The Advent of Neural Prostheses

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Madness

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« on: December 11, 2013, 02:40:26 pm »
So I was reading about this the other day:

Restoration of function after brain damage using a neural prosthesis

And then I found this today:

Facilitation of memory encoding in primate hippocampus by a neuroprosthesis that promotes task-specific neural firing

Essentially, the work is being done (successfully) that enable them to facilitate our own connections in the brain, at processing speeds, which may easily defeat axon conductance or, the faster yet, processing via myelin nerve fibers.

Add to this the speedy advances in optogenetics...

Semantica truly comes...
« Last Edit: December 11, 2013, 02:42:47 pm by Madness »
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jamesA01

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« Reply #1 on: December 12, 2013, 06:28:12 pm »
I look forward to the day I can get a job doing formatting and virus cleans for brains rather than just computers.

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« Reply #2 on: December 13, 2013, 12:46:15 pm »
Lol, we may find ourselves on the opposite side of that fence, james :(.

I don't think those who augment themselves (choice or accessibility) are going to continue interact with individuals and society as the Normies do.

One of the craziest takeaways from these for me is that in many cases the brain actually grows towards the novel connection, so in a sense after certain, so-far-undefined, thresholds of time and activiation, the neural prosthesis can be removed. The detriment to augmentees would be an instantly diminished sensation of conscious experience; technology will eventually beat biology in terms of "signal speed" and a greater prevalence of activation ability.
« Last Edit: December 13, 2013, 12:52:12 pm by Madness »
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jamesA01

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« Reply #3 on: December 14, 2013, 04:50:48 pm »
I don't think it will work like that.

These technologies will filter down into society, in the same way that technology does. Sure it will be adopted by the elite and the rich first, but over time it will be massed produce. Anti obesity and anti addiction prosthesis will be the big sellers. Hopefully we'll get good diy communities and the internet will help experimentation. There will be casualties and disasters just as there is with everything else, but also opportunities. Pessimism will be useful to temper the utopian fantasies and scammers promises, but its useless to act like we even have a choice about adopting these things, because we don't. Same with GMO's.

And a little bit of elitism doesn't have to be a bad thing.

My reaction to this stuff is the same as my reaction to Bakkers warnings. Let's not be irrational about it all, but let's still take the plunge into the depths of this stuff - because the faster and smarter we are the more we can defend ourselves against those who will use it to exploit us. We will be experimented on anyway, in the same way that consumerism now serves to gather experimental data from the illnesses and behaviours of those too poor to chose anything else. Embracing this is the best way to survive and prosper.

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« Reply #4 on: December 15, 2013, 02:14:38 pm »
I don't think it will work like that.

These technologies will filter down into society, in the same way that technology does. Sure it will be adopted by the elite and the rich first, but over time it will be massed produce. Anti obesity and anti addiction prosthesis will be the big sellers. Hopefully we'll get good diy communities and the internet will help experimentation. There will be casualties and disasters just as there is with everything else, but also opportunities. Pessimism will be useful to temper the utopian fantasies and scammers promises, but its useless to act like we even have a choice about adopting these things, because we don't. Same with GMO's.

And a little bit of elitism doesn't have to be a bad thing.

My reaction to this stuff is the same as my reaction to Bakkers warnings. Let's not be irrational about it all, but let's still take the plunge into the depths of this stuff - because the faster and smarter we are the more we can defend ourselves against those who will use it to exploit us. We will be experimented on anyway, in the same way that consumerism now serves to gather experimental data from the illnesses and behaviours of those too poor to chose anything else. Embracing this is the best way to survive and prosper.

It will be indescribable in all likelihood.

Lol - I just can't embrace it, james - makes me vaguely hypocritical. I mean, I too see it as inevitable. And I seek to modify myself through my actions and habitual behaviors so that I might experience more but only to what the human is biologically capable of - I can't bring myself to augment my experience with invasive technologies or chemicals (purposefully, anyhow). But Bakker's timely admonition, I think, is that we can do better. If we simply approached the sociocultural problem niche's we've all helped created with a little more attention and responsibility, we might not need the prostheses you've noted.

Call me crazy but is it so far fetched to believe that "you" can mediate your brain with your own brain without the need of invasive augmentation. What greater declaration of laziness can humans cry out.

I just can't stop eating this delicious refined sugar, coping with the person I've become based on the inabilities of my mother with this alchohol, having three donuts for breakfast, or smoking eight packs to stop stressing while my heart is bouncing a mile a minute even as I refuse to recognize the basic psychology that leads my environment to cue and move me like a programmable machine, which is many cases is unrelated to actual biological anomalies and deficits... so please just make me fit this out-dated, idealized representation of what you all think I should be... please, just allow me to smell rats and see dead flesh every time my brain tries to think of ice cream and meth... anything that makes it so I don't actually have to exercise my atrophied sense of willpower.

/madness out.
« Last Edit: December 15, 2013, 02:18:14 pm by Madness »
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« Reply #5 on: December 15, 2013, 03:06:50 pm »
Brilliant lol.

We both recognize that it's vanity we're indulging in here. The word "inevitable" is the absolute truth of these matters.

I've lived in the junkie mire and I can tell you one thing from experience - you will do a lot better if you face the pure nihilism rather than try and appeal to their sense of will power. These people ARE ruled by reason, and its a reason that is possible to decode. That's about the best you can do to extricate yourself from it, and prosper in spite of it.

My sense of will power, "if only I could just stop..." I wonder if this torment isn't a stand in blocking a greater fear... of pure causality that the self is forced to hallucinate it can control. Thinking you would be saved if only you could quit is so comforting, comforting enough that you don't see the future where you successfully quit and are grinded into pieces by a bus or rot in cancerous decomposition in a ward.

