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A neurologist who hacked his brain and almost lost his mind (2016)

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Re: A neurologist who hacked his brain and almost lost his mind (2016)

#31

Post by Beltalowda »

alach11 wrote: post #27
Nextgrid wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On the other hand, if someone wants to experiment on themselves, why not let them? Nobody is harmed if it doesn't work, and we can make quick breakthroughs that might be otherwise impossible due to ethics/etc.

Why not let athletes use steroids? It's unsafe. And people might consider risking their health if they feel it could make/break their career. Better to have a strong stigma against self-experimentation to avoid that.

This is quite a different situation because it creates an uneven playing field: to be competitive you will need to use steroids too. If it only affected the athletes many people wouldn't mind.

Re: A neurologist who hacked his brain and almost lost his mind (2016)

#32

Post by pmoriarty »

markdown wrote: post #17
sp332 wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are mods who would delete that in a heartbeat if they saw it.

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…

Larry Sanger, who cofounded Wikipedia, left Wikipedia to found a competitor named Citizendium, where experts were supposed to play a greater role than on Wikipedia. It failed.

The Encyclopedia Britannica, which had articles exclusively written by experts, was also outcompeted by Wikipedia.

It's unlikely that Wikipedia is going to change its model to give experts a greater say than they already do, but it would be interesting to see if another expert-curated encyclopedia could eventually compete. Maybe if some incredibly well-funded company like Google or Apple got behind it it could work (though that reminds me of Microsoft's Encarta, which also failed).

Re: A neurologist who hacked his brain and almost lost his mind (2016)

#34

Post by xwdv »

LinuxBender wrote: post #14
xwdv wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Gotta be Lion’s Mane, or something with it. edit: haters will downvote me but look it up for yourself and upvote if you agree

It does appear that is one of the molecules that will help stimulate production [1] but to what degree I can not tell. This might make for some fun reading on PubMed. I take half of those things they list but have no way to measure it. I would avoid commenting on the people down-voting you, that typically just makes it worse. [1] - https://www.neomed-clinic.com/the-best-nerve-growth-factor-s...

Has Lion’s Mane made demonstrable improvements in your intelligence???

Re: A neurologist who hacked his brain and almost lost his mind (2016)

#35

Post by xvector »

To undertake such tremendous personal risk to advance the state of brain-machine interfaces for us all - this guy is a hero in my book.

Futurists and the general populace can hand-wave about humanity's glorious digital future all they want - it will not come to pass without heroes like this paving the way.

Re: A neurologist who hacked his brain and almost lost his mind (2016)

#36

Post by fundamental »

oaktrout wrote: post #15
gzer0 wrote: post #13

> His early fears of having damaged Kennedy for life turned out to be unfounded; the language loss that left his patient briefly locked in was just a symptom of postoperative brain swelling. While I am glad that there was minimal harm done here, I am perplexed as to why a Neurosurgeon would risk their decades of training and career for such a high-risk low reward surgery. This could have been a terrible ending. We sh…

I have a feeling the surgeon did the surgery because he was in Belize, you can probably get away with more there.

This was almost certainly the case. It was extremely abnormal that the surgery happened at all.

Re: A neurologist who hacked his brain and almost lost his mind (2016)

#37

Post by HWR_14 »

pmoriarty wrote: post #28
gzer0 wrote: post #13

> His early fears of having damaged Kennedy for life turned out to be unfounded; the language loss that left his patient briefly locked in was just a symptom of postoperative brain swelling. While I am glad that there was minimal harm done here, I am perplexed as to why a Neurosurgeon would risk their decades of training and career for such a high-risk low reward surgery. This could have been a terrible ending. We sh…

Self-experimentation used to be a lot more common in medicine. There's an interesting history of it in a book called Who Goes First? https://www.amazon.com/Who-Goes-First-Lawrence-Altman/dp/052...

One of the two winners of the Nobel Prize in medicine from 2005 (Barry Marshall) gave himself ulcers just to prove he understood causation and the cure. He and his partner (Robin Warren) in the research won the prize for that treatment.

Re: A neurologist who hacked his brain and almost lost his mind (2016)

#38

Post by TedDoesntTalk »

pmoriarty wrote: post #32
markdown wrote: post #17

Earlier 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…

Larry Sanger, who cofounded Wikipedia, left Wikipedia to found a competitor named Citizendium, where experts were supposed to play a greater role than on Wikipedia. It failed. The Encyclopedia Britannica, which had articles exclusively written by experts, was also outcompeted by Wikipedia. It's unlikely that Wikipedia is going to change its model to give experts a greater say than they already do, but it would be int…

> Encyclopedia Britannica, which had articles exclusively written by experts, was also outcompeted by Wikipedia.

They were competing on free vs paid. You make it sound like they were competing on experts vs non-experts.

Re: A neurologist who hacked his brain and almost lost his mind (2016)

#39

Post by 3np »

bawolff wrote: post #23
Nextgrid wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On the other hand, if someone wants to experiment on themselves, why not let them? Nobody is harmed if it doesn't work, and we can make quick breakthroughs that might be otherwise impossible due to ethics/etc.

I think its like drugs in sports - in principle you are only risking yourself, but if it becomes normalized you will have to do it no matter how you feel about it or risk getting left behind.

Science is (supposed to be) a collaborative effort, not a zero-sum competitive game like sports.

Of course people might get competitive about their careers and feel pressured to stay on top. But the discovery of one researcher should not be to the detriment of others.

Re: A neurologist who hacked his brain and almost lost his mind (2016)

#40

Post by throwawaylinux »

bawolff wrote: post #19
markdown wrote: post #17

Earlier 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…

And that's a good thing. Wikipedia prioritizes verifiability over completeness. Are there downsides to that trade-off? Absolutely. But i would rather that over trusting random people on the internet to know what they are talking about.

You really think a self-proclaimed expert coconut picker would do that? Just go on the internet and tell lies about their alleged profession?
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