[HN Gopher] How far neuroscience is from understanding brains (2...
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How far neuroscience is from understanding brains (2023)
Author : Gooblebrai
Score : 84 points
Date : 2025-03-12 12:13 UTC (10 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov)
(TXT) w3m dump (pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov)
| bena wrote:
| I would think a large part of the problem is the difficulty in
| observing a working brain.
|
| There are very few non-destructive ways we can get a look into a
| brain while it is living. And even research into ways we can look
| into a living brain is hindered by the fact we don't want to harm
| the person being observed.
|
| I could see that making progress a lot slower
| jampekka wrote:
| > And even research into ways we can look into a living brain
| is hindered by the fact we don't want to harm the person being
| observed.
|
| Animal brains are harmed for research all the time. Some
| species, like Zebrafish can be even imaged real-time at
| neuronal level.
|
| As the article says, the problem is really that there are no
| good foundational ideas of what are the basic operating
| principles of the brain.
| bena wrote:
| I did mention people specifically. Mammalian brains are
| fairly more complex than piscine brains.
|
| People are important because we can't tell a fish to perform
| an action or to think of an elephant, etc. So while we can
| image, we can't know what correlates with a high degree of
| certainty.
|
| But even in other cases, a working brain is an entirely
| different object than a non-working one. Finding those
| foundational ideas and basic operating principles because we
| can't test a living brain. It's almost chicken/egg. Being
| able to experiment on a living human brain would probably
| give us much better ideas of the basic operating principles.
| And once we know those principles, we could probably move
| from experimenting on living human brains.
|
| Like, we can dick around with muscle. We can force it to
| perform as it were living and receiving signals. And that's
| partly because you can cut open a living person and watch
| those muscles operate. You can manipulate those muscles in a
| living person. You can measure things, etc. It's much harder
| to do that with a brain. Because it's incredibly easy to make
| irredeemable mistakes.
| glenstein wrote:
| >So while we can image, we can't know what correlates with
| a high degree of certainty.
|
| I don't think I agree just on this piece, though you are
| making important points here. We can know, for instance, of
| visual or spacial awareness, reactions to certain stimuli
| or objects introduced in their environment, and so on.
|
| You're not wrong on the importance of learning from active
| brain functions but I think we can at least make meaningful
| inroads with animals.
|
| > Finding those foundational ideas and basic operating
| principles
|
| I know a lot of people talk this way about brains and
| consciousness, that we need to first have our definitional
| elements before we proceed with research. But I think we
| often have, as the object of research, closing in on those
| elements, while gathering all kinds of functional and
| theoretical data from the mass of complicated noise that is
| brain structure and activity. We can build out
| correlations, mechanisms, and so on and close in on
| foundational elements.
|
| It may even be the case that foundational organizing
| principles turn our understanding inside out in important
| ways, but I have never understood the idea that we are
| stuck if we can't _start_ with such things in hand.
| bena wrote:
| I'm sorry, I see where I wasn't clear.
|
| I'm talking about very specific correlation. Like when I
| type these words, exactly how and what fires to achieve
| that. Which neurons and pathways are the thought "hit
| these keys", what's the signal to the fingers etc. We
| know "When this area is active, this group of actions can
| happen".
|
| It's hard to get good resolution.
|
| And I believe it would be _easier_ to replicate
| consciousness if we knew how it worked, I also believe it
| 's possible we eventually figure it out. It will just be
| much harder. And we may not know when we do it either. I
| believe _that_ is where we will need common, agreed upon
| definitions.
|
| But defining intelligence and consciousness is difficult
| because you have to define it in a way that includes
| everything we agree is conscious and excludes everything
| we agree is not. And we'll also have to agree what is and
| is not conscious. It's a way more involved problem than a
| lot of people give credit.
| glenstein wrote:
| >But defining intelligence and consciousness is difficult
| because you have to define it in a way that includes
| everything we agree is conscious and excludes everything
| we agree is not.
|
| I think this is extremely important, but I would say that
| methodologically, messy definitions can nevertheless be
| stepping stones that bring us closer to full
| comprehension of definitions. I suppose I just have a
| specific hobby horse in this context and I don't know
| that I'm responding to you so much as a general idea I've
| seen elsewhere, that you're rhyming with, which is this
| idea that research has to start from agreed upon
| definitions.
|
| I would say instead that there are such things as
| characteristic instances that embody lots of the stuff we
| are interested in, such that we can say "whatever
| consciousness is, it involves _that_ " and we can just
| point to something that's a wild, underdefined
| phenomenon, and make it subject of study. Without a
| definition, I can still understand that states of mind
| that involve, say, wakeful awareness and intention are
| going to be about consciousness. We can know necessary
| conditions even if we don't know "sufficient" conditions,
| and the former are a stepping stone to comprehending the
| latter.
