Brain implants allow paralysed monkeys to walk • Hacker News Board

Re: Brain implants allow paralysed monkeys to walk

#161

Post by perseusprime11 » Sat, Nov 12, 2016, 3:45 PM UTC

citricsquid wrote: post #67

Benjamin_Dobell wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would assume it's because monkeys are more intelligent than the animals we tend to eat; cows, chickens, sheep & pigs. Also, intentionally paralysing a creature, leaving it to live in that condition, and then performing experimental surgery/procedures on it is significantly different than slaughtering it. Whilst I appreciate the scientists mean well, and I do understand how this could benefit humanity; this sort of…

The intelligence argument is nonsense. Pigs are as intelligent as dogs. Describe the treatment of livestock (pigs, chickens, cows) but frame it as something that is happening to dogs and you'll drive hundreds of thousands of outraged meat eaters to signing a petition. The reason is cognitive dissonance, we're taught from the moment we can understand that it's okay to farm animals and very few people ever really think…

This is great comment! I always wondered why people were ok eating cows and pigs and not cats and dogs. It's got to be how we are conditioned from childhood to obey conventional thinking. Dogs are faithful to humans so we cannot eat them....

Re: Brain implants allow paralysed monkeys to walk

#162

Post by lostlogin » Sat, Nov 12, 2016, 4:58 PM UTC

sandworm101 wrote: post #139

lostlogin wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wonder if this is slowly changing as values change. In NZ there is a growing movement to eradicate pests to help protect native species. Cats fall on the wrong side of this goal. There have been public calls by high profile individuals to eradicate cats. Maybe someday birds will be seen to greater value than cats down here. http://nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=10...

That's a very modern trend. Even if they did 'ban' cats I really doubt anyone would look to eradicate them. We aren't going to see cops raiding people's houses to kill their pets. It will probably take the form of mandatory spay/neuter programs to wipe out the population over a period of several years. The feral cats will be trapped and similarly treated until there are only a very few that need to be actually killed…

We do have a rat problem. There are quite a few predator free areas in NZ which are islands or fenced inland areas. With fenced off areas, more problematic than rats are mice, which can get though truely tiny holes in fences, jump quite high and are hard to control. At least rats can be fenced out more easily. In terms of killing pests, some great equipment has been developed recently. A homegrown CO2 powered ", self resetting trap has impressive functionality and ongoing testing is really promising.

www.radionz.co.nz/news/national/313828/self-resetting-rat-traps-20-times-better-than-standard-traps-study

Re: Brain implants allow paralysed monkeys to walk

#163

Post by nitrogen » Sat, Nov 12, 2016, 6:25 PM UTC

RehnoLindeque wrote: post #155

mbfg wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

once lab meat/lab milk can be produced at or below cost of farming, cows will likely go extinct, unfortunately. A less vulgar correlary is that once horse racing is outlawed, horses will mostly go extinct as well, as the racing industry is responsible for being able to acquire feed/hay/veternary care for the average horse owner. Without it will be practically impossible to keep 'pleasure' horses. We humans are nasty…

From what I've heard most land-use in the world goes towards animal agriculture - mainly for growing feed. Don't quote me, but I think it's over 40% of all land use in the USA. On balance I'd be far more concerned about the destruction of habitat for already endangered wildlife.

What percentage of usable land is actually used, and what percentage of that usable land percentage is used destructively?

Re: Brain implants allow paralysed monkeys to walk

#164

Post by anbende » Sat, Nov 12, 2016, 9:45 PM UTC

truth_sentinell wrote: post #141

duaneb wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> We have a decent understanding now of the complexity of a human body I fundamentally disagree. We have models, sure, but they're approximative, not predictive, and I don't see any indication we'd be able to get prediction ever. It's very difficult to understand how biological approximation layered over chemical and physical approximation could give any benefit we get now from experimentation. Among other things, th…

Isn't that what we practically have from rats? a "subset" of the human brain? I cringe every time I see on some tech/science news some headline: "this is the reason you do this, or you think that", and then reading the study, you find out it was conducted on rats... If we are extrapolating results from rats to humans, why can't we just simulate a rat brain and avoid torturing more? Probably because rats are cheap, an…

At this point we're unable to simulate a rat brain. We think that we will be able to, but it's orders of magnitude beyond what we can do right now. Our biggest neural net computers have about a 1 million nodes (last time I checked). Rats have billions of neurons in a configuration we have not fully mapped.

One day we may be able to do that, and when we can, I agree it would be nice to stop torturing rats.

Re: Brain implants allow paralysed monkeys to walk

#165

Post by anbende » Sat, Nov 12, 2016, 9:57 PM UTC

truth_sentinell wrote: post #125

I'm eager for the day to come when we can map an entire animal to a computer model -or even human-, so animals won't be necessary anymore for this kind of procedure. How many years away do you guys think we are from that dream?

The current trend-line puts computing power at the level of the human brain in 10 years or so. However, processing power increases has been slowing down lately both in terms of time and the amount of money required for each new advance.

