EXCERPTS: When she woke up after a procedure involving drilling small holes in her skull, a woman suffering from chronic depression reported feeling “euphoric”. The holes were made to fit the wires that connected her brain with a matchbox-sized electrical implant; this would deliver up to 300 short-lived electricity bursts per day to specific parts of her brain.
Over a year later, Sarah, 36, says the brain implant has turned her life around. A sense of alertness and energy have replaced suicidal thoughts and feelings of despair, which had persisted despite antidepressants and electroconvulsive therapy. Sarah is the first person to have received a brain implant to treat depression, a breakthrough that happened during an experimental study published recently in Nature Medicine.
That's very hopeful news. Depression can be very hard to treat and anti-depressant drugs often don't work. Brain implants may or may not be the way forward, but they definitely deserve further investigation.
Quote:Such tailormade brain stimulation for patients with long-term, drug-resistant depression, which would be easy to use at home, could be transformative, the UCSF researcher concludes.
Way to go UCSF! They have a world renowned neuroscience program and some of their people are associated with Neurolink which is just a few blocks from UCSF's Mission Bay campus.
Quote:In the U.S., 12.7 percent of the population is on antidepressants. Almost exactly the same percentage of Australians–12.5–take similar drugs every day. With 13 percent of its population being on antidepressants, Iceland is the world’s highest antidepressant consumer.
That almost identical percentage of the population in each of these countries on antidepressants is interesting and very suggestive (to me anyway) that mood disorders like this are physiological in nature.
Quote:It is a far more elegant approach to treating brain disorders, with the potential to prove a lifesaver for the 40 to 50 percent of patients who see no benefits at all with antidepressants, Giordano says.
That's extremely hopeful. This is one of the most common psychiatric problems and often one of the most resistant to effective treatment.
Quote:But it comes with certain risks. Even if the device generating the brain stimulation sits outside the skull and could be easily used at home, the whole process still involves neurosurgery.
Yes, that is inherently risky. But techniques of implanting electrodes very precisely in the brain are progressing rapidly and already can be done with just a tiny opening of the skull, almost on an outpatient basis.
Quote:Patients could wear a cap, helmet, or visor that transmits electrical signals from the brain to a computer system and back, in a brain-computer interface that would not need surgery. “This could counter the implantation of hardware into the brain and body, around which there is also a lot of public hesitance,” says Giordano, who is working on such techniques at DARPA.
That's even better, but I doubt if they can get the same kind of targeted accuracy just by beaming energy from outside the skull. I'm skeptical but would love to be proved wrong.
Quote:Large segments of the population will simply refuse to allow that level of invasiveness in their heads, says Laura Cabrera..
Well, it would always have to be voluntary. If somebody has a strong aversion to the idea, they would have to have the option of saying 'no'.
But chronic depression can be so devastating that the risk/reward tradeoff might be very attractive to many people. Certainly the most severe drug-resistant cases where people are unable to have a normal social life, hold a job and are always risks for suicide.
(Dec 16, 2021 05:41 AM)Secular Sanity Wrote: If you don't believe me, drive it on google maps yourself. It's just past S Grapevine Rd, Golden, Colorado.
Again, why are you citing one of your two articles that have nothing to do with the 2019 Lakewood crash?
Yes, they added a second sign, because a moron drove past half a mile of runaway ramp to the immediate right of the outside lane as he was swerving to the inside: https://www.google.com/maps/@39.6982603,...2!1b1!2i38
But that has nothing to do with either of your articles. If anything, it only further demonstrates how utterly incompetent and grossly negligent he was.
At least we can agree that the sign extending over the freeway saying TRUCKERS YOU ARE NOT DOWN YET didn’t have the additional RUNAWAY TRUCK RAMP with an arrow pointing down in the video.
I inserted the link because it shows that exact sign. Not sure if charges were ever filed on that other truck driver.
The truck driver who was jailed for investigation of vehicular homicide after his runaway Rig killed two people and injured six others Sunday on interstate 70 has a history of traffic violations. Curtis Woods 32, of San Angelo Texas has been convicted of speeding at least six times in Texas. He also has two convictions for driving without motor vehicle liability insurance and was fined four times for failure to appear in court on traffic charges according to San Angelo municipal court aides. Woods posted a $5,000 Bond Monday night and was released. No formal charges have been filed.