| jampekka wrote:
| Animals are quite easy to get to do all sorts of
| experiments, and per very similar anatomy it seems very
| likely that the basic fundamental operating principles are
| same across species. If we can't figure out how a fruit
| fly's nervous system works, we have no hope at figuring out
| the human brain.
| mbauman wrote:
| The even bigger challenge is determining _what_ you need to
| observe in the first place.
|
| As a simplistic analogy, evolutionary designs of FPGA boards
| can end up relying upon idiosyncratic properties of the
| board(s) and create circuits that "shouldn't work" based on an
| idealized electrical circuit model. And they may not be
| transferable to other boards. In other words, to "understand"
| some evolutionary FPGA circuits, you need to "observe" more
| than just the gate configurations and idealized schematic.
|
| Brains are not FPGAs or even circuits, but I think the analogy
| holds. They're not _just_ idealized representations of spiking
| neural networks.
| NoxiousPluK wrote:
| I remember reading an article about this years ago - a non-
| transferable FPGA configuration which had some logic that
| should be unreachable but didn't work without it. Very
| faschinating but I've not been able to find it since.
| nick__m wrote:
| I think you want that paper "An Evolved Circuit, Intrinsic
| in Silicon, Entwined with Physics" available there https://
| cgi.cse.unsw.edu.au/~cs4601/refs/papers/es97thompson...
| tim333 wrote:
| I agree and think the way forward is computer simulation.
| Figure out a simulation equivalent of a neuron and put a lot
| together and see how well the simulated brain portion matches
| the real thing. That hasn't really been possible due to lack
| capability of computer power but we are getting to where it
| could be. They have of course done stuff with "artificial
| neural networks" of the ChatGPT type but those are very far
| from biology.
|
| DeepMind has been doing work along those lines with 'AI BRAIN'
| https://medium.com/@daneallist/unlocks-secrets-of-real-brain...
| renewedrebecca wrote:
| How do you simulate something you don't understand?
|
| The basic problem here is that we don't understand what a
| neuron does, so how would we model it?
| KineticLensman wrote:
| > The basic problem here is that we don't understand what a
| neuron does, so how would we model it?
|
| We understand lots of aspects of neurons and can model
| those. See the wikipedia page for some examples of well-
| understood principles.
| tim333 wrote:
| Yeah and you can do a simulation using a rough
| approximation and then it is interesting to see in what
| ways it matches real brains and in what it does not.
|
| It seems the DeepMind rat brain didn't really try to get
| close to biological neurons but still produced outputs
| close to a real brain. (vid from here for about 2 mins
| https://youtu.be/hIuXXvWY6-4?t=125)
| seejayjordan wrote:
| Look up Wada Test, where we shut down each hemisphere (one at a
| time) of the brain, while the patient is awake, to see how
| their personality changes without 1/2 their brain. Also stereo
| EEG. 200+ sensors placed in/on/around the brain, patient stays
| in bed for a week measuring brain activity. Here's the
| kicker... neurologists can plug into the brain and send teeny
| bits of electricity to each of the 200+ sensors individually to
| see what happens (typically this is for identifying seizure
| spots). Wish I didn't have to know this, but my partner is very
| epileptic, and has an RNS device implanted in her head. We
| upload her brain activity daily!
| Gooblebrai wrote:
| According to Wikipedia the personality barely changes and the
| tests is mainly done to detect which side is on charge of
| language and memory
| imchillyb wrote:
| We are just now uncovering an underlying principle of science:
| 'everything is a wave.'
|
| Neurological connective tissues and their corresponding signals
| may be more of a symptom of electrical wave action rather than a
| signaling nexus.
|
| Everything is a wave. Everything is a probabilistic wave form
| with probabilistic outcomes.
|
| Once science understands these waves and their myriad forms, we
| may have a greater understanding of our own wires and grey matter
| signaling.
| guappa wrote:
| We understand gravity and the 3 body problem still exists...
| 0x1ceb00da wrote:
| We just don't have a general solution of the 3 body problem
| in the form of equations. Practically speaking it's a solved
| problem because we can simulate the motion. We could do the
| same with brain. That's basically what neural networks are.
| willy_k wrote:
| We can simulate the three body problem because all of the
| significant parts of the problem can be known. This is FAR
| from the case when it comes to the brain.
| goatlover wrote:
| Neural networks are not simulations of neurons.
| Gooblebrai wrote:
| Can we simulate it indefinitely? I thought chaotic
| behaviour entered the game at some point.
