An Existential Crisis in Neuroscience

Post by erikpukinskis » Sun, Jan 26, 2020, 9:29 PM UTC

gedy wrote: post #93

lambdaloop wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a counterpoint, I am a computational neuroscientist who transitioned form working in human cognition to fruit fly motor control. Fruit fly neuroscience in the past decade has advanced tremendously. With the latest tools, we can record activity from specific genetically labeled neurons while stimulating others. We have identified specific groups of neurons to stimulate to get the fly to groom, walk, turn, and even…

> We have identified specific groups of neurons to stimulate to get the fly to groom, walk, turn, and even walk backwards This made me realize we may one day willing allow human brain controls to get us to do things we don't want - Work, Exercise, etc.

> human brain controls to get us to do things we don't want - Work

We already have that: coffee.

Post by erikpukinskis » Sun, Jan 26, 2020, 9:44 PM UTC

Balgair wrote: post #60

stevebmark wrote: post #40

I'm confused. This article doesn't say anything. It makes no points and has no insight. "There's a lot of data in neuroscience?" Is that the message? An unusual number of Nautilus articles frontpage HN like this one, where there doesn't seem to be any value in the article itself. What is going on?

It's that the author is undergoing a 'crisis', not that the field is. The title is clever, not descriptive. More broadly, there is a crisis. Our statistical methods/understandings are not working out in these large N-dimensional data sets, at least for the researchers that were raised on excel and not numpy. Aside: I'm surprised that the FAANGs haven't revolutionized statistics yet. When you have 'phase changes' wher…

I used to think corporations were where things get invented. It seemed that way to me, looking at Microsoft and Netscape and Apple and SGI growing up. And that in academia, people only made toys, and only got to the earliest stage of invention: ideas partly evaluated.

But my experience in software companies has been that in a corporation you are a slave to convention. Because even if you innovate in your domain, that innovation will be invisible to the rest of the corporation. Because when they look at it, they will evaluate it by asking which conventions it follows. But inventions by definition don’t follow conventions. What people like is to see conventions followed, and the results of that. It reads as progress.

Now I think it’s primarily artists who invent. But it’s hard to much production as a solo artist. So those who succeed are artists who split their time between doing their work in secret and public ally playing the game of performing conventions in a corporate body. If you split your time that way, you will be praised for applying convention and then periodically your secret art will appear as a magic trick and delight people who are already happy with you.

Without the convention theater, the art will just strike them as confirmation that you’re out touch with the organization.

The same is true in academia really. It’s just a different set of convention theater, around publishing rather than sales.

Re: An Existential Crisis in Neuroscience

Re: An Existential Crisis in Neuroscience