12 ms·

The ethics of brain boosting

232 points by cromulent 15y ago

glenra 15y ago
Okay, but where can I buy one of these devices for under $100?
- jeggers5 15y ago
  You can't, yet.
- jQueryIsAwesome 15y ago
  There should be a site where one could subscribe to new tech discoveries that are likely to be marketed soon* (i.e. this one) to get an email when it happens. * by soon i mean the next 5 years or so.
ivankirigin 15y ago
Any good link describing the research? Ethics considerations are irrelevant for technology that isn't yet proven
- HPBEggo 15y ago
  Agreed. Discussing ethics when no one even fully understands what the technology is seems rather pointless.
  - ChuckMcM 15y ago
    The fallacy here is "no one understands what the technology is". The research folks think they understand it enough to ask the question about the downsides. I continue to scan research in this area because I know that at some point there will be a recreational drug equivalent that runs off batteries. That is going to destroy a lot of wealth in the underground drug business. That will cause some violent changes in society. As for TDCS I expect it to move along to the point where this may be like a calculator, not "required" but an accelerator for people with ones.
- aneth 15y ago
  Really? If we waited until nuclear explosions were proven to consider ethical implications we might be in a very different place. Ethical considerations don't need to stop scientific advancement, but they always must be an ongoing part of the process. That said, I'm interested in a maker kit.
  - ivankirigin 15y ago
    Yes you're right. I'm just tired of sensationalist stories far ahead of real technology. Another tiring example is pretty much any study of human-robot interaction. Mention sex and robots in the same article and you'll instantly get ridiculous attention.
- mrsebastian 15y ago
  I actually wrote about tDCS, back when the University of New Mexico published some findings back in April 2011: http://www.extremetech.com/extreme/84232-boost-your-brains-power-with-a-9volt-battery-and-some-wet-sponges http://www.extremetech.com/extreme/84232-boost-your-brains-p...
- mekoka 15y ago
  It is said there was some very promising early results, enough to prompt them to consult with ethic experts.
- gregsadetsky 15y ago
  The story (blog article) refers to this short essay: http://download.cell.com/images/edimages/CurrentBiology/homepage/curbio9329.pdf http://download.cell.com/images/edimages/CurrentBiology/home... which mentions "The long-lasting effects of TDCS, which can persist for up to 2 months" with a reference to this paper: http://neuro.cjb.net/content/29/22/7271.full.pdf http://neuro.cjb.net/content/29/22/7271.full.pdf This last paper is quite interesting, as arguments can (will...) be based off of it posing that tDCS does provide a long-term benefit. Unfortunately, the gain (in response time and accuracy) over a sham tDCS (e.g., placebo) is quite modest -- 15% with an error bar of 10% for response time, and 5% with an error bar of 5% for accuracy... Check the Figure 4 on page 5.
jeggers5 15y ago
Wish they showed something more statistical. As in, by how much did people's memory skills really improve? That whole article doesn't really even explain how it works either, just some dabbling around "ethics" (really?). Just seems quite vague and unfocussed. Really exciting prospect if it works though!
- kiiski 15y ago
  I think an article named "The ethics of..." is meant to "dabble around ethics" rather than explaining the technology. There must be other articles/papers about that.
  - jeggers5 15y ago
    Yes, but because it's such a weird/new piece of technology, I think an explanation of how well it actually works would be a good compliment to the article, there's no point in talking about ethics if it doesn't actually work.
    - kiiski 15y ago
      How well it _currently_ works is irrelevant from ethics point of view. Ethics are only concerned with how it could potentially be used. That's important to think about, so that the researchers know what direction to go and how to conduct their research so that it wont cause problems in the future.
hobin 15y ago
I was kind of hoping this would be about accessing an external hard disk from my brain. I can't count the number of times I wished I could've saved a few seconds by not having to look everything up on the internet.
majmun 15y ago
"The currents of 1–2 mA make it easier for neurons in these brain regions to fire. " wouldn't this just make you do connections in your reasoning that you usually wouldn't do (maybe for a good reason) (is this why this method is ethically questionable?)
- bpodgursky 15y ago
  The question I think is, is that "good reason" a reason that was relevant as our brains were evolving millions of years ago, but is irrelevant now? Our brains evolved in a way which maximized reproductive potential, and while having strong cognitive abilities was clearly favored to an extent, there was a constant tradeoff between larger brains and food/energy input. Now that we don't have the same critical food shortages, we can set our own objective functions. Ex, now most people would probably choose a brain with +50 iq points which required an extra 1000 kcals a day, but a few tens of thousands of years ago, those requirements would probably have been fatal...
