Upgrade Your Memory with a Surgically Implanted Chip
bloomberg.com
bloomberg.com
I always wonder if things like this are worded like so for the layperson to understand? Because to me it sounds like an incredibly crude and hackish way to do anything. "Yeah, just shock the brain and it forms better memories! We're not entirely sure how or why, or what the implications are, but it seems to work for some reason!"
"We" don't say that; pharmaceutical sales reps say it.
https://journals.plos.org/plosmedicine/article?id=10.1371/jo...
A family member of mine had a somewhat-debilitating chronic condition in high school, which only got better with a combination of what today are garden-variety alternative therapies (acupuncture, elimination diet, et al). Today, as a doctor, pooh-poohs a lot of that stuff. It's confusing and disappointing to see.
"Did you win the Putnam?" Yes, I did.
That said, baaic statistical analysis and statistical intuition is a severely underappreciated skill. It's hard to see it almost totally neglected in American public schools, even ones that purport to have a strong focus on STEM.
I’d like it more if it linked to a study. Or if it had more details, preferably addressing placebos too.
https://europepmc.org/abstract/med/9078698
https://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-28166019
There is a depressing amount of evidence that doctors don’t have a basic level of statistical literacy.
Therapy.
- "this has never been studied in a clinical setting"
- "this has been tested in a clinical setting and no differentiation was seen from placebo, but there was an issue with the study that caused that result, but lacking omniscience and epistimic humility we and those who take our findings as gospel are not able to know this is the actual state of affairs, and therefore might mistakenly conclude there is no effect, even though that does not logically follow from these findings"
Also, re: the second point, you're talking about studies, but I'm talking about a much weaker criterion: whether any doctors have ever personally seen the treatment make a difference. There are a lot of things that have bad or no studies, but doctors swear by due to a mountain of shared-by-grapevine clinical anecdata. (Most treatments invented before the advent of scientific positivism, for example!) When something doesn't even have that, it's immediately suspicious—doctors really like talking about things when they work!
Not really.
The statement “this has never been observed in clinical settings to differentiate from placebo” is ambiguous whether it has or has not even been studied - my statement eliminates that ambiguity.
> It literally just means "there's no solid evidence that it works."
There is nothing to indicate whether there is or is not any evidence at all, let alone providing any indication as to the quality of the evidence.
On one hand one might say this is excessive pedantry, or just "semantics", but this ignores the massive amount of epistimically inaccurate memes that are taken as "generally true" "facts" across a wide variety of subjects. I would argue the prevalence of this problem is starting to cause major rifts within society, sometimes manifesting in violence, including death.
I have never met a single doctor that has given me any reason to suspect they happen to possess the extreme levels of pedantic logic required to support the authoritarian judgements they've laid upon me when asking specific questions I've asked after performing significant research on my own. I don't really see why they should be any different than a typical overconfident human being.
And it's not just doctors that are the problem. One can observe that a lack of (or, a lack of use of) logical skills and understanding of epistemology are significant factors in many of the disagreements that exist in the world. Very few people seem to appreciate how limited our understanding of things outside of fields like math and physics that follow very strict rules.
> doctors deploying authoritarian judgements despite not being masters of logic
That’s because doctors don’t use their own judgement. Doctors are embodiments of a system mapping a symptom-recognition model (mostly random, gets better with experience; this is the part humans are better at currently) to a fixed, explicit expert system of guidelines built by panels who study meta-analyses to reach recommendations.
In psychiatry, for example, this expert system is reified in the form of a book called the DSM. Doctors don’t need to know why the DSM recommends what it recommends to be right by making recommendations using it; just like a soldier doesn’t need to know what’s over the hill they’re lobbing grenades at in order to be aiding in winning a war. In both cases, the commander giving the orders has better “line of sight” on the problem than the person on the ground does. (And, in both cases, usually information-retaining expert consensus techniques are used to allow the commander+advisors system to actually have a greater-than-1.0xhuman level of rationality.)