| prismatix wrote:
| If you find this interesting, the Theories of Everything podcast
| with Curt Jaimungal does a good job exploring this topic. The
| neuroscience-centered conversations focus mostly on
| consciousness, but they still discuss similar problems with
| measuring and explaining how consciousness comes about from a
| collection of matter.
| intrasight wrote:
| I took a break from artificial networks to study neuroscience for
| a couple years. We hardly understand how a single synapse works -
| and we have trillions of them.
| minihat wrote:
| This is exactly right.
|
| I started a PhD in 2017 studying neuroscience + ML. I thought
| studying the brain would help me understand ANNs better. I was
| wrong. Ended up applying ML to analyzing EEG, MRI and similar.
| bumby wrote:
| Is this because we're misapplying the analogy to ML? I.e., in
| an effort to communicate and understand ANNs, we "pretend"
| it's like a brain. Just like before, we used "file retrieval
| systems" to understand the brain, or electricity is like
| "water in a pipe", which are also wrong. Analogies often only
| go so far, beyond which they do more harm than good.
| beezlebroxxxxxx wrote:
| What you're describing is endemic across HN (and tech,
| tbh). Lots of people on here "know"
| computers/programming/CS very well. They, naturally, tend
| to use analogies to computers/programming/CS when trying to
| explain or "think out loud" in their comments. That's fine.
| It's what they know. The common problem arises when people
| forget they're analogizing and begin to see their analogy
| as ontologically and conceptually identical to the thing
| they were making an analogy for. This requires a certain
| amount of ego, echo chambers, and self-valorization, so
| that they never have to face the actual issues with these
| analogies.
|
| But as many comments here have pointed out, studying
| neuroscience, for example, usually makes those analogies
| seem painfully inadequate. The same is true in philosophy
| of mind, for example.
| SkyBelow wrote:
| Have we hit the limit of the analogy, or have we hit a
| limit in our understanding? Both neural networks and actual
| brains have behaviors that emerge from the interactions of
| smaller components. Neural networks have trivial
| connections compared to brains, but our understanding of
| the emergent behaviors seems very limited. To me, this is a
| sign not that the analogy has reached a point of breaking
| down, but that our tools aren't sufficient to work on even
| then trivial connections. I do expect the analogy will
| break at some point, but I'm not sure we have reached that
| point yet.
| erikerikson wrote:
| I'm sure that there exist people who get lost in the
| analogies. Practitioners are generally not confused that
| ANNs are simplifications of the brain. The questions are
| which simplifications are most relevant and whether
| complexities can be added that yield better results. My own
| research was about reintroducing absolute location. I'm
| standard ANNs location is relative within a graph model of
| the network. I'm the real brain blood vessels and other
| macrostructures deliver materials used to grow and modify
| the neurons and these affect the network based on physical
| location. I'm fact, by adding these back in we bypassed the
| XOR limitation (i.e. Minsky's result leading to back
| propagation). Concretely, we observed learning XOR over the
| inputs within a Hopfield network using Hebbian learning
| modulated by spatially modulated trophic factor).
| desdenova wrote:
| Good thing there's not a lot of ML being done in Haskell...
| imagine a Brain Monad tutorial.
| hnuser123456 wrote:
| Turns out "water in a pipe" is actually surprisingly
| accurate, just that the "waves" are sloshing around at half
| the speed of light.
|
| https://youtu.be/2AXv49dDQJw?si=ZxRyiu8WwynUXwf_&t=655
| bumby wrote:
| I believe, at its best, it's an incomplete model (which
| may be enough for most people). But it leaves out
| important aspects like magnetic field work and probably a
| host of aspects from quantum theory.
|
| https://www.slideshare.net/slideshow/georgia-state-
| universit...
| hnuser123456 wrote:
| Ok, yeah, I'll agree with incomplete. Only useful for
| considering the bulk flow of electrons assuming no bulk
| EM field.
|
| Thanks for the read.
| morkalork wrote:
| Plus the overall network architecture was evolved over millions
| of years, is compressed in DNA and grows from cells multiplying
| and self-organizing.
| JJMcJ wrote:
| As an example, a not very good partial modeling of a three cell
| neuron cluster in C. Elegans is a significant research result.
|
| C. Elegans because every adult has the same number of cells in
| the same configuration.
| teqsun wrote:
| This is the main reason why I have skepticism towards any claims
| of imminent AGI.
| mellosouls wrote:
| I'm also sceptical but to be fair, we don't need to understand
| how the brain works for AGI, that's just one (obvious) path.
| JackFr wrote:
| Who knows? Maybe it'll turn out like flying and birds.
|
| Studying birds gave us some data, but mimicking them wasn't
| what got us jumbo jets.
| southernplaces7 wrote:
| Sort of a shame... I always wanted to fly in an
| ornithopter.
