Human Endogenous Retrovirus-K HML-2 integration within RASGRF2 is associated with intravenous drug abuse and modulates transcription in a cell-line model
Not all humans have the same HK2 viruses in their genomes. Here we show that one specific uncommon HK2, which lies close to a gene involved in dopaminergic activity in the brain, is more frequently found in drug addicts and thus is significantly associated with addiction. We experimentally show that HK2 can manipulate nearby genes. Our study provides strong evidence that uncommon HK2 can be responsible for unappreciated pathogenic burden, and thus underlines the health importance of exploring the phenotypic roles of young, insertionally polymorphic HK2 integrations in human populations.
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Based on our cell-line experiments, we suggest that RASGRF2-int leads to enhancement of dopaminergic activity through higher expression of the first exons of RASGRF2, which then results in increased potential for addiction.
Very sensible that the mutation relates to the dopaminergic activity, just based on our knowledge of the reward pathway and the effect of addictive drugs on dopamine. There may even been a positive feedback loop here, as any viral gene inserted that increases risky, impulsive behavior may also encourage procreation.
Certain aspects? Sure. All aspects? No. I don’t mind the buying the use and the minor incidentsl things. But if the addiction causes harm, be it physical, material or other major impacts on others, then it becomes both a health issue and a criminsl issue (stealing, hit and runs, deception, and obviously more). But yes, let’s try and treat it first rather than seek punishment first.
Every time I find interesting (and frighting) that we are nothing but a collection of ourselves and virus and bacterias, written down to our DNA and RNA or living together with close dependence deep in our guts (literally).
Going further, a lot of what we do unconciously is just what a virus or something else "did" to survive or spread in the past, and our free will isn't that free...
Edit: "did" wasn't meaning that a specific goal was set, for example, but just that the survival rate was better for certain configuration of atoms
It's also revealing how the unique ability of humans to overcome their fundamental biological nature can be quite impressive and inspiring. Humans have many natural tendencies that are not socially accepted, and better behavior can be learned and tendencies suppressed. Addicts and alcoholics can turn their lives around, even though they remain addicts for life.
> Every time I find interesting (and frighting) that we are nothing but a collection of ourselves and virus and bacterias, written down to our DNA and RNA or living together with close dependence deep in our guts (literally).
Decoding the Universe: How the New Science of Information Is Explaining Everything in the Cosmos, from Our Brains to Black Holes, by Charles Seife
One item discussed in the book that we as humans may just be a transport method for the data within DNA to survive time. Because without some replication it would get trapped and cease to exist.
We aren't just a product of that, we are also a product of human sexual selection and epigenetic inheritance of individually acquired traits. Many of your important traits (such as general intelligence) were acquired in part by conscious processes by your ancestors.
Perhaps the gene that makes people more prone to addiction also makes them take more risk or work harder? You can't just delete shit from an extremely complex system and expect it will just work.
There are so many more things than substances to be addicted to. Psychological dependence on certain behaviors can be just as strong as physical dependence on a substance.
It looks like this study is focused on drug addiction which on its own is really intriguing, but I wonder if there would be any evidence in the human genome to predict behavioral addiction.
Genetic test that could tell you: "You most likely won't develop physical addiction to cocaine." would be a game changer in some demanding professions.
Most people could use cocaine as safely as caffeine but since you have no idea if you get addicted or not mostly dumb people try and some suffer greatly.
I'm still not totally sure how the "causation" part is proven. Just because the genes must have already existed in human beings long before there were drugs? Not sure if this is totally convincing though sure, that is indeed stronger than many other cases as proving causation is really difficult.
Is it a particular SNP marker/mutation of the RASGRF2 gene? In my genetic report there are 99 such markers, I'm wondering if a specific one is mentioned in the paper.
I have some bad news for you: your perception of free will is a by-product of your ignorance of how your brain works. Every decision you think you make is actually just a bunch of neurons firing, and those neurons were built by your DNA.
No one actually believes this, including you. You may say you do, and even think you do, but you don’t. Everyone acts as if they and others around them possess free will. We act that way because that’s what we believe.
Honestly, I don’t think we understand enough about consciousness and how it arises from physical brains/bodies to make such an extraordinary claim like “there is no free will,” when the entire history of human thought and philosophy presupposes that there is.
Whenever free will comes up I like to bring up Conway's Free Will Theorem[1].
If you define free will as future choices cannot be predicted based on history, then it turns out that if humans have free will, so do elementary particles. To me, this doesn't mean we don't have free will, but instead the linear, deterministic model that's often used to discount free will is just not how the universe works.