ChristianMarks 15y ago
I've built one for ~ $30 in parts from Radio Shack using an LM317 current limiter. There is an odd bootstrapping problem involved with tDCS devices: you need to have the device connected to comprehend the instructions! Researchers speak of anodal and cathodal stimulation, and the convention is that + is anodal and - is cathodal. So far so good--at least this comports with vacuum tube conventions, which will be familiar to all readers of Hacker News. Researchers speak of anodal stimulation of the left dorsolateral prefrontal cortex. The tDCS device has to be connected (with the positive connection over the left dorsolateral prefrontal cortext) to even begin to comprehend that left means left from the perspective of the subject, but right from the perspective of a viewer viewing the subject's face. The right negative contact can go over the right eyebrow (but there are other protocols). This is one of the clearest: http://www.ncrrn.org/papers/symposium_tdcs/hamilton_tdcs.pdf http://www.ncrrn.org/papers/symposium_tdcs/hamilton_tdcs.pdf. As you can see, there is an inviolable convention among researchers not to unambiguously mark the anode + contact on the left dorsolateral prefrontal cortex, and the cathode - contact over the subject's right eyebrow. Instead, what we see on the third slide is a cartoon drawing of a subject in which two contacts are labeled "active" and "reference". There is an arrow leading from the active contact to the reference contact labeled "anodal" and another arrow from the reference contact labeled "cathodal". This refers to an ancient convention in electronics, in which current was assumed to flow from the anode to the cathode, even though electrons flow from the cathode to the anode. The literature is replete with such helpful diagrams. One would like a completely unambiguous statement: the anode is the positive connection, and it is secured to the left side of the subject's scalp; the cathode is the negative connection, and it secured over the subject's right eyebrow. Or one of the eight combinations possible by arbitrarily switching anode with cathode, positive with negative, and left with right. But I have been unable to locate a statement in the literature that would condescend to so direct and simple a description. Here is another article with a diagram showing node placement for tDCS. http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0165017306001068 http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0165017306.... Note that the anode is placed over the left dorsolateral prefrontal cortex, and the cathode is placed on the forehead. That beats the anodal and cathodal arrows of the previous diagram. What we still don't have is the identification of + with anodal and - with cathodal. And so one must continue searching through the literature--which should be done in any case--until one comes to something approximating a consensus on node placement and the meaning of anodal and cathodal versus positive and negative. Finally, here's a compilation from a less than unimpeachable source: http://www.drmueller-healthpsychology.com/tDCS.html http://www.drmueller-healthpsychology.com/tDCS.html. The author misreads 1mA as one microamp. That's one milliamp. But we do get a straightforward statement about node placement from Fregni, F., Boggio, P., Nitsche, M., et al. (2006). Letters to the Editor: Treatment of major depression with transcranial direct current stimulation. Bipolar Disorders, 8:203-205. This is confirmed in http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22031874 http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22031874, though you have to know that anode means positive and cathode means negative. I should say that in my initial reckless period of self-experimentation, I managed to induce phosphenes by accident -- blue white flashes in the entire visual field, blanking out everything else. Both contacts were in the supraorbital region. I ceased my experiments for a while and returned to the literature.
ntkachov 15y ago
I say throw ethics out the door. In sports the idea is to entertain and compete fairly so steroids reduce the value of sports. Memory and math? What is this a competition? Why on earth would you not want to increase your capacity for memory and math? The analogy is that steroids are to a mover as this thing is to an engineer. Do you really care how your mover found his strength?
- samt 15y ago
  This is a classic arms race. Like states giving tax breaks to invent corporations to move. Just like baseball we are probably all better off with some rules.
  - learc83 15y ago
    Considering anyone who knows which end of a soldering iron is hot could build one of these with access to the schematic, it's going to be impossible to enforce any limits on its use.
- ahelwer 15y ago