If an alternative remedy is effective, in fact, it matters to people who could benefit from the usage, but have been told, or led to believe (through dishonest, vague, weasel language that "covers" or "captures" more informative descriptions) by doctors or acquaintances who lack skills in logic or epistemology.
> No studies, only one good studies, one hundred bad studies: they’re all conditions where the right response is “don’t rely on this as evidence until you’ve done more studies.”
Tell that to doctors and half-educated iamverysmart people who confidently assert that an "alternative" treatment does not work, full stop, as opposed to "has not been found to work in clinical studies".
> You can’t prove a negative
Correct. And therefore, you shouldn't speak as if you have.
> you have to treat a negative the same as an absence of evidence.
Incorrect. You could simply state what is factually correct, for example: "Herb X has not been found to successfully treat ailment Y in clinical studies. This should not necessarily be treated as conclusive proof that it does not, but at this time scientific studies have not found any evidence of effectiveness. Be wary of anyone who states otherwise, whether for or against the treatment - anyone who claims to have conclusive evidence either way is mistaken."
> That’s because doctors don’t use their own judgement. Doctors are embodiments of a system mapping a symptom-recognition model (mostly random, gets better with experience; this is the part humans are better at currently) to a fixed, explicit expert system of guidelines built by panels who study meta-analyses to reach recommendations.
Doctors (and the general public) should be informed of the difference between guidelines resulting from our current, incomplete understanding, and absolute facts. Very few people, including doctors, seem to realize there even is such a difference.
> Doctors don’t need to know why the DSM recommends what it recommends to be right by making recommendations using it
A recommendation and a statement of "fact" (without actual evidence to support the fact) are two very different things.
> In both cases, the commander giving the orders has better “line of sight” on the problem than the person on the ground does.
You have no way of knowing whether an individual patient may happen to have a factually superior understanding of a particular ailment than their doctor. This is a fine example of a lack of understanding of epistemology.
> And, in both cases, usually information-retaining expert consensus techniques are used to allow the commander+advisors system to actually have a greater-than-1.0xhuman level of rationality.
This statement is better, in that it expresses uncertainty via usage of the word "usually".
Epistemologically speaking, it may be the 'clinical setting' itself that is disrupting or obscuring the effect.
In my experience body workers outside the medical establishment (like massage therapists for example) have a lot of ad-hoc knowledge about the body and its ailments from years of observation of their patients.
This kind of knowledge is actually a lot like most of the real knowledge employed by doctors - the knowledge of the hands and lived experience rather than some study in a journal.
ECT does have significant negative side effects, but it does seem to help some people. You may be right that it wouldn't be approved as a new treatment today.
That being said I do have an uncle with Parkison who had a neurostimulator implanted (DBS) 15 years ago. It worked quite well for a while, more than any medication at the time. It doesn't anymore, and he has lost cognitive abilities also, which is most likely due to the progressive nature of the disease, rather than DBS. This technique has been in clinical trial for 20+ years...
But as a 2nd point, we don't always do things by evidence either. Obstetrics is an example of an entire field where there is not much evidence, and people practice what was passed down to them. The reason is because often you cannot do an RCT in an ethical way with Obs.
Additionally, often times when we prescribe a medication/treatment, there is a really significant chance it won't do anything for you. The number needed to treat before one person experiences a benefit could be quite high, like 10 or 15. We still do it if the benefit outweigh the risk.
TLDR: We don't care how it works just that it works. Some fields like obstetrics have little evidence for many things. And just cuz there is evidence, doesn't mean it'll help most of the ppl who get it.
As a happy recipient of the device, I don't know how you could even think such as thing.
Reminds me of Star Trek DS9, where the Cardassian tailor had the brain implant to make him resistant to torture. He had turned it on, and left it on for 20 years, then it failed.
We are all driven by chemicals and everyone has their own preference on how to release dopamine and any other chemicals, be it exercise, drugs, alcohol, anything you can imagine. Getting a button to trigger such a strong response would mean a certain division in society, those who seek pleasure the new way or those who want to keep with the traditional way.
Overall I think that facilitating this would give people a huge (maybe too big) escape from reality and would certainly be abused.