I can understand his reasoning for thinking that the downhill ramp might not be the emergency ramp. Like he said, it’s downhill and starts on the curve. It’s pavement until you reach the other sign, and you can’t even see the other sign until you round the corner. As he’s rounding the corner, he’s trying to decrease the radius by moving into the inside lane, and by then, it’s too late.
SyneDec 16, 2021 07:35 AM (This post was last modified: Dec 16, 2021 07:36 AM by Syne.)
(Dec 16, 2021 07:09 AM)Secular Sanity Wrote: I can understand his reasoning for thinking that the downhill ramp might not be the emergency ramp. Like he said, it’s downhill and starts on the curve. It’s pavement until you reach the other sign, and you can’t even see the other sign until you round the corner. As he’s rounding the corner, he’s trying to decrease the radius by moving into the inside lane, and by then, it’s too late.
You can understand because you're apparently just as ignorant of semi operation as he was, and would be just as guilty if you got behind the wheel of a semi.
Cutting the corner only added to his speed, whereas at least grinding the outside guard would have lost some momentum, even if it weren't the runaway ramp.
You don't need a sign to see that there's a whole half mile of lane there meant to slow any vehicle that hits it.
Your desire to make excuses for a guy who killed four innocent people really knows no bounds. Again, do you have to see a video of their loved ones crying to have any sympathy for them at all?
(Dec 16, 2021 07:09 AM)Secular Sanity Wrote: I can understand his reasoning for thinking that the downhill ramp might not be the emergency ramp. Like he said, it’s downhill and starts on the curve. It’s pavement until you reach the other sign, and you can’t even see the other sign until you round the corner. As he’s rounding the corner, he’s trying to decrease the radius by moving into the inside lane, and by then, it’s too late.
You can understand because you're apparently just as ignorant of semi operation as he was, and would be just as guilty if you got behind the wheel of a semi.
Cutting the corner only added to his speed, whereas at least grinding the outside guard would have lost some momentum, even if it weren't the runaway ramp.
You don't need a sign to see that there's a whole half mile of lane there meant to slow any vehicle that hits it.
Your desire to make excuses for a guy who killed four innocent people really knows no bounds. Again, do you have to see a video of their loved ones crying to have any sympathy for them at all?
I said that it looked like he was attempting to straighten out the curve to keep it from tipping over. And the article that I posted shows how deceptive the road is.
"So we came up with a number of signs to warn the truckers to stay in low gear, to keep checking their brakes," Hopkins said. "And the most notable sign is the one that says, 'Truckers Don’t Be Fooled', You’re Not Down Yet."
It’s a sign that’s widely recognizable to those who drive on I-70 regularly today. Hopkins said the particular language came from interviewing lots of truck drivers who called that stretch of road deceptive.
"You see the Denver skyline in the distance and you have the sensation and sort of a flat area that you’re out of the mountains," Hopkins said. "But you’re really not. There’s really a steep incline ahead of you and a tight curve at the end. So we wanted to potentially warn drivers of trucks, no you’re not down yet, you’ve got a ways to go."
(Dec 15, 2021 08:35 PM)C C Wrote: Yes, one's identity as a human and specific person _X_ as comprehensively subsumed by one's entire lifetime.[1] We need the restrictions of a regulated information structure in order to psychologically exist to begin with. Non-governed randomness is not a cognitive entity.
Volition requires a disciplined system that has its own internal reasoning and conditioning dictating its choices, needs, and goals. The latter is contingently free to be itself to the extent that its autonomy is not compromised -- i.e., no exterior minds forcing it to act against the current state of its "identity" on _X_ calendar date. ("Sue is not responsible because fugitive John threatened to kill her 5-year-old if she didn't rob the store.")
The idea that "free will" should embrace starting options like "I could have been something or someone else", is bogus, since one would thereby not exist.
For instance, replacing Biden with different origin conditions -- such as being born a hedgehog or being born as an identical twin would simply eliminate him (Why Identical Twins Are Not Really Identical). Likewise, if Biden is descended from the same zygote (sans later splintering) as the Biden we know, but grows up in a dissimilar environment (raised by a foster-care system) -- those circumstances would produce an alternative microstructure in the brain (not the exact, same psychological identity of our Biden). Since innate traits don't account for everything.
- - - footnote - - -
[1] Or to put another way: Their 4D worm, in total, constituting "who _X_ individual is", as the overarching identity.