If the prostheses can make you smell rats and dead fish every time the ice cream mans sweet methamphetamine melody sounds out, and this leads to you actually successfully resisting the urge, isn't your refusal to use a prostheses a FAILURE of your willpower?

But I have to say, the smell of rats and dead flesh don't seem powerful enough to crush my cravings. Dying flesh in particular doesn't seem pungent enough to put off the smokers shuffling outside the hospital doors, be it there own or anyone elses.

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« Reply #6 on: December 16, 2013, 12:32:59 pm »
Brilliant lol.

;).

We both recognize that it's vanity we're indulging in here. The word "inevitable" is the absolute truth of these matters.

I've lived in the junkie mire and I can tell you one thing from experience - you will do a lot better if you face the pure nihilism rather than try and appeal to their sense of will power. These people ARE ruled by reason, and its a reason that is possible to decode. That's about the best you can do to extricate yourself from it, and prosper in spite of it.

I think you are saying here that something like behaviorism (or what could probably be termed "mechanismism" around here) is more apparent in a community of addicts. Sure (by no means trying to brush aside your experience - I too spent quite some time among the 'disheveled' but in many cases, it was keeping one of my best friend's alive as often as I was participating).

For our topic here, I think self-extradition is the pertinent point.

My sense of will power, "if only I could just stop..." I wonder if this torment isn't a stand in blocking a greater fear... of pure causality that the self is forced to hallucinate it can control. Thinking you would be saved if only you could quit is so comforting, comforting enough that you don't see the future where you successfully quit and are grinded into pieces by a bus or rot in cancerous decomposition in a ward.

"if only I could just stop..." is a habit. I've seen junkies spontaneously break the loop, have that thought, and really make efforts and have success in stopping as others reinforce the habit and leech the possbility of acting on these opportunitic thoughts of escape. It is an especially difficult pattern to break because of the exogenous (outside the body) factors involved (obviously it's super-convincing that you seem to have no willpower when I'm suddenly high again after breaking the umpteenth resolution to quit).

I'm going to die. It informs every moment of my life and when I forget, I try and reinforce the habit of reminding myself. But I've become committed to the expansion of my conscious experience. So dying able to perceive more than I do now and working towards that, again to the limits (BBT or otherwise) of innate biology, will satisfy me (in a sense, this amounts to constantly forming and breaking sets of habits - I'm obviously not removed from my social circumstance).

If the prostheses can make you smell rats and dead fish every time the ice cream mans sweet methamphetamine melody sounds out, and this leads to you actually successfully resisting the urge, isn't your refusal to use a prostheses a FAILURE of your willpower?

But I have to say, the smell of rats and dead flesh don't seem powerful enough to crush my cravings. Dying flesh in particular doesn't seem pungent enough to put off the smokers shuffling outside the hospital doors, be it there own or anyone elses.

Lol - I tried. Your argument stands, it might be a failure to exercise my willpower not to use a prostheses. I think, there are many other arguments I'd exhaust first before contending with that though because there are so many ways "I" perceive that "I" can affect my experience before I'd feel compelled to resort to prostheses.

I await your riposte, senhor.
« Last Edit: December 16, 2013, 12:35:38 pm by Madness »
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jamesA01

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« Reply #7 on: December 16, 2013, 06:28:06 pm »
I've got a lot of posts to respond to here but am currently stressed with work and very busy. Will get back to you on this and everything else at some point.

I think that perhaps the sense of "I" and will power that you are clinging to might itself be a sign of psychological stability, or maybe be serving more to protect/allign your personality with your behaviour. I feel that I am now beyond that stage and I just can't believe in the commitments to will power I am constantly making with myself. I look to solutions and replacements, and have been quite successful so far.

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« Reply #8 on: December 16, 2013, 11:22:07 pm »
I've got a lot of posts to respond to here but am currently stressed with work and very busy. Will get back to you on this and everything else at some point.

Take your time, james. We all live our own lives. Intersect here as we can :).

I think that perhaps the sense of "I" and will power that you are clinging to might itself be a sign of psychological stability, or maybe be serving more to protect/allign your personality with your behaviour. I feel that I am now beyond that stage and I just can't believe in the commitments to will power I am constantly making with myself. I look to solutions and replacements, and have been quite successful so far.

Lol - psychological stability or instability?

"I" could be anything, james. I definitely have very few subjective commitments, if any truly. However, whether "me" or my brain, I've found "agency" to be pretty efficacious illusion, in terms of increasing my perceptual experience and sensorimotor function.
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Callan S.

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« Reply #9 on: December 18, 2013, 12:46:00 am »
I don't think it will work like that.

These technologies will filter down into society, in the same way that technology does. Sure it will be adopted by the elite and the rich first, but over time it will be massed produce. Anti obesity and anti addiction prosthesis will be the big sellers. Hopefully we'll get good diy communities and the internet will help experimentation. There will be casualties and disasters just as there is with everything else, but also opportunities. Pessimism will be useful to temper the utopian fantasies and scammers promises, but its useless to act like we even have a choice about adopting these things, because we don't. Same with GMO's.

And a little bit of elitism doesn't have to be a bad thing.

My reaction to this stuff is the same as my reaction to Bakkers warnings. Let's not be irrational about it all, but let's still take the plunge into the depths of this stuff - because the faster and smarter we are the more we can defend ourselves against those who will use it to exploit us. We will be experimented on anyway, in the same way that consumerism now serves to gather experimental data from the illnesses and behaviours of those too poor to chose anything else. Embracing this is the best way to survive and prosper.
How is it both useless to act like we have a choice, yet the thing that makes it useless to act wont fuck you over so you're not embracing it any more than a slave is embracing his chains?