In addition, actually modeling a brain is not the same thing as having the computing power to do so. Our current chips have billions of transistors. However, our most sophisticated neural networks have a million nodes or so, I believe.

So we're a ways away from simulating a brain, human or otherwise. It's definitely more than 10 years. Probably 20 or more. And since we can't really predict computing power that far out, it's really hard to predict meaningfully.

Re: Brain implants allow paralysed monkeys to walk

#166

Post by coygui » Sun, Nov 13, 2016, 12:22 AM UTC

citricsquid wrote: post #67

Benjamin_Dobell wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would assume it's because monkeys are more intelligent than the animals we tend to eat; cows, chickens, sheep & pigs. Also, intentionally paralysing a creature, leaving it to live in that condition, and then performing experimental surgery/procedures on it is significantly different than slaughtering it. Whilst I appreciate the scientists mean well, and I do understand how this could benefit humanity; this sort of…

The intelligence argument is nonsense. Pigs are as intelligent as dogs. Describe the treatment of livestock (pigs, chickens, cows) but frame it as something that is happening to dogs and you'll drive hundreds of thousands of outraged meat eaters to signing a petition. The reason is cognitive dissonance, we're taught from the moment we can understand that it's okay to farm animals and very few people ever really think…

When I search for "gestation crates", Wikipedia tells me this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gestation_crate#/media/File:So...

I'm sure you don't explicitly mean this, :)

Re: Brain implants allow paralysed monkeys to walk

#167

Post by qbrass » Sun, Nov 13, 2016, 4:02 AM UTC

vblord wrote: post #88

TeeWEE wrote: post #4

I cant help to feel sad for the monkey. I'm not sure this is the way research should be done. Why not try this on a smaller scale animal first before doing it on a monkey? Also you don"t need to cut the spinal cord todo data analysis.

Just curious what you would think if they cloned a monkey and then did the operation to the cloned monkey? Would you still feel sad for the monkey if you knew that the only reason it existed was for this one purpose?

If that solved the ethical dilemma, they'd make humans for that purpose.

Re: Brain implants allow paralysed monkeys to walk

#168

Post by tn13 » Sun, Nov 13, 2016, 10:26 AM UTC

biofox wrote: post #7

"For more than a decade, neuroscientist Grégoire Courtine has been flying every few months from his lab at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne to another lab in Beijing, China, where he conducts research on monkeys with the aim of treating spinal-cord injuries. The commute is exhausting — on occasion he has even flown to Beijing, done experiments, and returned the same night. But it is worth it, say…

A lot of people feel a moral distinction between a quick death to more primitive traditional needs of food v/s slower death for uncertain gains. It is some kind of cognitive dissonance I feel. A lot of Americans who are perfectly happy eating a cow make fun of Indians for referring to cow as holy and outrage at Chinese killing dogs for food.

I personally think eastern world and more paganic religions like that of native Indians are perhaps more right to not see these issues as black and white based on fixed line but instead see our relationship with nature as much more flexible co-dependence. Like a mother who uses her own metabolism to feed her little child and the child who eventually tries to get rid of that dependence.

Re: Brain implants allow paralysed monkeys to walk

#169

Post by FullMtlAlcoholc » Sun, Nov 13, 2016, 10:53 AM UTC

theonemind wrote: post #158

FullMtlAlcoholc wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because of this sentiment, western nations are going to be leaps and bounds behind China and other nations when it comes to technologies /treatments derived from CRISPR. When George Church and ithers called for a moratorium on CRISPR based research, Chinese scientists said suit yourself and cintinued doing research on it. When the day comes that wr can cinduct research like this with simulations and can spare beasts…

We could also make even faster progress by experimenting on humans. If China does that, perhaps we should also do it to keep up with them. We could solve the homeless problem at the same time. I tend to agree that western nations will lag, but I don't think that makes a good argument for doing it.

> We could also make even faster progress by experimenting on humans.

Do you find animal testing in the service of medical research unethical? I'm not advocating for animal testing for cosmetics, fashion, or profit, but in the service of saving human lives or something similar to the simian heroes of NASA

Re: Brain implants allow paralysed monkeys to walk

#170

Post by FullMtlAlcoholc » Sun, Nov 13, 2016, 10:56 AM UTC

adrianN wrote: post #32

FullMtlAlcoholc wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because of this sentiment, western nations are going to be leaps and bounds behind China and other nations when it comes to technologies /treatments derived from CRISPR. When George Church and ithers called for a moratorium on CRISPR based research, Chinese scientists said suit yourself and cintinued doing research on it. When the day comes that wr can cinduct research like this with simulations and can spare beasts…

I think that "if we don't do it, the reds will get there first" is not a good argument in an ethical debate. Maybe the argument that right now people are suffering because they can't walk or have some other affliction whose cure requires animal testing carries more weight.

Considering Americans how much meat Americans consume, there really shouldn't be an ethical debate. Killing animals to save human lives is more ethically sound than killing them because they taste delicious.