A new brain implant automatically detects and kills pain in real time • Hacker News Board

Re: A new brain implant automatically detects and kills pain in real time

#101

Post by educaysean » Tue, Jul 06, 2021, 10:20 PM UTC

imwillofficial wrote: post #93

nszceta wrote: post #62

The Hedonistic Imperative outlines how genetic engineering and nanotechnology will abolish suffering in all sentient life. The abolitionist project is hugely ambitious but technically feasible. It is also instrumentally rational and morally urgent. The metabolic pathways of pain and malaise evolved because they served the fitness of our genes in the ancestral environment. They will be replaced by a different sort of…

Leave it to modern man to think we can rearchitect something so fundamental as pain and pleasure in the human experience without disastrous results.

Let's think about the internet. Let's think about how it enables us to achieve instant communication all around the globe and freely share and distribute knowledge too great to hold in one's brain. I'd say the modern men are more than capable of overcoming biological barriers once thought to be fundamentally impossible to achieve.

It might be a fairly rough road to get there, but I'm certain our understanding of how our brains perceive pain and pleasure will be dramatically different in a 100 years, and it'll be for the better.

Re: A new brain implant automatically detects and kills pain in real time

#102

Post by matt_heimer » Tue, Jul 06, 2021, 10:33 PM UTC

nszceta wrote: post #62

The Hedonistic Imperative outlines how genetic engineering and nanotechnology will abolish suffering in all sentient life. The abolitionist project is hugely ambitious but technically feasible. It is also instrumentally rational and morally urgent. The metabolic pathways of pain and malaise evolved because they served the fitness of our genes in the ancestral environment. They will be replaced by a different sort of…

> The notion that physical pain could be banished from most people's lives would have seemed absurd. Today most of us in the technically advanced nations take its routine absence for granted.

LOL, that's absurd. I'm working from bed (again) because of constant back pain that spikes to unbearable if I stay upright for too long.

Re: A new brain implant automatically detects and kills pain in real time

#103

Post by dantondwa » Tue, Jul 06, 2021, 10:45 PM UTC

nszceta wrote: post #62

The Hedonistic Imperative outlines how genetic engineering and nanotechnology will abolish suffering in all sentient life. The abolitionist project is hugely ambitious but technically feasible. It is also instrumentally rational and morally urgent. The metabolic pathways of pain and malaise evolved because they served the fitness of our genes in the ancestral environment. They will be replaced by a different sort of…

Brave New World was meant to be a dystopia, not a model to follow!

Re: A new brain implant automatically detects and kills pain in real time

#104

Post by l1n » Tue, Jul 06, 2021, 10:48 PM UTC

Source paper: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41551-021-00736-7

Re: A new brain implant automatically detects and kills pain in real time

#105

Post by filoeleven » Tue, Jul 06, 2021, 11:01 PM UTC

nszceta wrote: post #62

The Hedonistic Imperative outlines how genetic engineering and nanotechnology will abolish suffering in all sentient life. The abolitionist project is hugely ambitious but technically feasible. It is also instrumentally rational and morally urgent. The metabolic pathways of pain and malaise evolved because they served the fitness of our genes in the ancestral environment. They will be replaced by a different sort of…

Is there a section that discusses “pain as a warning system?” This sounds great for chronic pain, but I have a hard time conceiving of how removing the immediate pain response to environmental stimulus works here.

Touch a hot stove => feel pain and recoil

People without a pain response have all sorts of problems with incidental injuries that rise in mortality since they are unaware of them. I’m guessing that the site has answers for that, because it’s such a basic objection, but it wasn’t apparent from reading the table of contents.

Re: A new brain implant automatically detects and kills pain in real time

#106

Post by dizzystar » Tue, Jul 06, 2021, 11:12 PM UTC

There are people who are unable to feel pain. By all accounts, they live a tough life.

Re: A new brain implant automatically detects and kills pain in real time

#107

Post by filoeleven » Tue, Jul 06, 2021, 11:15 PM UTC

TheCoelacanth wrote: post #86

vultour wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Any reason for ibuprofen instead of paracetamol? Ibuprofen can damage your gastrointestinal tract.

Paracetamol can damage your liver. Neither are great options to take too much of.

More research is being done nowadays on various terpenes for pain relief. Unfortunately, because it’s strongly associated the cannabis industry, it’s hard to get past all the noise to the good information like research papers.

Most of the terpenes in cannabis strains are also found in other plants to varying degrees. Pure extracts are available and legal without question.

I can’t say much about their efficacy though, because I haven’t done a deep dive. Id love to hear from anyone who has done the research or has personal experience, especially without THC or CBD along for the ride.

Re: A new brain implant automatically detects and kills pain in real time

#108

Post by mpg33 » Tue, Jul 06, 2021, 11:17 PM UTC

What about panic? Could you disable the amygdala real time?

Re: A new brain implant automatically detects and kills pain in real time

#109

Post by eternalban » Tue, Jul 06, 2021, 11:23 PM UTC

nszceta wrote: post #62

The Hedonistic Imperative outlines how genetic engineering and nanotechnology will abolish suffering in all sentient life. The abolitionist project is hugely ambitious but technically feasible. It is also instrumentally rational and morally urgent. The metabolic pathways of pain and malaise evolved because they served the fitness of our genes in the ancestral environment. They will be replaced by a different sort of…

No pain, no empathy.

Re: A new brain implant automatically detects and kills pain in real time

#110

Post by Ieghaehia9 » Tue, Jul 06, 2021, 11:26 PM UTC

TheCoelacanth wrote: post #86

vultour wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Any reason for ibuprofen instead of paracetamol? Ibuprofen can damage your gastrointestinal tract.

Paracetamol can damage your liver. Neither are great options to take too much of.

As I understand it, paracetamol was discovered as the active metabolite of a much more damaging drug (acetanilide); and that most of paracetamol's effects is due to a metabolite of paracetamol in turn, namely AM404.

Why the pharmaceutical companies haven't done to paracetamol what they did to acetanilide, I don't understand. Providing AM404 directly would avoid the production of NAPQI in the body.