Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Ask HN: Is anyone working on “downloading” knowledge to the brain?

news.ycombinator.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

51–60 of 82 posts

Re: Ask HN: Is anyone working on “downloading” knowledge to the brain?

#51

Post by mr_coffee »

bognition wrote: post #7

Really great question! Former PhD in Neuroscience here. I spent many years building systems and algorithms to decode neural activity in rats. I've been out of neuro for almost a decade now so some of this is out of date, so take this all with a grain of salt. The TL;DR is yes but its insanely hard and we're decades away from knowing how to do this (if not longer). We still lack the technologies to interface with indi…

Thanks for the reply! The last point is one I had not considered. In some ways it might be harder than finding someone willing to go to Mars.

Re: Ask HN: Is anyone working on “downloading” knowledge to the brain?

#52

Post by crehn »

ahmed_ds wrote: post #21

This reminded me of Sleep Learning. This topic has the oddest Wikipedia page [0]. You would expect this topic to have research, historical background and other sections. But 80% of that page is just references to fictional literature. 0: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sleep-learning

Tangentially, studying right before sleeping has always been one of the most effective way for me to memorize stuff.

Re: Ask HN: Is anyone working on “downloading” knowledge to the brain?

#53

Post by james-redwood »

ninkendo wrote: post #37
keiferski wrote: post #10

I know it's not exactly what you asked for, but in my experience, spaced repetition is borderline science fiction -- if implemented properly. It's not as instantaneous or cool as The Matrix , but it does feel like magic when you can remember obscure words or concepts years after entering them into a SRS program.

What SRS software do you recommend?

Mochi.cards

Re: Ask HN: Is anyone working on “downloading” knowledge to the brain?

#54

Post by telxosser »

mdp2021 wrote: post #22

Not a word about the security implications? The easiest reply would be "They are called books", or whatever container and format for information - and already there issues and risks are more than just possible, mitigated by filters one is trained to develop. The more acquisition of information takes the aspect of an "injection", a whole world of issues open. From "I read War and Peace in one hour: it was about Russia…

I would think security wise it would be like medication. Everything from highly trusted,tested and expensive sources to the free for all of the black market.

I would suspect you are right though that the idea of a knowledge injection is absurd.

If an athlete takes steroids they are injecting strength in one sense but not like a movie that they take the injection and are superman 5 minutes later. Surely, there are biological processes that can't be sped up all that much unless we are talking about complete science fiction with total mastery of biology.

Re: Ask HN: Is anyone working on “downloading” knowledge to the brain?

#56

Post by legerdemain »

mdp2021 wrote: post #43
keiferski wrote: post #10

I know it's not exactly what you asked for, but in my experience, spaced repetition is borderline science fiction -- if implemented properly. It's not as instantaneous or cool as The Matrix , but it does feel like magic when you can remember obscure words or concepts years after entering them into a SRS program.

It's called "studying", which implies a form of "spaced repetition", but makes notions meaningful and "alive" by making them integrated in your "body of knowledge". To do differently - to just keep notions in a mental closet -, would be like memorizing a book: you have not read it. "Reading" - digesting information - and "memorizing" are not the same. To "study" you will have to use some sort of (often natural, impli…

With the exception of word lists for foreign language study (and to be honest, vocabulary is rarely my most important issue with foreign languages), I haven't found anything that benefits from studying flashcards.

I know that flashcards were a big thing among students when I was in grade school and college (decades ago). I'm sure they helped students memorize pieces of information, but I'm not sure they helped students understand them.

Re: Ask HN: Is anyone working on “downloading” knowledge to the brain?

#57

Post by kthejoker2 »

jstx1 wrote: post #41
rolisz wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes. I have concepts in Anki that I will be promoted to repeat again in 4 years and I've had to repeat 4-5 times in the past two years.

Why though? In what circumstances apart from preparing for exams does it makes sense to do this?

Without ascribing concrete value to it, I've done this my whole career and I am generally viewed as a "know-it-all" .. "Ask kthejoker, if anyone knows, he will."

Especially with regards to solution architecture, you're often combining or comparing a huge (think factorial!) mix of tools, code, data, etc. Each with their own configurations, settings, gotchas, patterns, constraints, capabilities, hacks ...

Being able to quickly recall and locate URLs, code repos, docs, points of contact in a company or the wider community ... for me, it is the ultimate career moat.

This article on A Cloud Guru kind of encapsulates the sentiment well

https://acloudguru.com/blog/engineering/the-career-changing-...

Anyway, convenient texhnology for spaced repetition plus a second brain is amazing compared to earlier centuries.

In the future this will probably be a core part of OP's question .. adding things to the brain, automatically deriving connections, surfacing things into your "local" memory at the perfect time ...

Re: Ask HN: Is anyone working on “downloading” knowledge to the brain?

#58

Post by mrkramer »

xg15 wrote: post #44
mrkramer wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not a neurologist too but what if you can do it without brain implants? Something like transmitting data in the form of waves to brain.

What kind of waves would that be? You'd need something to resonate with specific neurons in any case.

Idk but do you need brain implants or somehow it would be possible to do it without them?

Re: Ask HN: Is anyone working on “downloading” knowledge to the brain?

#59

Post by sdfgsdf »

keiferski wrote: post #10

I know it's not exactly what you asked for, but in my experience, spaced repetition is borderline science fiction -- if implemented properly. It's not as instantaneous or cool as The Matrix , but it does feel like magic when you can remember obscure words or concepts years after entering them into a SRS program.

I'm interested in this, but I'm doing something wrong.

On the one hand, I've downloaded AnkiDroid and played with it a bit. But I have the impression that just "seeing" the card isn't helping me. I need to be forced to write down the answer.

On the other hand, I've struggled to understand what "kind" of things should go in to a card. For example, verbs: I'm learning a language that has a complex verb conjugation structure. What I really need is to study the conjugation table. But instead the usual cards I download just ask the infinive form, and then display the conjugation table in the back - I'm not going to sit down and study the conjugation table when I'm swiping cards. When I sit down and study I do without cards, so I don't see the benefit...?

I feel I'm missing the trick.

Re: Ask HN: Is anyone working on “downloading” knowledge to the brain?

#60

Post by mattm »

ninkendo wrote: post #37
keiferski wrote: post #10

I know it's not exactly what you asked for, but in my experience, spaced repetition is borderline science fiction -- if implemented properly. It's not as instantaneous or cool as The Matrix , but it does feel like magic when you can remember obscure words or concepts years after entering them into a SRS program.

What SRS software do you recommend?

I've tried both Supermemo and Anki. Supermemo's algorithm is much better - I found I spent less time reviewing compared to Anki. Unfortunately, it's Windows only so I use Anki for the convenience.
Post reply on HN