Subject: Re: Hot flushes update
From: [email protected] (Chris Malcolm)
Date: 2/26/02 2:04 AM Pacific Standard Time
Message-id: <a5fmjb$co5$[email protected]>
My *guess* to the progress of hot flushes is based on the notion that
our bodies adaptively learn many of the kinds of control we need, such
as thermoregulation, exploiting whatever comes to hand. When a major
shift in hormone levels happens, this can disable one of the many
thermoregulation homeostatic control tricks you used to use. Like a
dog with three legs, before it has got used to it, every so often it
falls over. And like a dog with three legs, you have to relearn
thermoregulation under the new hormone regime. This is not learning
like learning how to play a new game of cards, it is a basic very
simple biological kind of learning, of the kind that even worms can
do. No insight is involved, simply a long process of pedestrian reward
and punishment which finally filters back through the various levels
of thermoregulation machinery to result in a new successful
adaptation. Since learning how to use an artificial leg gracefully
takes a few years, and involves not only this kind of low level
biological learning, but assistance from higher levels with insight, I
would expect the kind of learning involved in learning how not to have
hot flushes would take several years.
--
Chris Malcolm [email protected] +44 (0)131 650 3085
School of Artificial Intelligence, Division of Informatics
Edinburgh University, 5 Forrest Hill, Edinburgh, EH1 2QL, UK
[http://www.dai.ed.ac.uk/daidb/people/homes/cam/ ] DoD #205