  These are more similar than you have presented. Athletes compete for contracts at the highest levels. If some athletes use performance enhancing drugs, they will have an edge and pressure will be put on those who do not want to use performance enhancing drugs, for any number of reasons. On the intellectual side of things, you have students competing for scholarships, grants, and research placements. You have people competing for jobs in high-tech industries, and then competing with their colleagues for promotions, pay raises, and bonuses. I'm sure you can come up with more examples. The same problem then exists with devices or drugs which purport to improve learning ability. I could take dextroamphetamine every day. My productivity could go through the roof and I could soak up information like a sponge, easily putting within my grasp that which I strive to accomplish every day. Yet I do not want to do this, for many reasons. Maybe the device in the article lacks the side effects of regular amphetamine use. It therefore would not be on the same level as nootropic drugs, but saying we should 'throw ethics out the door' is quite a leap.
  - 15y ago
robertskmiles 15y ago
I found that section on 'cheating' completely bizarre. The reason something like a cheat-sheet counts as cheating is not that it's easier, it's that you haven't really learned it. The moral issue comes from the idea that the exam is meant to give an idea of how well you know something, and if you cheat you can get a good result without really knowing the subject matter. If you are actually learning, and the effect is not temporary, then it's obviously not cheating, no matter how easy it is.
- nessus42 15y ago
  All the classes I took at MIT let students bring a "cheat sheet" to exams. Additionally, many exams were completely open-book. I know that this is neither here nor there, but I felt compelled to comment on the notion that if you haven't memorized something, that you haven't learned it. This idea is all too prevalent.
  - robertskmiles 15y ago
    Absolutely. If the exam is trying to assess how you would do in an environment where you are free to look things up (like the real world most of the time), then that makes good sense. The point generalises to this: Exams are an attempt to measure something about you. Cheating is an attempt to make the result of the exam better than the reality of the thing the exam is trying to measure. Morally this puts it in the same class as lying and other deception. So whether carrying information into the exam is cheating or not, depends on the exam. If it's trying to measure what you can remember, it's cheating. Otherwise, it may not be. If this technology helps you to actually learn, then you aren't just increasing the result of the exam, you're actually increasing the thing the exam is trying to measure.
  - dhume 15y ago
    Memorization is not learning. Neither is a subset of the other.
gtani 15y ago
Interesting juxtapose.. if the #3 story about the 2011 Adderall /ritalin shortage drops off the front page, read that too.
Tichy 15y ago
"The idea of a simple, cheap and widely available device that could boost brain function sounds too good to be true." Like books, for example? Or computers (not that cheap, but widely available). I am not holding my breath on that device... My usual line of thinking: if it is so easy to enhance brain functions, why hasn't nature done so herself? (Another one where that applies is the super memory mice).
- JumpCrisscross 15y ago
  It's expensive (calorically). As it is that little engine sunk in a bone casing behind your eyes consumes calories like a ravaged soul.
- merkat 15y ago
  Maybe the nature is enhancing our brains (in evolutionary terms), but there might be devices or techniques to accelerate this process.
- waqf 15y ago
  > if it is so easy to enhance brain functions, why hasn't nature done so herself? A good question to raise, but it has a lot of plausible answers. For example, maybe having better cognitive ability causes people to spend more time doing science and less time procreating/looking after their offspring.
- commieneko 15y ago
  Nature has widely enhanced brain functions. There is variation in intelligence. But since traits are selected for against usefulness and not toward an abstract goal or destination you don't see much variation above or beyond that needed to promote the trait. Even today most people do not need much more abstract reasoning power than the median to survive and reproduce. (By "today" I mean within the last 10,000 years or so.) But in normal healthy people we see enough variation in abstract reasoning to have a profound effect on their performance in our brand spanking new technological environment of the last couple of thousand years; less than an eyeblink in evolutionary terms. And not just in competitive terms, but in absolute ability. A lot of that advancement can be simply be attributed to better nutrition and better mental and language models. I have little trouble believing that fiddling and tuning up the brain's electrical environment might might have some comparatively striking effects. (I can also see it possible to do great damage as well)
Tichy 15y ago
Related, I have recently been thinking about Star Trek economics. I don't know much about Star Trek, except that they don't use money. Yet there seem to be differences in "wealth", at least in that some get to be commanders of huge space vessels, whereas others are confined to low level jobs on said vessels. Presumably there is the notion of "only ability counts", but what happens once genetic engineering levels everybody's abilities? It seems to me from then on the logical conclusion is that in a Star Trek universe mankind would become a super organism spawning individuals according to need. The individual would necessarily be transcended.
