10 ms·
> Some researchers have challenged parts of this picture, however; a 2024 study, for example, suggested waste clearance is actually faster during waking than du
by highfrequency 2y ago
> Some researchers have challenged parts of this picture, however; a 2024 study, for example, suggested waste clearance is actually faster during waking than during sleep.
That’s a pretty big ambiguity in the story!
- beezlebroxxxxxx 2y agoWhen you talk to neuroscientists and researchers in private you often find that they are far less confident than public personas, PR, articles, or science reporting, make them sound. A lot of their findings are really more like "huh, that's weird. We should look at this more." What seems like a ton of consensus at cruising altitude is actually much more divisive as you approach ground level. The more recent emergence of the idea that neuroscientists are a kind of "super scientist" of human behavior (all self-help books are now "neuroscience"-based now, for example) has also made them seem much more certain about certain things than they actually are.
- smokedetector1 2y ago[flagged]
- krapp 2y ago>It's not just optimistic - its qualitatively unjustified to think that neuroscience (in its current form, at least) is inevitably capable of cracking consciousness. The fact that you had to add the parenthetical here to hedge your bet demonstrates that you don't even entirely believe your own claims.
- smokedetector1 2y ago[flagged]
- smallmancontrov 2y agoGod of the Gaps is not intellectual honesty. Neither is running from an argument.
- smokedetector1 2y ago[flagged]
- smallmancontrov 2y agoNot an axiom, just a prior with enough evidence to smash the probability of ghosts quite near to zero. You're welcome to pretend that I said "zero" and continue shadow-boxing a straw-man, but if you want to fight my actual argument you need to contend with "near to zero." The difference between Woo of the Gaps and Science of the Gaps is that science is on the advance and woo is on the retreat, it has been this way for centuries, and the pace always seems to be determined exactly by the rate at which science advances rather than any actual opposition from the Woo camp. Nothing is over until it's over, but how much do you actually want to bet on a glorious turnaround? You do you, but for me the answer is "not much."
- smokedetector1 2y ago[deleted]
- smallmancontrov 2y agoThe rate of an army's advance through a particular town is 0 until they get there, but if you were to see the front lines moving towards you and put forward this argument as a reason to stay, you would be in for a rude surprise.
- krapp 2y ago[flagged]
- beezlebroxxxxxx 2y agoThat claim has a very robust history in philosophy of mind. Peter Hacker and M.R. Bennett, a philosopher and a neuroscientist respectively, cowrote Philosophical Foundations of Neuroscience[0]. There was also a fascinating response and discussion in a further book with Daniel Dennett and John Searle called Neuroscience and Philosophy[1]. Both books are excellent and have fascinating arguments and counter-arguments; you get very clear pictures of fundamentally different pictures of the human mind and the role and idea of neuroscience. [0]: https://www.wiley.com/en-us/Philosophical+Foundations+of+Neuroscience%2C+2nd+Edition-p-9781119530978 https://www.wiley.com/en-us/Philosophical+Foundations+of+Neu... [1]: https://cup.columbia.edu/book/neuroscience-and-philosophy/9780231140447 https://cup.columbia.edu/book/neuroscience-and-philosophy/97...
- smallmancontrov 2y agoSo... because the problem of untangling how the brain works is complicated and unfinished, it might be powered by woo? Sure, and maybe Cthulu is about to awaken the sunken city of R'lyeh. You can't prove me wrong either.
- circlefavshape 2y ago> despite the evidence to the contrary Humans being unable to figure out how inanimate matter gives rise to consciousness is not evidence that "strict materialism on consciousness is misguided". Or is there some other evidence I'm unaware of?
- smokedetector1 2y ago[deleted]
- AnimalMuppet 2y agoWhile I agree in general, I think you overstate things here: > Many STEM people hate this because they want to axiomatically believe materialist science can reach everything, despite the evidence to the contrary. Do we have actual evidence that it can't reach everything? That would be "evidence to the contrary". What you have given is evidence of its inability to reach everything so far, in its current form. That's still not nothing - the pure materialists are committed to that position because of their philosophical starting point, not because of empirical evidence, and you show that that's the case. But so far as I know, there is no current evidence that they could never reach that goal. [Edit to reply, since I'm rate limited: No, sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander. The materialists don't get the freebee, and neither do you. In fact, I was agreeing with you about you pointing out that the materialists were claiming an undeserved freebee. But you don't get the freebee, for the same reason that they don't.]
