This sounds suspiciously like the time machine that kip ordered off the internet in napoleon dynamite.
Or one of those ab exercisers from a TV infomercial.
GoFlow: a DIY tDCS brain-boosting kit
51–60 of 90 posts
Re: GoFlow: a DIY tDCS brain-boosting kit
#52On the subject of ethics, I've been looking into Modafinil (Provigil, etc) lately. If you're unfamiliar with it, it's a drug which eliminates the cognitive effects of sleepiness. Its current approved use is for treatment of narcolepsy. The effects last for around eight hours, and the drug doesn't induce jitters or negatively impact decision making. Quoting off the top of my head, a military test showed sleep-deprived helicopter pilots operating within 17% of their well-rested accuracy after 36 hours of continuous duty. It can be used to stay awake for very long periods, but it's more interesting for its effects in normal waking periods. Not only does it prevent sleepiness, it increases focus and seems to have anti-depressant properties.
I'm pretty well convinced that over the next decade we'll see this and similar drugs proliferate among white collar jobs. Let's face it: our work is boring and the body is not well adapted to it. It's difficult to keep the mind engaged when the body thinks it's a good time to nap or chat with the tribe.
If you look back at photos of the space race, two things are likely to be prominent: coffee and cigarettes. The brilliant engineers who put men on the moon using slide rules also dosed themselves with stimulants in order to maintain focus. These days, cigarettes are on the wane, and something will need to replace and improve upon them.
A common criticism is, "what if everyone is on them?" Well, so what if they are? The automatic assumption is that we'll all be working 16 hour shifts, but I don't see any reason to expect that. If I can maintain focus and do a day's worth of highly productive work in four hours, why not expect the work day to drop to four or six hours (six giving a net benefit to the employer) over time?
Re: GoFlow: a DIY tDCS brain-boosting kit
#53On the subject of ethics, I've been looking into Modafinil (Provigil, etc) lately. If you're unfamiliar with it, it's a drug which eliminates the cognitive effects of sleepiness. Its current approved use is for treatment of narcolepsy. The effects last for around eight hours, and the drug doesn't induce jitters or negatively impact decision making. Quoting off the top of my head, a military test showed sleep-deprived…
Based on the common programmer complaint of being on call/working very long hours, I think your conclusion is rather naive.
Everyone doing it will just result in it being the expected behavior to get more work out of 8+ hours on the job.
Re: GoFlow: a DIY tDCS brain-boosting kit
#54Another ethical wrinkle:
Given that we have good evidence that this technology is safe and remarkably effective, is it ethical to NOT deploy this technology on those government executives on whose decision-making and information-processing ability American lives depend?
Re: GoFlow: a DIY tDCS brain-boosting kit
#55> It’s not hard to see how tDCS could pose some ethical considerations, though. Only if you're primed by your culture to blanch at transhumanism. > What if some students can afford tDCS kits, but others can’t? What if some students can afford college, computers, calculators, tutoring, study guides, etc. but others can't? This is one of the silliest purported ethical issues I've ever seen, but it consistently gets con…
Some are primed to blanch at transhumanism; Some are primed to accept a class-based social hierarchy as simply mundane and not an ethical issue. Every new privilege granted to the top socioeconomic class is an appropriate opportunity to ask the question "why solve this problem instead of improving peoples' lives by tackling inequality?" The answer can be that one is simply working on what one is good at. However that…
"tackling inequality" can be achieved in many ways. One of these ways could, counterintuitively, be creating an effective way to produce more elites. If your training program / intelligence amplification technology created another Norman Borlaug or Henry Ford or Bill Gates, you might have had a greater impact on the lower socioeconomic class than if you had managed to invent a new vaccine yourself.
Re: GoFlow: a DIY tDCS brain-boosting kit
#56Earlier quoted context omitted.
May I ask about the set-up? Where both electrodes on your back? Did you use some conductive gel gloop? Was this a dc or an ac signal? Why 3 batteries? Where they in series or parallel? May I also ask what your device is used for? Apologies for the interrogation! (Good Luck with the grafts btw.)
