meaning to bar fly.
| belter wrote:
| But of course! All makes sense now:
|
| https://restaurantguru.com/The-Drunken-Fly-Stratford-upon-Av...
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