- wavephorm 15y ago
  Star Trek was a meritocratic socialist economy with a World Government, of which we really only see the military/starfleet aspect of everything. There was a hierarchy of jobs based on performance, and there was never any mention of genetic discrimination as far as I know.
  - dmoney 15y ago
    http://en.memory-alpha.org/wiki/Genetic_engineering http://en.memory-alpha.org/wiki/Genetic_engineering This would lead to the banning of genetic engineering on Earth by the mid-22nd century, even research which could be used to cure critical illnesses. This ban was implemented because of the general fear of creating more tyrants such as Khan. It was also felt that parents would feel compelled to have their children genetically engineered, especially if "enhanced" individuals are allowed to compete in normal society. ... By the 24th century, the United Federation of Planets allowed limited use of genetic engineering to correct existing genetically-related medical conditions. Persons known to be genetically enhanced, however, were not allowed to serve in Starfleet, and were especially banned from practicing medicine.
  - deleted 15y ago
    [deleted]
axiom 15y ago
Looking at the actual research it seems the improvements were typically on the order of 10%. So this isn't going to turn Homer Simpson into Einstein. I wonder how this compares over the long term to just working an extra 20 minutes per day, or even just drinking a cup of coffee.
- Udo 15y ago
  At 10% it's also worth comparing to a placebo control group - I have the suspicion that the results of such a study could annihilate the "improvement" claim entirely if an independent study were to be conducted on this.
mekoka 15y ago
So if I understand well, they stumbled upon a method for brain boosting that seems very promising and yet, could be very affordable and also very easily made at home or from a DIY kit. They emphasize how good it would be for humanity, how very bad side-effects their limited studies have shown, etc. Enough to make anyone wonder why this isn't on the market yet. Only now, they're questioning the ethics of letting people know about it, and they do that... by talking about it? I believe it would now be more dangerous and irresponsible to keep things secret, the cat's out of the bag. People who read such an article with the details provided, only have enough information to have an approximate understanding of how this thing works, but it won't stop them from experimenting. Already, I see instructions being posted on this very thread.
- Udo 15y ago
  It's a reverse psychology marketing ploy. Those guys need funding and are looking into commercial applications which this article is designed to invoke interest for. I think those claims of performance increases when applied to healthy brains can safely be assumed to be highly questionable.
- mindcrime 15y ago
  People who read such an article with the details provided, only have enough information to have an approximate understanding of how this thing works, but it won't stop them from experimenting. Already, I see instructions being posted on this very thread. Yeah, I'd be shocked if half the population of HN don't have one of these things inside a week. Somebody should call Jameco and Mouser, etc., and ask if they see a spike in sales of certain electronic components in the next few days! I probably have most of the parts needed in my parts-box already, so I might just give it a try myself. Nothing like a little reckless self-experimentation...
mrinterweb 15y ago
This research sounds very similar to the research done by Dr. Bob Beck on his "Brain Tuner" in 1983. Bob Beck had some other radical beliefs such as blood electrification that he claimed could cure all sorts of maladies. I wonder how much the transcranial direct current stimulation differs from Bob Beck's Brain Tuner. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uRx0Luz86Uc&feature=related http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uRx0Luz86Uc&feature=relat...
colonel_panic 15y ago
I've heard of transcranial magnetic stimulation, but not direct current stimulation. Can anyone give us a rundown of the difference in results?
walrus 15y ago
If I'm understanding correctly, the device makes certain neuron pathways more likely to fire. What happens if, for example, you enable this device every time you enter a potentially frustrating situation? Would you become frustrated more easily?
ricksta 15y ago
This can be built easily by connecting 9v battery, a potentiometer, and a multimeter on current mode in series. The potentiometer basically controls the current and the multimeter displays how much you are putting in yourself. I'm curious on what the benefits of this is but also scared of the side effects if there are any. Anyone else tried this?
api 15y ago
"we need to control the release of the genie" Has never, and will never be done. Oh, and I will believe all the people who whine about the virtue of the natural, un-augmented human, and about how unfair augmentation is, when they start advocating that athletes compete naked.