Robin Cook had a plot about this (triggering orgasm-like responses on brains) many years ago in his book Brain:
Isn't this already happening to a certain extent--and progressively getting worse? I think there's an ever-increasing chasm between people who occupy their leisure time with digital entertainment engineered to be an easy--and highly addictive--dopamine fix, and people who try to enjoy more mindful activities. The latter option is, of course, incomparably harder.
It's something that's maybe hard to understand unless you've done drugs. I used to go out raving and do MDMA a lot. At the peak I was doing it almost every weekend. Until I found myself going out alone and looking for opportunities to go out, even if nobody I knew was going or the party wasn't good. I thought I really liked dancing, but I eventually realized, my brain was looking for an excuse to put me in that environment where I would typically do drugs, even if I actually knew going out that night would be a shitty experience. In other words, when you mess with your reward circuitry, your brain will begin to "lie" to you to guide you back to situations where you will get more of that reward. Your way of thinking will shift, and you might not even notice.
I personally don't think there is any way that brain implants can hook into our reward circuit and be used in a safe/responsible way. At least, not if the users themselves have direct control. The only way it could maybe be used sustainably is to reward certain behaviors in a way that the person themselves doesn't have control over, but that's a whole other dystopian can of worms. Personally, I think brain implants might fuck up society beyond recognition. Imagine if people could turn their sex drive on or off at will, or stop themselves from falling in love, get over someone instantly, make themselves love their miserable jobs. Sounds great right? Except we'll stop being human, we'll become machines.
This isn't really what the Ringworld books are about, but it comes up a few times, and I think it's a pretty interesting plot device.
spoilers in this paragraph One of the gadgets in the series is a "wireless" form of this technology that works without an implant in the victim. It comes up several plot points as a form of either overt coercion (since the victim would almost instantly become dependent on the device), or more subtly by applying it to a victim without their knowledge to make them associate the sensation with being in the presence of the wielder.
No mention of controls or error bars. Until then, this is all placebo effect.
As someone with no knowledge of how this stuff works, I like to imagine that when you try to remember something, your brain sends signals the same connections that were formed when you last saw that thing. It then activates your visual cortex, your auditory cortex and language centers. So you visualize it, see the word, and hear it in your brain, then suddenly you feel as if you know the answer to the thing you were trying to remember.
It's thought of as occurring just as you described, but it's very difficult to prove it even in rodent models.
Also, humans are wildly diverse. Some people have aphantasia, where they cannot 'image' things in their heads. Invariably when you bring this up on HN, you get a lot of people saying they cannot believe this and a lot of people saying that this is their normal reality. Similar to discussions on synestensia (hearing colors, tasting names, other 'mix ups') and if you stand or sit when you wipe in the bathroom.
https://www.iflscience.com/brain/cant-imagine-pictures-your-...
This is a great romp, good for your next flight or downtime.
The premise is what happens to society when augmented people start to matter.
Are you kidding? 15-37% improvement in memory formation/recall? Where do I sign?
Citation?
An electronic device connected to a brain could inject thoughts without the carrier even noticing it's not the thoughts who are supposed to be saved/generated in this chip.
Now they have relative control over the majority but it's still not absolute - in my opinion that is a huge difference.
About a year ago I was quite surprised to find out that a colleague, dear friend, and brilliant neuroscientist took a job as research director of haloneuro.com
I was not surprised at all when he told me a few weeks ago that he had resigned, and that tDCS was total BS. The CEO of the company had him running dozens of clinical tests in parallel; they would publish the few that supported tdcs and would file drawer the rest.
But by all means, feel free to run an electric current through your brain if you think it will help X.
I just talked to my wife about this, she was doing some research tdcs research as part of her PhD 3-4 years ago. She say's that extremely precise electrode placement is necessary for P < 0.05 effects, so that might support your position that retail tdcs devices are largely bullshit. But the research isn't about commercial devices (largely), it's on lab subjects who have properly placed electrodes.
You are right though, the claims about the utility of these commercial devices (and really any non-implanted device) that are by far the most dubious.
If I lived over there I'd definitely consider it. Such a cool area of work!