- smokedetector1 2y ago[deleted]
- ben_w 2y agoScience and philosophy as they currently stand have yet to settle on just one single an universally agreed upon definition of "consciousness" — last I heard it was about 40 different definitions, some of which are so poor that tape recorders would pass. The philosophical definitions also sometimes preclude any human from being able to meet the standard, e.g. by requiring the ability to solve the halting problem. Without knowing which thing you mean, we can't confidently say which arrangements of matter are or are not conscious; but we can still be at least moderately confident (for most definitions) that it's something material because various material things can change our consciousness. LSD, for example.
- AnimalMuppet 2y agoA slightly-less-than-perfect analogy: I can mess with the execution of software by mis-adjusting the power supply far enough. It still runs, but it starts having weird errors. Based on that, would we say that software is electrical? Is software electrical? It certainly runs on electrical hardware. And yet, it seems absurdly reductionist to say that software is electrical. It's missing all the ways in which software is not like hardware. Is consciousness similar? It runs on physical (chemical) hardware. But is it itself physical or chemical? Or is that too reductionist a view? (Note that there is no claim that software is "woo" or "spirit" or anything like that. It's not just hardware, though.)
- 0_gravitas 2y ago> When disagreeing, please reply to the argument instead of calling names. "That is idiotic; 1 + 1 is 2, not 3" can be shortened to "1 + 1 is 2, not 3." > Please don't fulminate. Please don't sneer, including at the rest of the community. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- smokedetector1 2y ago[deleted]
- HeatrayEnjoyer 2y agoNo, they're not.
- smokedetector1 2y ago[deleted]
- raziel2p 2y agoif it's become usual, maybe it's time to reconsider your arguments or phrasing?
- smokedetector1 2y ago[deleted]
- raziel2p 2y agoI don't really care if I believe you or not, you deleted your comment so I can't even see what you're referring to, but getting into unproductive arguments on the internet is just gonna make you miserable.
- smokedetector1 2y ago
- schnable 2y agoI learned this after being diagnosed with epilepsy. It became clear quickly that we know very little about how the brain works. Almost all of the medical advice and prediction was based on observed behaviors in the population, nothing specifically about my brain.
- lamename 2y agoAs a neuroscientist, yes. But this is true of most science & medicine news written for a general audience. I have to tell my parents to stop reading "Chocolate is a superfood / Chocolate causes cancer" articles every year. Uncertainty isn't good for engagement, even if it's correct.
- thechao 2y agoNonlinear (and inverting!) response curves for drug dosimetry that's population and person specific. Especially when there's a temporal delay. Trying to explain grapefruit to my elderly parents is like pulling teeth.
- krisoft 2y ago> Trying to explain grapefruit to my elderly parents is like pulling teeth. It is not that hard. It is a fruit roughly the same size and appearance as an orange, but more bitter. See! I explained it. :) Joking asside, what are you trying to explain about grapefruit to your elderly parents? Is it the weird way it interacts with certain medicines?
- xp84 2y agoIt can potentially double or triple the effective dose you’ll absorb of many medications, so weird doesn’t adequately describe it. “Potentially life-threatening” is better.
- mattgreenrocks 2y agoThis is the first time I've heard of that. Glad I stumbled across this, even though I hate the taste.
- krisoft 2y agoHave you heard the one about lychee? There is some compound in them which can lower your blood glucose levels. The sugar from digesting the fruit will eventually push up your sugar levels, so it all ends up okay eventually, and the drop is relatively small. But if you already have a low blood sugar level, and eat a lot of lychee it can maybe even kill you. So don’t eat them for an empty stomach just to stay on the safe side. That is my other “tasty fruit with a weirdly dangerous rare side-effect” fact.