Note that this result does not depend on statistical randomness like some of quantum mechanics, but just three simple axioms. I highly recommend reading the full paper, especially the end, "Free Will Versus Determinism".
Actually free will is one of those delicious unanswerable questions that everyone has a different answer for. Think about this for a moment -- what would be different about the world or human behavior if we had free will versus if we didn't?
Talking about free will is just another way to have a conversation about God.
Don't take away the illusion of free will when you can't give it back. Some people might actually like to think that they have free will. Or at least you could ask them which pill they want beforehand ;-)
One of many holes in this theory is that the mind that believes it has free will is also the one that created the conceptual model of neurons, so we could also be wrong about that too.
>Every decision you think you make is actually just a bunch of neurons firing
That's like saying "matter is just a bunch of atoms". The reality is not so certain. Our understanding of the fundamental nature of reality (physics) and consciousness (neuroscience/psychology) is still highly theoretical.
Just because I love arguing about free will, and because I feel like a lot of the time people are not all talking about the same thing when they say "free will", would some of you be willing to tell me what you think "free will" means?
Please say what you sincerely think free will means, and try not to give me strawman or devil's advocate positions on what you think your opponents think it means, if you would be so kind.
This is only bad news to people like you. In theory, finding out whether free will truly exists or not should make absolutely no difference to our lives because the universe would continue on the same way regardless. Only pessimists let such knowledge prevent them from doing things.
I see nothing here that suggests the link is causative. It could very well be that the toll of being an addict compromises the immune system leading to conditions that most people never get.
So what does this say about all the studies on rats, dogs, and all the other animals we have been using to study addiction? The rats that choose cocaine over food, are they running a different retrovirus?
This brings home the point Sam Harris makes often in his writing and blog (and books [1]): Our subjective experience of free will and being in control is largely an illusion.
I used to find that very depressing, but now made peace with compatibilism (the notion that determinism and free will are compatible) [2][3].
Sam Harris objects to compatibilism: both argue that determinism is true, but Harris thinks that thus we have no free will, while compatibilists argue that we still have the "free will worth having" (see the book by Dennett [4]).
Harris and Dennett had an insightful podcast/debate on that [5].
[+] [-] rfinney|7 years ago|reply
Human Endogenous Retrovirus-K HML-2 integration within RASGRF2 is associated with intravenous drug abuse and modulates transcription in a cell-line model
Not all humans have the same HK2 viruses in their genomes. Here we show that one specific uncommon HK2, which lies close to a gene involved in dopaminergic activity in the brain, is more frequently found in drug addicts and thus is significantly associated with addiction. We experimentally show that HK2 can manipulate nearby genes. Our study provides strong evidence that uncommon HK2 can be responsible for unappreciated pathogenic burden, and thus underlines the health importance of exploring the phenotypic roles of young, insertionally polymorphic HK2 integrations in human populations.
...
Based on our cell-line experiments, we suggest that RASGRF2-int leads to enhancement of dopaminergic activity through higher expression of the first exons of RASGRF2, which then results in increased potential for addiction.
[+] [-] WhompingWindows|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] wil421|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mcfunk|7 years ago|reply
For anyone interested in further reading on the topic I highly recommend information available from the Institute For Addiction Study (https://www.theinstituteforaddictionstudy.org/).
[+] [-] mc32|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] nirelCALBO|7 years ago|reply
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[+] [-] woliveirajr|7 years ago|reply
Going further, a lot of what we do unconciously is just what a virus or something else "did" to survive or spread in the past, and our free will isn't that free...
Edit: "did" wasn't meaning that a specific goal was set, for example, but just that the survival rate was better for certain configuration of atoms
[+] [-] hellofunk|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] qwerty456127|7 years ago|reply
That's our bodies, not us. "Every time I find interesting (and fighting)" that people believe they are nothing but a collection of cells, chemicals and feelings. Most people (outside the audience of the HN perhaps) don't even recognize that the feelings are actually the chemicals and have little to do even with the objective reality, needless to say with their true self. Believing you are your body is almost the same as believing that you are your car or your GitHub account. That's not we, that's our bodies, our "cars" with baggage (memories etc) in them, in our true self "we are all Kosh" © Overwhelming majority of people just live in permanent "rubber hand illusion". Getting rid of the illusion and recalling who you actually are is, however, easy as 1-2-3: 1. get cousciously aware of your emotions and thoughts, distance from them and obseve them 2. turn your inner gaze from them to the direction of where do you feel you observe them from 3. recognize that what you see there (it looks like just nothing, just conscious "empty space") is the actual you and you will never be able to "unsee' that. One doesn't need any kind of religion or spirituality to realize this (although it actually is taught in the Tibetan religious tradition of Dzogchen), it is as simple as realizing the rubber hand is not a part of your body.