Even the Growing Block Universe conception of time still sports a partial "worm" of a currently existing person, which will eventually be completed upon death. Whatever we claimed was "caused" or "uncaused" in the supposed privileged Now of GBU would still retain that status of being caused or uncaused when that Now becomes part of the past.
IOW, the "future" not existing in GBU makes no more impact upon an event being judged random or non-random, caused or uncaused, than does the "future" existing in eternalism. A real compatibilist should be concerned with just that: Free will being compatible with determinism and its set future and past.
And that means placing emphasis on FW being the autonomy of the functioning cognitive system itself (the universe at large cannot think and reason -- it lacks a mind to qualify as a puppet-master). And recognizing that if other thought orientations strangely consider FW dependent upon non-caused and random events -- then such candidate occurrences would still retain that status even in eternalism.
That's not to say that absolute determinism is the case, but why in the world would the advocates of FW not want to have a defense for every metaphysical situation or interpretation about what's going on with time (or at least the primary ones usually rearing their heads)?
I understand what you’re saying, and you bring up some very good points, but I’m a little confused because I thought Biden was a hedgehog.
SyneDec 16, 2021 05:36 PM (This post was last modified: Dec 16, 2021 05:36 PM by Syne.)
(Dec 16, 2021 02:50 PM)Secular Sanity Wrote:
(Dec 16, 2021 07:35 AM)Syne Wrote:
(Dec 16, 2021 07:09 AM)Secular Sanity Wrote: I can understand his reasoning for thinking that the downhill ramp might not be the emergency ramp. Like he said, it’s downhill and starts on the curve. It’s pavement until you reach the other sign, and you can’t even see the other sign until you round the corner. As he’s rounding the corner, he’s trying to decrease the radius by moving into the inside lane, and by then, it’s too late.
You can understand because you're apparently just as ignorant of semi operation as he was, and would be just as guilty if you got behind the wheel of a semi.
Cutting the corner only added to his speed, whereas at least grinding the outside guard would have lost some momentum, even if it weren't the runaway ramp.
You don't need a sign to see that there's a whole half mile of lane there meant to slow any vehicle that hits it.
Your desire to make excuses for a guy who killed four innocent people really knows no bounds. Again, do you have to see a video of their loved ones crying to have any sympathy for them at all?
I said that it looked like he was attempting to straighten out the curve to keep it from tipping over.
You're either lying again or have no clue how to effectively communicate at all. No one has mentioned tipping over in this thread.
Tipping over in the outside lane of that curve would have been a far better outcome.
Quote:And the article that I posted shows how deceptive the road is.
Nothing deceptive about a half mile of a lane, right on the shoulder, filled with gravel or sand.
Quote:"So we came up with a number of signs to warn the truckers to stay in low gear, to keep checking their brakes," Hopkins said. "And the most notable sign is the one that says, 'Truckers Don’t Be Fooled', You’re Not Down Yet."
It’s a sign that’s widely recognizable to those who drive on I-70 regularly today. Hopkins said the particular language came from interviewing lots of truck drivers who called that stretch of road deceptive.
"You see the Denver skyline in the distance and you have the sensation and sort of a flat area that you’re out of the mountains," Hopkins said. "But you’re really not. There’s really a steep incline ahead of you and a tight curve at the end. So we wanted to potentially warn drivers of trucks, no you’re not down yet, you’ve got a ways to go."
Again, for like the third time, those signs were put up after a 1989 crash. Completely irrelevant to this 2019 crash.
And it's becoming quite telling that you keep avoiding your utter lack of sympathy for the families of the victims. Seriously, are you only capable of sympathizing with people you've seen crying? So this guy is more sympathetic to you? What a piece of shit.
It’s not that I don’t have sympathy for one and not the others. I think that 110 years for an unintentional accident is excessive, and even the judge thought so.
(Dec 16, 2021 06:20 PM)Secular Sanity Wrote: It’s not that I don’t have sympathy for one and not the others. I think that 110 years for an unintentional accident is excessive, and even the judge thought so.
You haven't been arguing for a reduced sentence. You've been arguing all the ways you think he was not at fault or trying to excuse his actions. That makes you a piece of shit. Just imagine the family of a victim coming across this thread and all your arguments.
Dec 16, 2021 05:00 AM
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Are brain implants the future of treatment for depression and anxiety?
![[Image: 51750589444_c67f682052_z.jpg]](https://live.staticflickr.com/65535/51750589444_c67f682052_z.jpg)