- jacobr1 2y agoA lot of the things we sort of know are also related to studies that look at a very small subsystems attempting to isolate variables. Like take a slice of neurons, apply a certain chemical and check how it changes action potentials. Over time a bunch of that kind of data can be pieced together in larger systems analysis. That kind of things relies on extrapolation from that lower-order data though, ideally with confirming studies from subject animals, but the data is really clean. The media reports on research is usually bad too, usually taking whatever speculative impact the research might have that is suggested for funding or future work ... but wasn't actual the results of the paper just something tacked on as basically informed speculation.
- generalizations 2y agoAlso note that the medical field selects hard for people who can memorize information, to the exclusion of people who can understand systems. Those people, in turn, are the ones doing this research. This is likely a large part of why our knowledge of neuroscience is largely mechanistic and without a sense of the larger picture. Compare to the invention of the perceptron, which took a joint effort between a polymathic neurophysiologist and a logician.
- lamename 2y agoI agree that the selection for memorization is high, and I've worked with many neuroscientists who cared more about biological "stamp collecting" than understanding systems. But in my experience neuroscientists have to have a solid level of systems thinking to succeed in the field. There are too many factors, related disciplines (from physics to sociology), and levels of analysis to be closed off.
- orwin 2y agoLuckily, those two different traits are learnable, so I'd guess as the field advance and mature, this will change? Honestly 'our knowledge of [X] is largely mechanistic and without a sense of the larger picture' is weirdly applicable to most scientific fields once they escaped the 'natural philosophy' designation.
- generalizations 2y agoI doubt it, I used the perceptron as a neuroscience-related example of what happens when we have the right people trying to put the pieces together, not just memorizing.
- lazystar 2y ago> the medical field selects hard for people who can memorize information, to the exclusion of people who can understand systems. sounds similar to the problem with tech coding interviews. ive refactored the backend orchestration software of a SaaS company's primary app and saved 24tb of RAM, while getting 300% faster spinup times for the key part of the customer app, but i bomb interviews because i panic and mix up O(n) for algorithms and forget to add obvious recursion base cases. i know i can practice that stuff and pass, its just frustrating to see folks that have zero concept of distributed systems getting hired because they succeed at this hazing ritual. but with that said, i suppose no industry or job will ever be free from "no true scottsman" gate-keeping from tenured professionals. hiring someone that potentially knows more than you puts your own job security at risk.
- BenFranklin100 2y agoI work with scientists in many disciplines and neuroscientists are the absolute worst when it comes to hyping their work. Neuroscience, especially the CNS subfield, is complex and still in its infancy compared to other disciplines. The field’s unknowns creates space for strong, ego-driven personalities to claim certainties where none exist and hype their work. The field itself perpetuates this problem by lionizing specific labs or people (i..e The Allen Institute’s Next Generation Leaders) instead of viewing progress as a group effort sustained over years and decades.
- pfdietz 2y agoWorse than Origin of Life researchers?
- timr 2y agoOrigin of life doesn't make it into the NY Times health column and get parroted by your grandma a week later when she wants to know if taking a nap will give you cancer. Neuroscience is in the same quadrant of the knowledge / hype plot as nutrition science.
- glenstein 2y ago>What seems like a ton of consensus at cruising altitude is actually much more divisive as you approach ground level. I think there's a sense in which that's true (I've especially heard it with respect to the foundations of maths), but I worry about that way of thinking. There absolutely are places where we have consensus, even on subjects of extreme complexity. And the fact that we really do have consensus can be one of the things that's most important to understand. I don't want people doubting our knowledge that, say, too much sugar is bad, that sunscreen is good, that vaccines are real and so on. A lot of what passes for nuanced decoding of the social and institutional contexts where science really happens, looks to outsiders like "yeah, so everything's fake!" And when the job of communicating these nuances falls into the hands of people who don't think it's important to draw that distinction, I think that contributes to an erroneous loss of faith in institutional knowledge.