[+] [-] EGreg|7 years ago|reply
I agree that atoms are necessary, but how do we know they are sufficient for consciousness?
Can you prove the “nothing but” part?
[+] [-] benmowa|7 years ago|reply
Decoding the Universe: How the New Science of Information Is Explaining Everything in the Cosmos, from Our Brains to Black Holes, by Charles Seife
One item discussed in the book that we as humans may just be a transport method for the data within DNA to survive time. Because without some replication it would get trapped and cease to exist.
[+] [-] chiefalchemist|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] roywiggins|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] x220|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jrochkind1|7 years ago|reply
Did they take the list of all HK2 viruses, and test them all to see which one had a prevalence in identified addicts?
If they did that, would they admit it in the paper?
Maybe I've become too cynical, but my default is to assume statistical misuse these days.
[+] [-] lazyjones|7 years ago|reply
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[+] [-] Communitivity|7 years ago|reply
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[+] [-] mbroncano|7 years ago|reply
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Deepness_in_the_Sky
[+] [-] ridgeguy|7 years ago|reply
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Darwin%27s_Radio
[+] [-] twodave|7 years ago|reply
It looks like this study is focused on drug addiction which on its own is really intriguing, but I wonder if there would be any evidence in the human genome to predict behavioral addiction.
[+] [-] MrEfficiency|7 years ago|reply
Alcohol ruins your day.
I can be productive on weed and/or caffeine. Both of them get work done.
I believe I'm addicted to the productivity, when I take them outside of a work environment, I want to work.
At what point is this positive reinforced habits?
[+] [-] scotty79|7 years ago|reply
Most people could use cocaine as safely as caffeine but since you have no idea if you get addicted or not mostly dumb people try and some suffer greatly.
[+] [-] sjg007|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] SZJX|7 years ago|reply
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[+] [-] lisper|7 years ago|reply
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[+] [-] nardi|7 years ago|reply
Honestly, I don’t think we understand enough about consciousness and how it arises from physical brains/bodies to make such an extraordinary claim like “there is no free will,” when the entire history of human thought and philosophy presupposes that there is.
[+] [-] inputcoffee|7 years ago|reply
In other words, I am not a product of neurons firing, I am neurons firing.
I feel like we should reread Descartes' Meditations. But roughly speaking, "I think therefore I am" can be interpreted as "I am thought."
What is essential to me is the information processing that happens as a result of the neurons firing.
[+] [-] bqe|7 years ago|reply
If you define free will as future choices cannot be predicted based on history, then it turns out that if humans have free will, so do elementary particles. To me, this doesn't mean we don't have free will, but instead the linear, deterministic model that's often used to discount free will is just not how the universe works.
Note that this result does not depend on statistical randomness like some of quantum mechanics, but just three simple axioms. I highly recommend reading the full paper, especially the end, "Free Will Versus Determinism".
[1]: http://www.ams.org/notices/200902/rtx090200226p.pdf
[+] [-] jschwartzi|7 years ago|reply
Talking about free will is just another way to have a conversation about God.
[+] [-] JepZ|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] colordrops|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] wu-ikkyu|7 years ago|reply
That's like saying "matter is just a bunch of atoms". The reality is not so certain. Our understanding of the fundamental nature of reality (physics) and consciousness (neuroscience/psychology) is still highly theoretical.
[+] [-] checkyoursudo|7 years ago|reply
Please say what you sincerely think free will means, and try not to give me strawman or devil's advocate positions on what you think your opponents think it means, if you would be so kind.
[+] [-] WilliamEdward|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] catawbasam|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] undershirt|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jostmey|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] asimpletune|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] sandworm101|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] FabHK|7 years ago|reply
I used to find that very depressing, but now made peace with compatibilism (the notion that determinism and free will are compatible) [2][3].
Sam Harris objects to compatibilism: both argue that determinism is true, but Harris thinks that thus we have no free will, while compatibilists argue that we still have the "free will worth having" (see the book by Dennett [4]).
Harris and Dennett had an insightful podcast/debate on that [5].
[1] https://www.nytimes.com/2012/07/15/books/review/free-will-by...
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compatibilism
[3] https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/compatibilism/
[4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elbow_Room_(book)
[5] https://samharris.org/podcasts/free-will-revisited/