This article is too long, I hate this style of writing.
Here is something for the impatient.
https://www.technologyreview.com/2015/11/09/247535/to-study-...
A neurologist who hacked his brain and almost lost his mind (2016)
111–118 of 118 posts
Re: A neurologist who hacked his brain and almost lost his mind (2016)
#112Earlier quoted context omitted.
Which is why Wikipedia is so western-centric. I could be the world expert in my field, say... coconut picking. I haven't published any papers about picking coconuts, and neither is it a subject that the newspapers want to write about. If I wrote wikipedia entry about picking coconuts, it would be immediately deleted because personal experience isn't a citable source. I need to tell some other fool about what I do, ha…
The number of people who think themselves world experts in something is truly enormous. Wikipedia needs to be maintainable by people who aren't topic experts. They can't just go around anointing people that sound expert-y to them, as that would introduce far more bias, western and otherwise. Wikipedia's job isn't to push forward the frontiers of knowledge. It's to summarize the stuff you can look up elsewhere.
Wikipedia's job is to push forward the frontiers of the documentation of knowledge.
Re: A neurologist who hacked his brain and almost lost his mind (2016)
#113This article is too long, I hate this style of writing. Here is something for the impatient. https://www.technologyreview.com/2015/11/09/247535/to-study-...
Yeah, it's like there's a hook, and then a whole lot of backstory before the hook comes back.
I think authors rely on this too much as a crutch. It can work if the hook makes the reader actually wildly curious as to how that situation came about. But otherwise it comes across as like a turgid interruption.
I also dislike it in television. It's one of JJ Abrams' favorite techniques. Open with some crazy scenario, and then "two weeks previous" comes up on the title screen. He did it all the time in Alias. Although I think it worked in Mission Impossible III.
Re: A neurologist who hacked his brain and almost lost his mind (2016)
#114Earlier quoted context omitted.
The number of people who think themselves world experts in something is truly enormous. Wikipedia needs to be maintainable by people who aren't topic experts. They can't just go around anointing people that sound expert-y to them, as that would introduce far more bias, western and otherwise. Wikipedia's job isn't to push forward the frontiers of knowledge. It's to summarize the stuff you can look up elsewhere.
Wikipedia's job is to push forward the frontiers of the documentation of knowledge.
Could you show me what Wikipedia policies you base that on? Because I don't think it's correct.
Re: A neurologist who hacked his brain and almost lost his mind (2016)
#115Earlier quoted context omitted.
Note that Wikipedia has this policy focussed on being a tertiary source; Wikiversity , another Wikimedia project, welcomes original research. A lot of what people complain about Wikipedia ruling out is in scope for either Wikiversity or Wikibooks; it's not a “we don't want that” issue but a “we have structure, and within that structure there is a better place for that”.
Yeah, but realistically wikiversity doesn't have much to show for it.
> Yeah, but realistically wikiversity doesn’t have much to show for it.
Because people don’t really want a public wiki to publish original research, they just want to vandalize Wikipedia because of its social impact and use their claims of personal expertise as an excuse to evade Wikipedia’s existing content policies.
Re: A neurologist who hacked his brain and almost lost his mind (2016)
#116Re: A neurologist who hacked his brain and almost lost his mind (2016)
#117This article is too long, I hate this style of writing. Here is something for the impatient. https://www.technologyreview.com/2015/11/09/247535/to-study-...
Yeah, it's like there's a hook, and then a whole lot of backstory before the hook comes back. I think authors rely on this too much as a crutch. It can work if the hook makes the reader actually wildly curious as to how that situation came about. But otherwise it comes across as like a turgid interruption. I also dislike it in television. It's one of JJ Abrams' favorite techniques. Open with some crazy scenario, and…
I feel like it's all about the misguided notion of writers/reporters "adding something" to what happened. They are trying to enrich the raw story with their own style leading to this mess.
Re: A neurologist who hacked his brain and almost lost his mind (2016)
#118Apart from the clickbait headline, there is an important division between restorative and augmentative applications of BCI. The former, when the patient has already suffered serious neurological injuries (or even paralysis) presents an attractive risk/reward ratio. The latter is dubious, even if only for the operation risks such as the swelling the article notes. Interesting to ponder where that dividing line resides…
augmentive BCI is literally the only route for humanity to conquer problems like death.
this guy will go down in history as one of the few that paved the way for humanity to evolve beyond the horribly fragile flesh-and-meat sacks that we are today.