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Scientists Reverse Brain Damage in Drowned Toddler?

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Re: Scientists Reverse Brain Damage in Drowned Toddler?

#271

Post by taneq »

hobs wrote: post #260
xhedley wrote: post #253

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A friend of mine had her heart restarted at age 40 after 20 minutes of resus by the excellent London Ambulance Service. Intensive Care then applied a cooling apparatus to drop brain temperature. My friend was in a coma for 6 weeks and had brain damage because of the lack of oxygen. On one hand, this was distressing because she lost mathematical ability. This prevented her working in her previous field as a chemistry…

Yep. I had a teacher in grade school and one day she didn't come back to class, she had had a gigantic stroke. 6 months later she rolled into class in a wheelchair, a changed person, she could not speak or do basic tasks for herself. Over the next two years she relearned most of her abilities, walking, talking, thinking, speaking, teaching and was back to "normal" again. Then she had another stroke. She did not give…

We had a teacher in early high school, lovely lady, who dropped dead over the holidays from an aneurysm. It was a real shock for everyone, and the source of my first proper existential crisis.

Re: Scientists Reverse Brain Damage in Drowned Toddler?

#272

Post by dang »

wfunction wrote: post #268
dang wrote: post #262

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Moderators sometimes rate limit accounts that post too many unsubstantive or off-topic comments too quickly and/or get involved in flamewars. You've posted a ton of comments that match that description lately. That includes this subthread—the site guidelines specifically ask you not to post this kind of thing. Others include https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14792835 and https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=147935…

...Wow. Both of those comments were direct responses to the topic and your second example in fact had 8 upvotes and others who supported it as well. I suppose in addition you'd naturally hope for me to assume this was a totally unbiased decision not at all associated with the fact that I had recently criticized your treatment of another user immediately beforehand publicly, right? I was so happy I'd found a moderator…

I'm sorry there's some sort of weird misunderstanding between us. That's definitely not what we're aiming for, and I would be happy to correct it if I knew how.

Re: Scientists Reverse Brain Damage in Drowned Toddler?

#273

Post by wfunction »

dang wrote: post #272
wfunction wrote: post #268

Earlier quoted context omitted.

...Wow. Both of those comments were direct responses to the topic and your second example in fact had 8 upvotes and others who supported it as well. I suppose in addition you'd naturally hope for me to assume this was a totally unbiased decision not at all associated with the fact that I had recently criticized your treatment of another user immediately beforehand publicly, right? I was so happy I'd found a moderator…

I'm sorry there's some sort of weird misunderstanding between us. That's definitely not what we're aiming for, and I would be happy to correct it if I knew how.

Please see my edit, I missed a crucial part of your reply. (And I think it answers your question as to how: i.e. don't respond harshly when you don't have to, whether to me or anyone else. There were lots of gentler options available in both our cases here.)

Re: Scientists Reverse Brain Damage in Drowned Toddler?

#274

Post by toomuchtodo »

xhedley wrote: post #255
toomuchtodo wrote: post #244

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thank you for the reply. I can't tell you how much it means to me, regardless of the outcome. I'm prepared for her to pass; she's in a coma and she's suffered brain damage, but I'm doing my best to advocate for her.

Toomuchtodo: I posted earlier in the thread about a friend who bounced back after brain damage following a cardiac arrest. The time when I didn't know the extent of the damage (would my friend ever wake up) was terrifying. The thought of a decision I might have to make as "next of kin" was worse. I feel for your situation. I'm sure you will do the best thing you can do. Happy to chat - email is in my profile.

Thank you. I will be in touch.

Re: Scientists Reverse Brain Damage in Drowned Toddler?

#275

Post by Natsu »

afthonos wrote: post #259
Natsu wrote: post #233

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If it's evidence, then it must have an effect on the truth or falsity of the statements. So if X says "the sky is blue" then X's credibility must be causally related to whether or not the sky is blue. As there's no such mechanism, this is pointless. You essentially point out that it's an easy shortcut. And it is, but there's no good reason to take it. One's feelings of credibility do not change the truth value of any…

When presented with a statement, what matters is the probability that the statement is true. The credibility of a source is strong evidence in this regard and can be used to sway the probability mightily. You're right, of course, that arguing over the credibility is pointless, but an appeal to authority is not fallacious if you and I both agree on the authority. (Though an appeal to authority is a perfect setup for a…

Yes, I can understand using a mental shortcut by evaluating something simpler that's well-correlated with the truth value. However, this generally runs afoul of Goodhart's law at some point and we invest entirely too much work into something that's meant to be a shortcut.

Moreover, when it's an argument, you want others to agree with you. If you have to take shortcuts and infer the truth of something by proxy because you are either too lazy or not capable of evaluating the matter directly, you probably have no business arguing over it in the first place when you could instead apply your expertise to show how wrong it is.

