Search results

Thank you for entertaining this discussion, there have been many interesting ideas. I think I understand what you are saying here. The many worlds hypothesis would be deterministic in the sense that the probabilities are set in accordance to our pre-chosen world. While quantum events appear...

It does seem like Einstein remained unconvinced that quantum mechanics was a complete theory even if it makes accurate predictions. He did explicitly state that God does not play dice. Perhaps he would be more convinced by one of deterministic quantum theories that exist today. I think...

I think what would be most useful is figuring out what percentage of people that meet ME/CFS criteria are later discovered to have another condition. In the NIH study at least a few of the dozen or so patients that made it through to the final screening were found to have other medical issues...

I'm not convinced that preference is somewhere between determined and stochastic. An event that occurs must either have a reason for occurring or not. Even if certain probabilities are greater than others, that needs explaining and should back to something unknowably random or determined. The...

Jonathan brought up a good point that its not just about the number of connections. Neurons have more signals that just open or close so there are probably many different components to complexity. Maybe silicone is limited in its ability to be complex in enough or the right ways. It could also...

Even for random quantum events just because its uncertain to an observer doesn't mean its not determined. I don't think we know that if we rewound the clock, these quantum events wouldn't go the same way. And if it is truly random then there is still no agency anyways.

Exactly, and I think consciousness is deterministic and based of the laws of physics. I think the main reason why many people think differently now is because the amount of resources we would need to know all the inputs is so many times greater than with a computer.

I certainly don't, as I am not a biologist. I tend to assume that many other animals have some level of conscious experience though. I would argue that if an organism seems to react in a similar way to pain as a human does, then we should assume they are in some way experiencing that. It does...

Thanks for the previous post, I thought it was very interesting. I just had a few questions; why do we think everything consists of the transfer of information and not say the transfer of energy? If everything consists of informing, I'm not sure why the concept of qualia seems to be unique to...

We know how computers work at the fundamental level. But as programs become more complex, it becomes more and more difficult to know how the 1 and 0s comes together to produce the desired result. In programs that use large data sets, I think it would be almost impossible to go back and figure...

If you showed someone from a thousand years ago that bits of rock can be organized in a way to carry out complex programs and answer all sorts of problems, they would probably think you had magic powers. Even now, we don't know how a computer runs complex programs, how all the individual...

Looks like there are different modes. The real time mode measures every second but presumably uses more power. The website says 5 mins continuous monitoring uses 2% power which doesn't seem too bad.

It could be that both viral infections and ME involve higher lactate levels in the brain. So I am not sure what that would rule out other than suggesting that perhaps they involve some of the same features. 24/25 subjects and controls seems pretty decent for this kind of study. Interesting...

One other factor that I have not seen mentioned yet is "pooling" of blood in my hands and feet when upright. Especially in warm temperatures my feet and hands will become red/purple and feel somewhat swollen when standing. They also become extremely itchy and are a factor that causes me to sit...

61% of POTS patients having a CBF value in the bottom 5% of the control reference values is an interesting result. I don't know much about SPECT but given others have had similar findings it seems like a plausible abnormality.

I don't think we know if there is an objective way to measure pain. If it is possible to produce AI that can feel pain then it could be measurable, but that is a little besides the point. I agree that the placebo could be due to expectations about treatment and reporting better outcomes due to...

If the placebo effect actually works then it should have a biological mechanism by which it works. If pain is the result of a signal in the brain that produces a negative experience, how does a placebo block those signals from being processed?

If you removed the one outlier with a very high GWI score and the two individuals with more than 150 hits, I 'm guessing the correlation would only be very weak. There could still be an association, but it would have been more convincing if the trend wasn't driven by a handful of individuals.

Has there been any updates on Younger's leukocyte tracking scan or his PET and MRI scans in ME/CFS patients? He mentioned the PET scan should be done in 2024 but it seems like its been a while since he's given any new info.

To me it is less about predicting cause and effect and more to do with convenience in conveying meaning. There are very broad labels that don't tell us much at all about an individual but apply to a wide range of the population. There are also very focused labels that tell us a much greater...