Yes this is true, but we actually have a lot more data to back this on than exclusively fMRI analysis - for example the ADHD medication guanfacine works only because the alpha 2 receptors happen to be wired differently in the prefrontal cortex than it is in other areas of the brain (a2 is inhibitory for most brain regions, but in the PFC they're positioned to amplify connections between neurons) , so by stimulating alpha 2 we allow for a more “top down” control from the prefrontal cortex than we do without, which improves executive function.
So that is one extremely robust way to understand neurological conditions like ADHD or Parkinson’s
With such medications, besides behavioural changes, how are they able to measure outcomes without fMRIs? Like knowing whether neuron connections are amplified or not?
They don't, this is speculative (i.e. a theory) and almost certainly untrue (or a gross over-simplification), much like the early and now disproven serotonin theories of depression.
If this article resonates with you in even the smallest way, I urge you to read Neil Postman's "Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business".
I am currently re-reading this book and am amazed by the apparent accuracy of his analysis, which is that the mediums in which we communicate or express information (print vs. TV vs. TikTok) have a massively understated role in the quality and type of communication we participate in. That is, as print lends itself naturally to logical argument and less to emotional knee-jerk reactions, the type of conversations taken place in long-form print will by nature be more logical and intellectual. Compare this to TV or short term videos, which captivate us using more primal forms of distraction (bright lights with moving images, fast talking, "Gotcha" type rhetoric, cool dances, sexual/romantic behaviour, or background subway surfers), and it is obvious that the nature of what we see is inherently less based around logic and reason.
And as a consequence, if we are what we consume, it is only natural to surmise that the quality of the mind follows the quality (and qualia) of our media.
People in computing like Alan Kay and Ted Nelson were reading people like Postman and Marshall McLuhan and worrying about this kind of thing decades ago. Unfortunately, instead we've got to the point where the computer industry has created TV on the computer from the visionary post-war manifesto Don't Create TV on the Computer. And while it was probably always the case that most people would end up mostly taking the path of least resistance through their lives, the state of the technology is actively funneling them there, because it usually makes it so bloody painful, and sometimes quite isolating, to do things which are more thoughtful or effortful, or even just to do the same things in a more thoughtful way.
(Probably the single thing that most needs to get fixed immediately, right away, is to get content-addressable networking—IPFS, a better iteration of IPFS, your favourite alternative to IPFS, have your pick—up to an adequate level of practical usability, support and actual adoption. This is a blocker or near-blocker for many things, sometimes in unobvious ways.)
All that said, the fact that that Postman book is from 1985, still pretty solidly in the pre-Internet mass-media world, illustrates that the cultural-decline issue probably isn't really, or mostly, a computer or even a consumer-Internet problem. Revolution in the Head is another book of the same kind of cultural pessimism, also from (basically) the pre-Web era.
> The Society of the Spectacle. When I reread this, I was alarmed at how applicable it is today.
i read this too young and it set me up for a lifetime of hopeless depression. highly recommended. i just started 'simulacra and simulation' and the development on the ideas covered in 'spectacle' is even less optimistic.
That's nonsense. Funnily enough you are getting outraged by a nothing burger while complaining about emotional behavior.
The argument could be summed up as: "since there are fast food restaurants everywhere, quality restaurants do not exist anymore".
This is demonstrably false and I wouldn't be surprised that they increase in supply at roughly the same rate.
You are confused because volume is dominated by the masses, but it has always been like that. The major difference is that back then things were much more siloed, and you wouldn't notice the masses mediocre content consumption habits.
But it was always there, on TV, in terrible magazines, shitty books and poor journals, you didn't pay attention to them because those things were beneath you, but they already had many times the volume of the "good stuff".
I think the prior probability in the bayesian sense is that the two entering cohorts are equally skilled (assuming students were randomly split into two sections as opposed to different sections being composed of different student bodies). If this were the case, the implication is that performance differences in standardized tests between cohorts are due to the professor (maybe one of the profs didn't cover the right material), so then normalization could be justified.
However if that prior is untrue for any reason whatsoever, the normalization would penalize higher performing cohorts (if it were a math course, maybe an engineering student dominated section vs an arts dominated cohort).
Right, and if it depends, maybe we just don't do it then?
Intuitively and in my experience, course content and exams are generally stable over many years, with only minor modifications as it evolves. Even different professors can sometimes have nearly identical exams for a given course, precisely so as to allow for better comparison.
I’ve tried them on snowmobile trails. With the vegetation the range was about a mile.
Range can be 100+ miles though if you can establish line of sight. Depending on the scenario, a high elevation repeater could give several mobile devices pretty significant range.
Range is line of sight. If you can see it, even if 100 miles away, odds are it'll work. Seattle area has one of the better networks for MeshCore. Tacoma to Vancouver BC is the range for semi reliable messaging
Yes you can get decent reception inside buildings. It operates in the 915mhz band. Similar frequencies to old school pagers. Lora is an interesting RF protocol, it has really good properties for operating below the noise floor.
yes, I definitely agree here. We've known for a long while that 1:1 therapy isn't the only way to treat depression, even if we aim to use psychotherapy methods like CBT/DBT.
David Burns released his CBT guide "Feeling Good" in 1980, which he labels as a new genre of "Bibliotherapy". His book is shown to have clinically significant effects on depression remission. Why can an LLM not provide a more focused and interactive version of this very book?
Now, I agree with you and the article's argument that one cannot simply throw a gpt-4o at a patient and expect results. The LLM must be trained to both be empathetic and push back against the user when necessary, forcing the user to build nuance in their mental narrative and face their cognitive distortions.
1:1 therapy isn't the only way to treat depression, but it's still unmatched for personality disorders, and can be a huge force multiplier with medication for OCD, GAD, MDD, Schizophrenia, ADHD, and, yes, depression.
The problem is that because therapy is as much art as science, the subset of skilled, intelligent therapists is much smaller than the set of all therapists, and the subset of skilled, intelligent therapists with experience and knowledge of your particular disorder and a modality that's most effective for you is tiny, making it frustratingly hard to find a good match.
This is also useful for power-constrained systems - 128T x 35W is less power than 2 x 64T x 35W which gives a larger power budget for whatever h100-type device you have connected to these drives
Hey sorry to hijack a comment, I saw your comment elsewhere about the Georgia Tech's MS Computer Science being a waste of time and I was curious to learn a bit more about your experience.
I'm currently considering the online masters but still was curious to your experience if you don't mind. Reply here or an email would be appreciated
Sorry for the late reply - What questions do you have? For the record, my undergrad was CompE. I entered GT's MSCS on campus program (before OMCS came out) and was appalled 1) by the reliance group projects, and 2) the low skill of my peers. The caliber of student in MSCS is not great. Most can barely code at all and I got tired of carrying the groups I was in. So after a year in the program I switched over to Electrical and Computer Engineering. Much better program. I was only able to do that because I had a bona fide engineering BS from an accredited school.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mastery_learning
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