232 points by cromulent 15y ago

glenra 15y ago

Okay, but where can I buy one of these devices for under $100?

jeggers5 15y ago
You can't, yet.
jQueryIsAwesome 15y ago
There should be a site where one could subscribe to new tech discoveries that are likely to be marketed soon* (i.e. this one) to get an email when it happens. * by soon i mean the next 5 years or so.

ivankirigin 15y ago

Any good link describing the research? Ethics considerations are irrelevant for technology that isn't yet proven

HPBEggo 15y ago
Agreed. Discussing ethics when no one even fully understands what the technology is seems rather pointless.
- ChuckMcM 15y ago
  The fallacy here is "no one understands what the technology is". The research folks think they understand it enough to ask the question about the downsides. I continue to scan research in this area because I know that at some point there will be a recreational drug equivalent that runs off batteries. That is going to destroy a lot of wealth in the underground drug business. That will cause some violent changes in society. As for TDCS I expect it to move along to the point where this may be like a calculator, not "required" but an accelerator for people with ones.
aneth 15y ago
Really? If we waited until nuclear explosions were proven to consider ethical implications we might be in a very different place. Ethical considerations don't need to stop scientific advancement, but they always must be an ongoing part of the process. That said, I'm interested in a maker kit.
- ivankirigin 15y ago
  Yes you're right. I'm just tired of sensationalist stories far ahead of real technology. Another tiring example is pretty much any study of human-robot interaction. Mention sex and robots in the same article and you'll instantly get ridiculous attention.
mrsebastian 15y ago
I actually wrote about tDCS, back when the University of New Mexico published some findings back in April 2011: http://www.extremetech.com/extreme/84232-boost-your-brains-power-with-a-9volt-battery-and-some-wet-sponges http://www.extremetech.com/extreme/84232-boost-your-brains-p...
mekoka 15y ago
It is said there was some very promising early results, enough to prompt them to consult with ethic experts.
gregsadetsky 15y ago
The story (blog article) refers to this short essay: http://download.cell.com/images/edimages/CurrentBiology/homepage/curbio9329.pdf http://download.cell.com/images/edimages/CurrentBiology/home... which mentions "The long-lasting effects of TDCS, which can persist for up to 2 months" with a reference to this paper: http://neuro.cjb.net/content/29/22/7271.full.pdf http://neuro.cjb.net/content/29/22/7271.full.pdf This last paper is quite interesting, as arguments can (will...) be based off of it posing that tDCS does provide a long-term benefit. Unfortunately, the gain (in response time and accuracy) over a sham tDCS (e.g., placebo) is quite modest -- 15% with an error bar of 10% for response time, and 5% with an error bar of 5% for accuracy... Check the Figure 4 on page 5.

jeggers5 15y ago

Wish they showed something more statistical. As in, by how much did people's memory skills really improve? That whole article doesn't really even explain how it works either, just some dabbling around "ethics" (really?). Just seems quite vague and unfocussed. Really exciting prospect if it works though!

kiiski 15y ago
I think an article named "The ethics of..." is meant to "dabble around ethics" rather than explaining the technology. There must be other articles/papers about that.
- jeggers5 15y ago
  Yes, but because it's such a weird/new piece of technology, I think an explanation of how well it actually works would be a good compliment to the article, there's no point in talking about ethics if it doesn't actually work.
  - kiiski 15y ago
    How well it _currently_ works is irrelevant from ethics point of view. Ethics are only concerned with how it could potentially be used. That's important to think about, so that the researchers know what direction to go and how to conduct their research so that it wont cause problems in the future.

hobin 15y ago

I was kind of hoping this would be about accessing an external hard disk from my brain. I can't count the number of times I wished I could've saved a few seconds by not having to look everything up on the internet.

majmun 15y ago

"The currents of 1–2 mA make it easier for neurons in these brain regions to fire. " wouldn't this just make you do connections in your reasoning that you usually wouldn't do (maybe for a good reason) (is this why this method is ethically questionable?)

bpodgursky 15y ago
The question I think is, is that "good reason" a reason that was relevant as our brains were evolving millions of years ago, but is irrelevant now? Our brains evolved in a way which maximized reproductive potential, and while having strong cognitive abilities was clearly favored to an extent, there was a constant tradeoff between larger brains and food/energy input. Now that we don't have the same critical food shortages, we can set our own objective functions. Ex, now most people would probably choose a brain with +50 iq points which required an extra 1000 kcals a day, but a few tens of thousands of years ago, those requirements would probably have been fatal...

