>>12004479This is all horseshit. Yes, Descartes believed that, and he had zero substantiated evidence to believe it, and there's still zero evidence to believe it.
The pineal gland is probably important when it comes to sleep, dreams, and the circadian rhythm, but it's not some magical thing and probably isn't even closely tied to consciousness.
Studies of ancient humans long before water fluoridation also show calcified pineal glands. Aging naturally causes this. There's no good evidence showing that the amount of fluoride added to water accelerates this process. It's not disproven, but there's no good evidence for it. About 40% of people over the age of 17 have calcified pineal glands whether or not they live in a country with fluoridated water.
Also, if this is true you might be asking "well if so many people have calcium deposits in their pineal glands, why aren't we noticing drastic changes?" Because it doesn't seem to cause much impact, as far as we can tell. It can reduce melatonin production, but it doesn't seem to be associated with sleep problems. Also, staying up late and posting on 4chan probably fucks with melatonin production more than calcium does.
Evolutionarily, it's probably a vestige of light detection and melatonin production systems when organisms had a single, central eye. Now it no longer has that purpose in humans.
But even if it *did*, what does it matter? If we all had third eyes on our heads detecting light, we probably wouldn't behave or feel differently than we do now. It's just a lot of excitement over a system that's not all that interesting.
