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Engineered material can reconnect severed nerves

news.rice.edu

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Re: Engineered material can reconnect severed nerves

#31
post #29

University hosted announcements (e.g. rice.edu announces a major breakthrough) have incentives that are so out of wack it's basically clickbait at this point. Researchers oversell their results for publishing and funding purposes. Then the university oversells those results to draw in students/investors. Curious if others feel the same way or if I'm just too cynical at this point...

30 % of physics and chemistry can’t be replicated. 70 % of soft science can’t be replicated. Most of what we know about sociology may just be fake, and given that a huge foundation of progressive thought around rase, sex, and gender is based on this, this is a big problem. at a minimum, this isn’t far off

> 30 % of physics and chemistry can’t be replicated.

Is this true? I left academia a long time ago, but I'd be surprised if it's that good. I'd actually suspect it's the inverse and only 30% can be replicated.

Re: Engineered material can reconnect severed nerves

#32

Neural lace when?

Considering how hard it is to actually fix any accidental damage to brain cells and nerves, and the far-reaching consequences of such damage, I am always amazed to see how many are eager to just plug something into it and let some arbitrary code send electric shocks through their brain.

I get the unfathomable potential of the thing, and the appeal of said potential. But that’s a product I won’t be an early-adopter of.

Re: Engineered material can reconnect severed nerves

#33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

here's the kicker it's all connected to an organic deep neural network which means that the specific arrangement of the physical wires doesn't matter. because there's a training period in which the neural network literally learns to control the body anyways

If we only ever wanted to reconnect nerves of fetuses that might be relevant.

There's no reason to be glib. If patients' brains can reconfigure following trauma such as strokes [1] or having our entire visual field flipped [2] there's no reason to assume one couldn't reroute around having nerves hooked up differently.

[1] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK326735/ [2] https://www.theguardian.com/education/2012/nov/12/improbable...

Re: Engineered material can reconnect severed nerves

#34
post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

30 % of physics and chemistry can’t be replicated. 70 % of soft science can’t be replicated. Most of what we know about sociology may just be fake, and given that a huge foundation of progressive thought around rase, sex, and gender is based on this, this is a big problem. at a minimum, this isn’t far off

> 30 % of physics and chemistry can’t be replicated. Is this true? I left academia a long time ago, but I'd be surprised if it's that good. I'd actually suspect it's the inverse and only 30% can be replicated.

Who knows? Most science nobody attempts to replicate. The major stuff yes, but small things are not worth the cost or time.

Re: Engineered material can reconnect severed nerves

#36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

here's the kicker it's all connected to an organic deep neural network which means that the specific arrangement of the physical wires doesn't matter. because there's a training period in which the neural network literally learns to control the body anyways

Except the arrangement starts to matter more and more with age.

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Re: Engineered material can reconnect severed nerves

#37

University hosted announcements (e.g. rice.edu announces a major breakthrough) have incentives that are so out of wack it's basically clickbait at this point. Researchers oversell their results for publishing and funding purposes. Then the university oversells those results to draw in students/investors. Curious if others feel the same way or if I'm just too cynical at this point...

That makes me think of this comic on the news cycle: https://phdcomics.com/comics/archive.php?comicid=1174

Re: Engineered material can reconnect severed nerves

#38
post #30

University hosted announcements (e.g. rice.edu announces a major breakthrough) have incentives that are so out of wack it's basically clickbait at this point. Researchers oversell their results for publishing and funding purposes. Then the university oversells those results to draw in students/investors. Curious if others feel the same way or if I'm just too cynical at this point...

I understand the cynicism. Academic reporting is a hard & thankless gig. The non-cynical version: Half of a researcher's job is disseminating results -- to other researchers & the populace at large. I'd much rather have excited university announcements (even over-reaching ones) than the rage-porn news that dominates the airwaves & "mainstream news" homepages. Besides: Any serious researcher will just revert to the ac…

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Re: Engineered material can reconnect severed nerves

#39

University hosted announcements (e.g. rice.edu announces a major breakthrough) have incentives that are so out of wack it's basically clickbait at this point. Researchers oversell their results for publishing and funding purposes. Then the university oversells those results to draw in students/investors. Curious if others feel the same way or if I'm just too cynical at this point...

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