Gel-electrodes, 27v DC - clocked at 100ma when I tested it. 27v to get required field strength across the site of my injury, just a back of the envelope guess. Both electrodes on my back 1 above 1 below the site of my injury. It's a long story but it seems a modest electric field can encourage axon regrowth in damaged spinal cords. Good evidence for this including a phase 1 human trial in 2005 but nothing since. Here…
I'm all for experimenting on yourself. Go for it.
However, I'm also a software engineer for a medical device company and I spend a great deal of time assessing and mitigating the safety of various operations. Please take care to understand the failure modes of anything you build and attach to your own body. When you get to the point of using an Arduino (or anything else that uses software), the number of failure points goes up dramatically. Try to consider how anything could fail and what the consequences will be.
Re: GoFlow: a DIY tDCS brain-boosting kit
#57On the subject of ethics, I've been looking into Modafinil (Provigil, etc) lately. If you're unfamiliar with it, it's a drug which eliminates the cognitive effects of sleepiness. Its current approved use is for treatment of narcolepsy. The effects last for around eight hours, and the drug doesn't induce jitters or negatively impact decision making. Quoting off the top of my head, a military test showed sleep-deprived…
Beware, there is a 2 in 933 chance of developing a severe skin rash reaction, and the FDA has rejected modafinil for this reason. From Wikipedia:
"The FDA advisory committee voted 12 to 1 against approval, citing concerns about a number of reported cases of skin rash reactions in a trial that included 933 patients on modafinil, including two severe cases which appeared to be "definite" erythema multiforme or Stevens–Johnson syndrome. One of the two severe cases involved hospitalization."
Re: GoFlow: a DIY tDCS brain-boosting kit
#58[deleted]
Re: GoFlow: a DIY tDCS brain-boosting kit
#59> It’s not hard to see how tDCS could pose some ethical considerations, though. Only if you're primed by your culture to blanch at transhumanism. > What if some students can afford tDCS kits, but others can’t? What if some students can afford college, computers, calculators, tutoring, study guides, etc. but others can't? This is one of the silliest purported ethical issues I've ever seen, but it consistently gets con…
What if this allows you to run faster. Should we allow this in Olympics? (I haven't made up my mind yet, but leaning towards a no.)
The Olympics, while wonderful, are nothing more than entertainment, so the ethical considerations of "should we or should we not do X" are typically pretty much inconsequential. The ramifications of a runner setting a new record are, in the grand scheme of things, pretty much null.
The ramifications of the average human being able to learn more in less time are relatively gigantic. So gigantic, in fact, that I think they dwarf what small social-inequity considerations are raised (if it can really be done for a $90 kit right off the bat, then just wait until economies of scale kick in).
Re: GoFlow: a DIY tDCS brain-boosting kit
#60On the subject of ethics, I've been looking into Modafinil (Provigil, etc) lately. If you're unfamiliar with it, it's a drug which eliminates the cognitive effects of sleepiness. Its current approved use is for treatment of narcolepsy. The effects last for around eight hours, and the drug doesn't induce jitters or negatively impact decision making. Quoting off the top of my head, a military test showed sleep-deprived…
Beware, there is a 2 in 933 chance of developing a severe skin rash reaction, and the FDA has rejected modafinil for this reason. From Wikipedia: "The FDA advisory committee voted 12 to 1 against approval, citing concerns about a number of reported cases of skin rash reactions in a trial that included 933 patients on modafinil, including two severe cases which appeared to be "definite" erythema multiforme or Stevens–…
That was in a trial for ADHD treatment in adolescents. As a result, they don't advise the use of Modafinil in children. It is unclear to me whether the 933 studied were adolescents, and if so, whether or not a similar rate of rashes are seen in adults.
The Wikipedia page also says: "From the date of initial marketing, December 1998, to January 30, 2007, FDA received six cases of severe cutaneous adverse reactions associated with modafinil, including erythema multiforme (EM), Stevens–Johnson syndrome (SJS), toxic epidermal necrolysis (TEN), and drug rash with eosinophilia and systemic symptoms (DRESS) involving adult and pediatric patients.
I have to admit, six cases in eight years doesn't strike fear into me.