ChristianMarks 15y ago

I've built one for ~ $30 in parts from Radio Shack using an LM317 current limiter. There is an odd bootstrapping problem involved with tDCS devices: you need to have the device connected to comprehend the instructions! Researchers speak of anodal and cathodal stimulation, and the convention is that + is anodal and - is cathodal. So far so good--at least this comports with vacuum tube conventions, which will be familiar to all readers of Hacker News. Researchers speak of anodal stimulation of the left dorsolateral prefrontal cortex. The tDCS device has to be connected (with the positive connection over the left dorsolateral prefrontal cortext) to even begin to comprehend that left means left from the perspective of the subject, but right from the perspective of a viewer viewing the subject's face. The right negative contact can go over the right eyebrow (but there are other protocols). This is one of the clearest: http://www.ncrrn.org/papers/symposium_tdcs/hamilton_tdcs.pdf http://www.ncrrn.org/papers/symposium_tdcs/hamilton_tdcs.pdf. As you can see, there is an inviolable convention among researchers not to unambiguously mark the anode + contact on the left dorsolateral prefrontal cortex, and the cathode - contact over the subject's right eyebrow. Instead, what we see on the third slide is a cartoon drawing of a subject in which two contacts are labeled "active" and "reference". There is an arrow leading from the active contact to the reference contact labeled "anodal" and another arrow from the reference contact labeled "cathodal". This refers to an ancient convention in electronics, in which current was assumed to flow from the anode to the cathode, even though electrons flow from the cathode to the anode. The literature is replete with such helpful diagrams. One would like a completely unambiguous statement: the anode is the positive connection, and it is secured to the left side of the subject's scalp; the cathode is the negative connection, and it secured over the subject's right eyebrow. Or one of the eight combinations possible by arbitrarily switching anode with cathode, positive with negative, and left with right. But I have been unable to locate a statement in the literature that would condescend to so direct and simple a description. Here is another article with a diagram showing node placement for tDCS. http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0165017306001068 http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0165017306.... Note that the anode is placed over the left dorsolateral prefrontal cortex, and the cathode is placed on the forehead. That beats the anodal and cathodal arrows of the previous diagram. What we still don't have is the identification of + with anodal and - with cathodal. And so one must continue searching through the literature--which should be done in any case--until one comes to something approximating a consensus on node placement and the meaning of anodal and cathodal versus positive and negative. Finally, here's a compilation from a less than unimpeachable source: http://www.drmueller-healthpsychology.com/tDCS.html http://www.drmueller-healthpsychology.com/tDCS.html. The author misreads 1mA as one microamp. That's one milliamp. But we do get a straightforward statement about node placement from Fregni, F., Boggio, P., Nitsche, M., et al. (2006). Letters to the Editor: Treatment of major depression with transcranial direct current stimulation. Bipolar Disorders, 8:203-205. This is confirmed in http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22031874 http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22031874, though you have to know that anode means positive and cathode means negative. I should say that in my initial reckless period of self-experimentation, I managed to induce phosphenes by accident -- blue white flashes in the entire visual field, blanking out everything else. Both contacts were in the supraorbital region. I ceased my experiments for a while and returned to the literature.

ntkachov 15y ago

I say throw ethics out the door. In sports the idea is to entertain and compete fairly so steroids reduce the value of sports. Memory and math? What is this a competition? Why on earth would you not want to increase your capacity for memory and math? The analogy is that steroids are to a mover as this thing is to an engineer. Do you really care how your mover found his strength?