- miki123211 2y agoAnother nuance that most people don't understand is that there are different levels of "badness." There's a difference between "cigarettes cause cancer" and "phones cause cancer". The former is very definitely true, confirmed by many studies, and the health impact is very significant. The latter is probably untrue (there are studies that go both ways, but the vast majority say "no cancer"). Even if there's any impact, it's extremely minimal when compared to cigarettes. People can't distinguish between those two levels of "causes cancer" in a headline.
- richrichie 2y agoThis is especially true in climate science. There is a huge chasm between the public and private (post couple of drinks) sides.
- macksd 2y agoYeah this is very common. You might see the headline "Scientists prove X causes Y", and when you click through all the pop-science journalism until you get to the paper, you'll find "We found a weak positive correlation between X and Y and it's surprising because the prior research found the opposite".
- BobbyTables2 2y agoSounds like astrophysists… (:->
- acuozzo 2y ago> they are far less confident than public personas Science requires, at its core, falsifiability. Just a little education on the philosophy of science is enough to rid most scientists of bravado; to make them wince at words like "fact" and "prove" in scientific contexts. I imagine this has an impact on personality as well, in the long run.
- latexr 2y agoObligatory SMBC: https://www.smbc-comics.com/comic/2009-08-30 https://www.smbc-comics.com/comic/2009-08-30
- eli_gottlieb 2y ago> When you talk to neuroscientists and researchers in private you often find that they are far less confident than public personas, PR, articles, or science reporting, make them sound. Neuroscience postdoc here. Yes. This is broadly true of all science communication in mass media. https://phdcomics.com/comics.php?f=1174 https://phdcomics.com/comics.php?f=1174
- skipants 2y agoMaybe I'm misunderstanding, but isn't that quote referring to the glymphatic clearance found in 2012 and not the main topic highlighted; fluid clearance via blood vessel contraction?
- s1artibartfast 2y agoI was thought it years ago, and there are parents that old for using it to treat Alzheimer's
- kbelder 2y agoPatents?
- s1artibartfast 2y agoautocorrect from patents*
- tshadley 2y agoWell the Franks study probably destroyed any chance for natural sleep conditions. Nedergaard is scathing: https://www.thetransmitter.org/glymphatic-system/new-method-reignites-controversy-over-brain-clearance-during-sleep/ https://www.thetransmitter.org/glymphatic-system/new-method-... > The new paper used many of the techniques incorrectly, says Nedergaard, who says she plans to elaborate on her critiques in her submission to Nature Neuroscience. Injecting straight into the brain, for example, requires more control animals than Franks and his colleagues used, to check for glial scarring and to verify that the amount of dye being injected actually reaches the tissue, she says. The cannula should have been clamped for 30 minutes after fluid injection to ensure there was no backflow, she adds, and the animals in the sleep groups are a model of sleep recovery following five hours of sleep deprivation, not natural sleep—a difference she calls “misleading.” > “They are unaware of so many basic flaws in the experimental setup that they have,” she says. > More broadly, measurements taken within the brain cannot demonstrate brain clearance, Nedergaard says. “The idea is, if you have a garbage can and you move it from your kitchen to your garage, you don’t get clean.” > There are no glymphatic pathways, Nedergaard says, that carry fluid from the injection site deep in the brain to the frontal cortex where the optical measurements occurred. White-matter tracts likely separate the two regions, she adds. “Why would waste go that way?”
- janalsncm 2y agoThat part stuck out to me as well. However, I wonder if that would be as conclusive as it seems. Even if waste removal is faster while awake, waste creation may be slower. Part of the purpose of sleep and getting tired could be that waste concentration hits some threshold, and the body says “it’s time to stop creating so much metabolic waste”.
- fsckboy 2y ago>>researchers have challenged parts of this picture, however; a 2024 study, for example, suggested waste clearance is actually faster during waking than during sleep >That’s a pretty big ambiguity in the story! no, it's not: "waste clearance faster during waking than sleep" does not mean it's adequate to the job, and waste clearance at night could still be critically important. We also do not know what the waste consists of comprehensively and having a specific sleep system implies its doing something.