phcordner · HackerTrans

Even discounting everything about the ethics, feasibility, state of our conceptual knowledge of brain function, has anyone demonstrated how a six-figure hardware suite like this https://plexon.com/plexon-systems/ is going to be miniaturized into a smartphone sized device mass produced for consumer purchase in the timetable laid out by Neuralink?

phcordner

5 年前議論

You are correct. The researchers here sequenced each vaccine starting with the bit of vaccine left in the vial after administration. The goal was to get a raw sequence of the Moderna mRNA component so it can be easily filtered out as being a signal of therapeutic origin. Pfizer's sequence has already been published; it's incldued here to confirm that the result achieved experimentally matches the published sequence.

phcordner

5 年前議論

The human-octopus most recent common ancestor was an ancient organism from hundreds of million years ago. It would have been one of the earlier organisms to have bilateral symmetry and an embryonic development characterized by the three germ layers we have today.

If you have a dog and have been to the aquarium you're likely to already intuit that octopuses do something that looks a lot like sleeping and that animals all the way down the family tree have periods of quiet and active sleep as well. The researchers here use a combination of observational techniques to suggest that the octopus sleep states observed are analogous to sleep in the vertebrate.

The research paper as published does not explicitly mention dreaming, rather it is one of a host of processes implied when the researchers analogize the 'active sleep' behavior observed in the octopus to animal REM sleep patterns. The conclusion spells out the possible connection to the 'metabolic detoxification' and 'cognitive processing' functions of vertebrate REM sleep but does not state them definitively.

The general media news article and the research paper have some slight differences because of their different intended audiences, but litigating that divide is best left to those already doing it: the esteemed scholars of the Dunning-Krueger Institute at Wikipedia University.

phcordner

5 年前議論

Okay man, cool. Let me know when your open-brain Dr. Mephisto trials disproving adult DA neurogenesis are written up in Nature

Edit: the title’s not even misleading; “Parkinson’s” modifies “gene,” not “neurons” so it’s not even saying anything about the location of these neurons or when they are being created!

phcordner

5 年前議論

In neurobiology, human in vivo studies are prohibitive from a cost, logistical, and ethical standpoint. But to anyone who can successfully parse a neurobiology paper this is assumed knowledge.

phcordner

5 年前議論

This is also addressed in the paper:

"Zebrafish are a particularly valuable tool to study neurogenesis in vertebrates. Basal levels of neurogenesis occur at higher levels than in mammals, and additional proliferative zones are found throughout the brain"

In the zebrafish model, which yes, is different from the human brain, the researchers specifically demonstrate that neurogenesis is occurring in dopaminergic regions throughout life:

"... we demonstrate that ascending TPp DA neurons and local-projecting PVO neurons, but not magnocellular ascending DA neurons, are each generated into adulthood in wild type animals at a rate that decreases with age."

PINK1 deficiency slows the rate of the generation of DA neurons in zebrafish. Following this result, they then turned to the question of applicability to human systems by testing PINK1 deficiency on a culture of human midbrain organoids and successfully showed that this gene downregulated the size these organoids reached, demonstrating that this gene has an effect on neurogenesis of human dopaminergic neurons from the substantia nigra.

"Isolated observations in animal models of PD always raise concerns about the applicability of any results to human patients with this condition. However, the observation of impairment of DA neurogenesis in a PINK1-deficient, human tissue derived organoid model confirmed the initial observations."

phcordner

5 年前議論

First line of the abstract of the paper:

>Recent evidence suggests neurogenesis is on-going throughout life but the relevance of these findings for neurodegenerative disorders such as Parkinson’s disease (PD) is poorly understood.

phcordner

5 年前議論

I see the "geopolitical" angle again and it's still not vindicated by this announcement. Nothing that Gelsinger said indicated he came to those decisions by seeing what was cookin' on the threat board:

> We are committed to ensuring this capacity will support commercial customers, as well as address unique government and security requirements in the U.S.

Geographic distribution makes a certain amount of business sense and getting those nice DoD contracts makes even more.

What doesn't make sense is China having Wing Attack Plan R ready to go against TSMC and Samsung.

phcordner

5 年前議論

Interesting hypothesis, why not take the bus down to your local high school and test it out?

phcordner

5 年前議論

How? A worm is a whole multicellular organism. A neuron's just a cell, one that's specialized into a single function.

All a single neuron does is pass a signal to the synaptic cleft in response to a chemical or electrical signal at the other end. It's a simple subunit of a larger system.

Saying a single neuron is more complex than a worm is like saying a cat6 ethernet cable is more complex than a blast furnace.

phcordner

5 年前議論

pg is a known fan of the cancel culture complaint think tank industrial complex

phcordner

5 年前議論

> And in that planning the fact that TSMC’s foundries — and Samsung’s — are within easy reach of Chinese missiles is a major issue.

Are processor fabs analagous to auto factories and shipyards in World War II? Is the United States military's plan for a nuclear exchange with China dependent on a steady supply of cutting edge semiconductors? Even if it is, is that strategy really going to help?

This article is mostly concerened with Intel's stock price. Why bring this into it? Let's say Intel gets its mojo back and is producing cutting edge silicon at a level to compete with TSMC and supplying the Pentagon with all sorts of goodies... and then China nukes Taiwan? And now we cash in our Intel options just in time to see the flash and be projected as ash particles on a brick wall?

"The U.S. needs cutting edge fabs on U.S. soil" is true only if you believe the falied assumptions of the blue team during the Millenium Challenge, that electronic superiority is directly related to battlefield superiority. If semiconductors are the key to winning a war, why hasn't the U.S. won one lately?

And what does any of this have to do with Intel? Why are we dreaming up Dr. Strangelove scenarios? Is it just that some people are only comfortable with Keynesian stimulus if it's in the context of war procurement?

phcordner

6 年前議論

>Some readers may ask why I am not considering the failures of the White House, and making the case that the President is also a joke.

Some readers implicitly understood why when the author presented the pricipal disaster of 2020 as the death of '1/4 of all small businesses' and bailed before 20k words of statue-avi rationalist faux-erudition gave them aneuryisms.

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