Peter: Egon, this reminds me of the time you tried to drill a hole in your head, remember that?
Egon: That would have worked if you didn’t stop me.
Neuroscientists' Open Letter To DIY Brain Hackers
121–130 of 149 posts
Re: Neuroscientists' Open Letter To DIY Brain Hackers
#122Earlier quoted context omitted.
The linked transcript is fairly short and DEFINITELY worth a read. Very interesting stuff.
There is a much longer and even more fascinating article here on HN about a similar case. You should search for it, if I was in front of a computer I'd find it for you. In it the man seems to have a lasting effect and is "cured" from Aspergers ends up splitting with his wife of I remember correctly.
Re: Neuroscientists' Open Letter To DIY Brain Hackers
#123Earlier quoted context omitted.
> IQ scores were actually going down By how much? If someone can trade severe anxiety for perhaps 5-10 IQ points, then in most cases they will probably sign up.
Severe anxiety is painful for sure, but doesn't that seem a bit unnecessary? Given there are proven methods for treating anxiety such as medications, meditation, cognitive behavioral therapies, etc without such a high cost.
Most people who are turning to more extreme and DIY solutions are doing so precisely because they've tried everything else. Outside of a small core of "natural cure" quacks, alternative medicine or "unproven medicine" is the last thing people try after conventional medicine and methods of symptom regulation have failed.
Combined, the anxiety treatment options you mentioned are probably about 80-90% effective, which is good from a societal outcomes perspective, but that still leaves millions of people with no other options.
Furthermore, many of the FDA approved medications for anxiety have side effects that can be more harmful than the original anxiety, and patients have far less experience coping with those second-order effects. A sufferer of extreme anxiety can have developed a toolset of partially effective coping mechanisms built over decades of experience, but be totally unprepared to deal with the disassociative effects and suicidal thoughts that come from something like Xanax.
Re: Neuroscientists' Open Letter To DIY Brain Hackers
#124Earlier quoted context omitted.
Heroin (and the fact that it's a scarce commodity due to legislation first world countries) has the self-harm potential (needles can be used by addicts so many times they actually snap/collapsed veins/'cotton fever') along with social negatives (shared needles=>increased rates of transmittance of hep C and other maladies, petty crime, prostitution (which is a-okay by me if regulated, but addicts who resort to sex wor…
If heroin was legal, safe, and free, I still wouldn't use it. The state I would be in as a heroin addict has a large negative value in my current utility function. This negative value is so large that it swamps the positive value of being happy all the time. I suspect this just means I'm not entirely hedonistic.
Heroin doesn't make you happy.
It nukes emotion.
Re: Neuroscientists' Open Letter To DIY Brain Hackers
#125Earlier quoted context omitted.
Can you point to any papers? I'm curious. A friend (actually not me) was just asking about them. He gets anxiety, and wanted to have them on hand in case of a severe attack. But he's wary of medications generally and is on the fence about taking them.
Beta blockers aren't great for sudden panic attacks. I took them for years, and while they're great for toning down the anxiety baseline, they don't even remotely approach benzos when it comes to mitigating severe panic. Sadly the only medications you can reasonably get out there that will address an incipient or in progress panic attack are benzos. There are other supplements/medications that are helpful (phenibut i…
The problem with benzodiazepines is that they're insanely addictive. And withdrawal is excruciating.
Re: Neuroscientists' Open Letter To DIY Brain Hackers
#126> a zapping session may produce an effect exactly the opposite of what's intended
Sounds a lot like anti-depressant medication.
Re: Neuroscientists' Open Letter To DIY Brain Hackers
#127My brothers and I saw a child psychiatrist in the late 1970s and early 1980s. She had stuck needles in our head and tried to treat us via electric shock for depression.
We were all high functioning with above average intelligence.
Ever since I had problems remebering names and faces of most people I met and other memory problems.
She said we were too smart to have autism but high functioning autism wasn't discovered until later in the 1990s so we might have been misdiagnosed.
It makes it hard for me to find work and be accepted.
Re: Neuroscientists' Open Letter To DIY Brain Hackers
#128Earlier quoted context omitted.
Anxiety and high IQ are linked: http://www.livescience.com/36259-anxiety-linked-high-iq.html so it is possible (I am speculating) that by reducing anxiety, you are reducing IQ. Not everyone wants to be smart, but it is not a decision I would take lightly. I wonder if you could perform the opposite operation, jacking up anxiety and IQ...
Even ignoring the whole "IQ = smart" thing, you can have a lower IQ and still have a high IQ.
This was not a well formulated sentence. I'll go ahead and clarify it some for other people reading and scratching their heads:
>you can have a lower IQ and still have a high IQ
You can lower your IQ and still have a high IQ. I.E going from 130 to 120 is different from going from 100 to 90.
Re: Neuroscientists' Open Letter To DIY Brain Hackers
#129Does wearing monitor headphones possess not obvious risks to your brain functions?
Re: Neuroscientists' Open Letter To DIY Brain Hackers
#130Does wearing monitor headphones possess not obvious risks to your brain functions?
That depends on how badly miswired they are, I suppose.