samt 15y ago
This is a classic arms race. Like states giving tax breaks to invent corporations to move. Just like baseball we are probably all better off with some rules.
- learc83 15y ago
  Considering anyone who knows which end of a soldering iron is hot could build one of these with access to the schematic, it's going to be impossible to enforce any limits on its use.
ahelwer 15y ago
These are more similar than you have presented. Athletes compete for contracts at the highest levels. If some athletes use performance enhancing drugs, they will have an edge and pressure will be put on those who do not want to use performance enhancing drugs, for any number of reasons. On the intellectual side of things, you have students competing for scholarships, grants, and research placements. You have people competing for jobs in high-tech industries, and then competing with their colleagues for promotions, pay raises, and bonuses. I'm sure you can come up with more examples. The same problem then exists with devices or drugs which purport to improve learning ability. I could take dextroamphetamine every day. My productivity could go through the roof and I could soak up information like a sponge, easily putting within my grasp that which I strive to accomplish every day. Yet I do not want to do this, for many reasons. Maybe the device in the article lacks the side effects of regular amphetamine use. It therefore would not be on the same level as nootropic drugs, but saying we should 'throw ethics out the door' is quite a leap.
- 15y ago

robertskmiles 15y ago

I found that section on 'cheating' completely bizarre. The reason something like a cheat-sheet counts as cheating is not that it's easier, it's that you haven't really learned it. The moral issue comes from the idea that the exam is meant to give an idea of how well you know something, and if you cheat you can get a good result without really knowing the subject matter. If you are actually learning, and the effect is not temporary, then it's obviously not cheating, no matter how easy it is.

nessus42 15y ago
All the classes I took at MIT let students bring a "cheat sheet" to exams. Additionally, many exams were completely open-book. I know that this is neither here nor there, but I felt compelled to comment on the notion that if you haven't memorized something, that you haven't learned it. This idea is all too prevalent.
- robertskmiles 15y ago
  Absolutely. If the exam is trying to assess how you would do in an environment where you are free to look things up (like the real world most of the time), then that makes good sense. The point generalises to this: Exams are an attempt to measure something about you. Cheating is an attempt to make the result of the exam better than the reality of the thing the exam is trying to measure. Morally this puts it in the same class as lying and other deception. So whether carrying information into the exam is cheating or not, depends on the exam. If it's trying to measure what you can remember, it's cheating. Otherwise, it may not be. If this technology helps you to actually learn, then you aren't just increasing the result of the exam, you're actually increasing the thing the exam is trying to measure.
- dhume 15y ago
  Memorization is not learning. Neither is a subset of the other.

gtani 15y ago

Interesting juxtapose.. if the #3 story about the 2011 Adderall /ritalin shortage drops off the front page, read that too.

Tichy 15y ago

"The idea of a simple, cheap and widely available device that could boost brain function sounds too good to be true." Like books, for example? Or computers (not that cheap, but widely available). I am not holding my breath on that device... My usual line of thinking: if it is so easy to enhance brain functions, why hasn't nature done so herself? (Another one where that applies is the super memory mice).

JumpCrisscross 15y ago
It's expensive (calorically). As it is that little engine sunk in a bone casing behind your eyes consumes calories like a ravaged soul.
merkat 15y ago
Maybe the nature is enhancing our brains (in evolutionary terms), but there might be devices or techniques to accelerate this process.
waqf 15y ago
> if it is so easy to enhance brain functions, why hasn't nature done so herself? A good question to raise, but it has a lot of plausible answers. For example, maybe having better cognitive ability causes people to spend more time doing science and less time procreating/looking after their offspring.
commieneko 15y ago
Nature has widely enhanced brain functions. There is variation in intelligence. But since traits are selected for against usefulness and not toward an abstract goal or destination you don't see much variation above or beyond that needed to promote the trait. Even today most people do not need much more abstract reasoning power than the median to survive and reproduce. (By "today" I mean within the last 10,000 years or so.) But in normal healthy people we see enough variation in abstract reasoning to have a profound effect on their performance in our brand spanking new technological environment of the last couple of thousand years; less than an eyeblink in evolutionary terms. And not just in competitive terms, but in absolute ability. A lot of that advancement can be simply be attributed to better nutrition and better mental and language models. I have little trouble believing that fiddling and tuning up the brain's electrical environment might might have some comparatively striking effects. (I can also see it possible to do great damage as well)

Tichy 15y ago

Related, I have recently been thinking about Star Trek economics. I don't know much about Star Trek, except that they don't use money. Yet there seem to be differences in "wealth", at least in that some get to be commanders of huge space vessels, whereas others are confined to low level jobs on said vessels. Presumably there is the notion of "only ability counts", but what happens once genetic engineering levels everybody's abilities? It seems to me from then on the logical conclusion is that in a Star Trek universe mankind would become a super organism spawning individuals according to need. The individual would necessarily be transcended.