Worse, your own correlations work against you, as you can now correlate that someone who cannot or will not do that work in making an argument, dragging irrelevant (if sometimes correlated) things into the argument becomes a signal for someone using non-factual means to persuade, which necessarily correlates quite strongly with making false claims.

In short, yes, it can be simpler and it can lead you to being right, if for the wrong reasons. But nobody else has good cause to trust it, it's vulnerable to manipulation, and it's simply better in all cases to be less lazy and fully explain why something is wrong using facts instead of opinions of someone's credibility.

Re: Scientists Reverse Brain Damage in Drowned Toddler?

#276

Post by Natsu »

rayiner wrote: post #261
Natsu wrote: post #212

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If and only if the arguer's credibility has no logical connection to their argument, then attacking the arguer is fallacious. The arguer's credibility does not affect the truth value of any statements, so it's always more useful to argue over why someone is wrong. You cannot guarantee that any segment of the population agrees with your credibility assessments. And these assessments should be established via appeals…

The arguer's credibility has no bearing on the truth value of purely logical arguments that can be fully evaluated within the four corners of the argument. Very few scientific assertions fit that rubric. In the ordinary case where a conclusion is at some pointed predicated on an unknown fact, then the credibility of the speaker absolutely matters.

Saying that a person's credibility decides the truth value of the statement requires a causal relationship. To say otherwise is to posit a mechanism via which one's opinions somehow shape reality itself. So it seems to me that our notions of 'fact' might not be aligned?

I understand evaluating someone's credibility as a proxy when I have no means of investigating something. I do not understand it when we are talking about scientific assertions, which must be falsifiable in order to be scientific in the first place.

Re: Scientists Reverse Brain Damage in Drowned Toddler?

#277

Post by dang »

Karunamon wrote: post #190

It is also completely irrelevant to the correctness or incorrectness of the argument, which is often what gets missed. Authority is a heuristic, nothing more. The evaluation of P -> Q happens independently of the speaker. If you're trying to refute P -> Q by mentioning an attribute of the speaker, you're necessarily answering some other question entirely, while making an excuse to ignore the original question. You ca…

> You're coming up with reasons to avoid doing logic.

This crosses into incivility. Please don't do that here.

We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14814687 and marked it off-topic.

Re: Scientists Reverse Brain Damage in Drowned Toddler?

#278

Post by dang »

dvt wrote: post #245
Karunamon wrote: post #190

It is also completely irrelevant to the correctness or incorrectness of the argument, which is often what gets missed. Authority is a heuristic, nothing more. The evaluation of P -> Q happens independently of the speaker. If you're trying to refute P -> Q by mentioning an attribute of the speaker, you're necessarily answering some other question entirely, while making an excuse to ignore the original question. You ca…

You're confused. The original argument is not a deductive one, it's abductive. Material implication, e.g., P -> Q, is a deductive move. In non-deductive arguments, like we have here, any claim (be it conditional or otherwise) certainly does not happen independently of the speaker or of what logicians call the knowledge base (KB).

> You're confused.

Please don't make personal comments even when someone else has been uncivil. Your reply would be just fine without this.

Re: Scientists Reverse Brain Damage in Drowned Toddler?

#279

Post by BrandoElFollito »

dboreham wrote: post #254
BrandoElFollito wrote: post #250

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, this is the basis for religion. I am an atheist, scientist (physics) and I used to actively discourage people from religion (which is pure quackery). This until I realized that religion helps people who do not want to otherwise think about the world around them. One of the people I managed to move away from religion and change his beliefs ended up deeply depressive. Another one was deeply unhappy with the chang…

I am not religious but I believe that some form of religion has been fundamental to the human species historically. Humans wouldn't have become humans without it. So it is a hard thing to give up.

I think that there is an inherent need in people to explain a way or another what they experience.

Some time ago religion was the only way to go, now science has taken over. Science also gave people the right to say "I do not know".

Re: Scientists Reverse Brain Damage in Drowned Toddler?

#280

Post by agumonkey »

taneq wrote: post #270
composer wrote: post #264

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm reluctant to say this... But future generations will probably laugh at us. Our rule of thumb about deprivation of oxygen and brain damage is based on the idea that brain damage occurs on the "down" side when the brain is deprived. Actually, the damage occurs on the "up" side when a patient is revived under non-ideal circumstances for brain operation. It turns out the brain if you wake it "up" properly can stay "d…

I'm no medical professional, but this matches the last thing I read on the topic. A sudden inrush of oxygen to an oxygen-starved brain triggers apoptosis, and that there'd been a bunch of recent (albeit cautious) success stories from gradual resuscitation rather than rapidly warming the victim while flooding their lungs with oxygen.

God, that's possible this would just be an oxyde overdose u_u;;; that would be so lame.

What book was this ?

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