Quote Originally Posted by FlyFree View Post
I'm interested to see what your take is on this cdde323.
That's like handing me a crossword puzzle. I warn you, I'm good at being a pessimist, over analyzing and nit picking =D

<begin wikipedia knowledge>

Alcohol raises the levels of dopamine in your brain, fortunately, a lot of things in life have this same effect. Including just plain ol' thought...

Dopamine has a controlling hold over a lot of the body/mind functions that are altered with alcohol consumption. It seems reasonable that with the power of thought, you should be able to produce some and/or minor effects of alcohol. I think that's where it ends though... The students were in college, they were being offered free liquor in a bar setting and they were in a group of their peers. So many different factors were contributing to the meme of getting drunk, it makes sense a placebo could result in a huge spike of dopamine. Perform that same experiment with a more "general public" sampling and keep them separated, I have a feeling you'd get vastly different results.

I can keep on going (dunno if I should.)

A sort of counter-punch to you "drunk button" idea is that dopamine also controls your reward system. By default, you are rewarded by good... unexpected things. This is why a good song will truly never be as good as the first time you heard it, those virgin ears caused a huge surge in dopamine and you simply aren't programmed to like something over and over and over.

If you, being very enthusiastic with this idea, went through the dream time to do this yourself. NEVER testing it in waking life until that one day you had completed all 2400 repetitions. On that day, all your buddies are surrounding you, you're in a bar, everyone is drunk except you and... You press the "drunk button". You might uhmmm... crack a smile. (Haha... I'm just kidding =D) No, you might feel something, but I don't expect you to feel what I think you are picturing in your head. There might be a dopamine spike because of all the built up faith and anticipation you've put into this meme. I don't expect it to work the next day though... or any time in the future.

Now! If it did work and was repeatable, I would totally be the first person in line to invest his time. I'd press the drunk button when I got out of the car to pump gas... Let's just hope I would remember to turn it off.