wavephorm 15y ago
Star Trek was a meritocratic socialist economy with a World Government, of which we really only see the military/starfleet aspect of everything. There was a hierarchy of jobs based on performance, and there was never any mention of genetic discrimination as far as I know.
- dmoney 15y ago
  http://en.memory-alpha.org/wiki/Genetic_engineering http://en.memory-alpha.org/wiki/Genetic_engineering This would lead to the banning of genetic engineering on Earth by the mid-22nd century, even research which could be used to cure critical illnesses. This ban was implemented because of the general fear of creating more tyrants such as Khan. It was also felt that parents would feel compelled to have their children genetically engineered, especially if "enhanced" individuals are allowed to compete in normal society. ... By the 24th century, the United Federation of Planets allowed limited use of genetic engineering to correct existing genetically-related medical conditions. Persons known to be genetically enhanced, however, were not allowed to serve in Starfleet, and were especially banned from practicing medicine.
- deleted 15y ago
  [deleted]

axiom 15y ago

Looking at the actual research it seems the improvements were typically on the order of 10%. So this isn't going to turn Homer Simpson into Einstein. I wonder how this compares over the long term to just working an extra 20 minutes per day, or even just drinking a cup of coffee.

Udo 15y ago
At 10% it's also worth comparing to a placebo control group - I have the suspicion that the results of such a study could annihilate the "improvement" claim entirely if an independent study were to be conducted on this.

mekoka 15y ago

So if I understand well, they stumbled upon a method for brain boosting that seems very promising and yet, could be very affordable and also very easily made at home or from a DIY kit. They emphasize how good it would be for humanity, how very bad side-effects their limited studies have shown, etc. Enough to make anyone wonder why this isn't on the market yet. Only now, they're questioning the ethics of letting people know about it, and they do that... by talking about it? I believe it would now be more dangerous and irresponsible to keep things secret, the cat's out of the bag. People who read such an article with the details provided, only have enough information to have an approximate understanding of how this thing works, but it won't stop them from experimenting. Already, I see instructions being posted on this very thread.

Udo 15y ago
It's a reverse psychology marketing ploy. Those guys need funding and are looking into commercial applications which this article is designed to invoke interest for. I think those claims of performance increases when applied to healthy brains can safely be assumed to be highly questionable.
mindcrime 15y ago
People who read such an article with the details provided, only have enough information to have an approximate understanding of how this thing works, but it won't stop them from experimenting. Already, I see instructions being posted on this very thread. Yeah, I'd be shocked if half the population of HN don't have one of these things inside a week. Somebody should call Jameco and Mouser, etc., and ask if they see a spike in sales of certain electronic components in the next few days! I probably have most of the parts needed in my parts-box already, so I might just give it a try myself. Nothing like a little reckless self-experimentation...

mrinterweb 15y ago

This research sounds very similar to the research done by Dr. Bob Beck on his "Brain Tuner" in 1983. Bob Beck had some other radical beliefs such as blood electrification that he claimed could cure all sorts of maladies. I wonder how much the transcranial direct current stimulation differs from Bob Beck's Brain Tuner. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uRx0Luz86Uc&feature=related http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uRx0Luz86Uc&feature=relat...

colonel_panic 15y ago

I've heard of transcranial magnetic stimulation, but not direct current stimulation. Can anyone give us a rundown of the difference in results?

walrus 15y ago

If I'm understanding correctly, the device makes certain neuron pathways more likely to fire. What happens if, for example, you enable this device every time you enter a potentially frustrating situation? Would you become frustrated more easily?

ricksta 15y ago

This can be built easily by connecting 9v battery, a potentiometer, and a multimeter on current mode in series. The potentiometer basically controls the current and the multimeter displays how much you are putting in yourself. I'm curious on what the benefits of this is but also scared of the side effects if there are any. Anyone else tried this?

api 15y ago

"we need to control the release of the genie" Has never, and will never be done. Oh, and I will believe all the people who whine about the virtue of the natural, un-augmented human, and about how unfair augmentation is, when they start advocating that athletes compete naked.