
Is neuroenhancement by noninvasive brain stimulation a net zero-sum proposition? - LolWolf
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23880500
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thriftwy
So they're saying, they can improve my neural function by also making me burn
more calories?

Market cap 1T.

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pharrlax
You know what they say about the candle that burns twice as bright, though

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nine_k
It consumes fuel twice as fast? Fuel is cheap.

If there any evidence that intense mental loads somehow wear down the brain,
or the body as a whole, any faster? If anything, I only know that intense
mental loads stave off the onset of Alzheimer's.

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arcticbull
Animals up to rhesus monkeys which reduce their caloric intake have reduced
incidence of age-related and of all-cause mortality [1], and this is conserved
- at least - in rats, mice, fish, flies, worms and yeast [2]. While the fuel
itself may not be expensive, there is evidence that consuming/using it is
anything but. These studies are for obvious reasons difficult to conduct in
humans, though I would be very surprised if they weren't under way, and time
will tell.

[1]
[https://www.nature.com/articles/ncomms4557](https://www.nature.com/articles/ncomms4557)

[2]
[http://ajcn.nutrition.org/content/78/3/361.full](http://ajcn.nutrition.org/content/78/3/361.full)

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JamesBarney
Running also increases caloric and definitely doesn't reduce lifespan in
humans. So the abstraction "increase energy causes bodies to wear out faster"
is very leaky, and probably so leaky that it's not super useful.

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mamon
Depends how you count it. Humans are quite effective engines - number of
calories burned per hour of running is quite low, and you only do it for
limited number of hours per week.

At the same time runners tend to be the kind of people that are very concerned
about their health, so they eat healthy food, with moderation.

So overall caloric intake of a runner can be much less than that of obese
couch potato.

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CamperBob2
I remember playing games like Falcons and Hard Hat Mack on my Apple II+ as a
kid. Those two games in particular were cracked copies. As was fairly common
in the Apple II warez scene, pressing the reset button during gameplay would
dump you into the Monitor prompt. You could access locations $C050 and $C057
to turn fullscreen graphics mode back on, and type G to resume execution from
the point of interruption. The details were more complex than my recollection
at this late date, but that was the basic idea.

What was cool about this was that you could also alter random values in memory
from the Monitor before resuming the game. Of course, without the source code
it was tough to say what effects a given change might have. Usually nothing
would happen after modifying a few arbitrary memory values, but sometimes I'd
get lucky and gameplay would resume in an interesting, undocumented way. Fewer
enemies, more powerful weapons, access to an otherwise-unreachable level,
wacky graphical effects. Occasionally I'd get _really_ lucky and stumble upon
a way to jack up my score to 999,999,999 or whatever. When that happened, I'd
hit reset again, reboot, and dump the graphics RAM to my printer for
guaranteed bragging rights on the school bus the next day.

Frequently, though, after altering something at random, the game would just
crash.

And that seems a _lot_ like what you're doing by running electric current
through your brain.

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JoshMnem
See also: "Popular electric brain stimulation method used to boost brainpower
is detrimental to IQ scores"

[https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2015/05/150505152140.h...](https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2015/05/150505152140.htm)

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throwanem
Direct current across the brain. Really. I mean, in my younger or attractive
days, I fell in for a while with a bunch of kink players who for safety
reasons wouldn't even put DC across their et cetera, but other people consider
it just fine for their actual brains. Sure.

Ever get that odd morning moment where you're not sure you woke up in the same
worldline where you fell asleep? I think this one might be a Cronenberg film,
but hey, at least I'm probably not actually _in_ it.

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jksmith
Yeah but you know where a man's brain is.

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spangry
Isn't it false to assume the human body (and the human brain) is a 'closed
system'? This is going to sound mighty stupid, but doesn't the fact that we
ingest variable amounts of food (i.e. energy) suggest that in surplus
situations this energy can be used 'on the spot', rather than converted to
long-term storage (i.e. fat)?

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suneilp
I got lost in that paper trying to find out the reason that lead to asking if
neuroenhancement is a zero-sum proposition. Can anyone point it out to me.

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PaulHoule
That argument would lead to the proposition that any effort to improve
cognition is a net zero-sum proposition.

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jonnathanson
To get a little meta for a second, do we have a universally accepted, value-
neutral, standard idea of exactly what we mean when we say cognition?
Individual tests might set different parameters and pay attention to different
mechanics. Or do they?

To put my question a different way: how confident are we in our current map of
the system?

I'm asking as a legitimately curious layperson. Perhaps this comment is naive,
and if so, I'm admitting to my naivete in advance.

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hprotagonist
>do we have a universally accepted, standard idea of exactly what we mean when
we say cognition?

no. (sensory neuroscience guy here)

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matart
Could someone explain this to a layman like myself, please

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terminado
In other words, does this amount to abuse of an already maximally efficient
organ, resulting in short term gains in exchange for what amounts to injury or
perhaps chronic subclinical injuries?

From the abstract:

    
    
      based on the assumption that brain 
      resources are subjected to the physical 
      principle of conservation of energy
    

Which is to say, nothing material is added to the equation, and thus, nothing
useful is actually extracted. Conceptually, the idea is to question whether
we're really just burning the candle at both ends, to get more light.

Compare to steroid abuse in athletes, resulting in a statistically significant
shortening of lifespan.

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thriftwy
I doubt this is true. There are smarter people and there are simpler ones. I
guess they're in the same ballpark WRT energy usage. Could you turn the latter
into the former? Why not?

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arcticbull
I suppose anything is possible, though that may well be much more challenging
if intelligence is a function of the physical configuration/arrangement of the
neurons in the brain. The interesting question if the structure theory is
true, is what kinds of effects that would have on the sense of self, and of
consciousness as a whole.

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chrisweekly
Why run electrical current through your brain (which seems like a bad idea on
general principle)? Audio waves are demonstrably effective - not just for
stimulation / focus, but adjustable for other cogntitive states, like
relaxation and sleep. See [Brain.FM]([https://brain.fm](https://brain.fm)).

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jjallen
Dated: "2014 Jan 15"

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_tb
it's a paper, not a javascript framework

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amputect
This is a good and funny reply. Also, it accidentally led me down a fun rabbit
hole and I ended up trying to learn about the oldest scientific works are that
are still regularly cited today.

Answers:
[https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&as_sdt=0%2C48&as_yl...](https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&as_sdt=0%2C48&as_ylo=1500&as_yhi=1750)
is a good starting point. Euler's paper demonstrating that there is no
solution to the Königsberg bridge problem and inventing graph theory in the
process is one of the more recognizable (to me) papers, but there's a lot of
truly interesting, foundational work there.

My wife guessed that Newton would be on there, but I couldn't easily turn him
up. I'm probably just bad with Google scholar, or maybe it's so foundational
that nobody bothers to provide a citation for e.g the very existence of
_calculus_ or _gravity_

My original question was "the oldest still-cited scientific work") but I
relaxed my criteria due to poorly defined definitions on 'still-cited' and
'scientific'. Still an interesting way to spend some time, so thanks for the
digression!