| southernplaces7 wrote:
| Since we don't yet have anything remotely like AGI and at the
| same time, don't even really know how the brain works or what
| consciousness is aside from being aware that we feel it, you
| and nobody else really know if our path to consciousness is
| just one of many. For all we know it might be the only one.
| There could be some very big unknown unknowns in those
| waters.
| glenstein wrote:
| I would say I think those are all pretty good observations,
| all perfectly true _and_ I think AGI is more plausible than
| it 's ever been in light of what we've demonstrated via
| LLMs. Our understanding really is that limited but I don't
| take it to be a counterpoint to the prospect of AGI.
| Traubenfuchs wrote:
| > what consciousness is
|
| Probably an unavoidable property that emerges from the
| sheer and perverse complexity of the human brain, its 100
| billion connections and the unimaginable amount of
| interactions between them, modulated by neurotransmitters +
| their reuptake, length, amount, location, quality and
| condition of pre/post-synaptic receptors, axons and other
| nano structures in the brain...
|
| Comparing this disgusting moist, fleshy and electric
| masterpiece of nature with something primitive like a
| """neuronal""" network or LLM was always ridiculous.
| Windchaser wrote:
| > Probably an unavoidable property that emerges from the
| sheer and perverse complexity of the human brain
|
| I don't think complexity alone leads to consciousness.
| Rather, consciousness is the mechanism by which
| information is integrated in a relatively resource-cheap
| fashion: dump all this info into a shared mental
| workspace, add some reflective awareness of that
| info/workspace, and _bam_ , you can both process the
| information in an integrated way, and you're also now
| aware of it all. The higher-level information processing
| and the awareness go hand-in-hand.
|
| There're good reasons why most of the leading theories of
| consciousness focus on information integration. (Baars'
| Global Workspace Theory, Graziano's Attention Schema
| Theory, Tononi's Integrated Information Theory, etc.)
| goatlover wrote:
| I don't see how the sensations of color, sound, etc come
| out of information integration. Sensory experience along
| with internal sensations form the hard problem of
| consciousness.
| LinuxAmbulance wrote:
| > Probably an unavoidable property that emerges from the
| sheer and perverse complexity of the human brain
|
| Complexity alone causing consciousness, much like an
| infinite amount of monkeys coming up with Shakespeare's
| complete works, is a far flung pipe dream.
|
| The hardware doesn't guarantee the software, but the
| software can't exist without the appropriate hardware is
| probably a better way to look at it.
|
| There's so much life out there that survives just fine
| without consciousness that it seems like a very narrow
| stroke of luck that it occurred at all.
| srveale wrote:
| Not trying to be sassy but what definition of AGI are you
| using? I've never seen a concrete goal, just vague stuff like
| "better than humans at a wide range of tasks." Depending on
| which tasks you include and what percentage of humans you need
| to beat, we could be already there or maybe never will be.
| Several of these tests [1] have been passed, some appear
| reasonably tractable. Like if Boston Dynamics cared about the
| Coffee Test I bet they could do it this year.
|
| [1]
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Artificial_general_intelligenc...
| calepayson wrote:
| > I've never seen a concrete goal, just vague stuff like
| "better than humans at a wide range of tasks."
|
| I think you're pointing out a bit of a chicken vs. the egg
| situation here.
|
| We have no idea how intelligence works and I expect this will
| be the case until we create it artificially. Because we have
| no idea how it works, we put out a variety of metrics that
| don't measure intelligence but approximate something that
| only an intelligent thing could do (we think). Then engineers
| optimize their ML systems for that task, we blow by the
| metric, and everyone is left feeling a bit disappointed by
| the fact that it still doesn't _feel_ intelligent.
|
| Neuroscience has plenty of theories for how the brain works
| but lacks the ability to validate them. It's incredibly
| difficult to look into a working brain (not to mention deeply
| unethical) with the necessary spatial _and_ temporal
| resolution.
|
| I suspect we'll solve the chicken vs. egg situation when
| someone builds an architecture around a neuroscience theory
| and it _feels_ right or neuroscientists are able to find
| evidence for some specific ML architecture within the brain.
| srveale wrote:
| I get what you're saying, but I think "boiling frog" is
| more applicable than "chicken v egg."
|
| You mention that people feel disappointed by ML systems
| because they don't feel intelligent. But I think that's
| just because they emerged one step at a time, and each
| marginal improvement doesn't blow your socks off.
| Personally, I'm amazed by a system that can answer PhD
| level questions across all disciplines, pass the Turing
| Test, walk me through DIY plumbing, etc etc, all at
| superhuman speed. Do we need neuroscience to progress
| before we call these things intelligent? People are polite
| to ChatGPT because it triggers social cues like a human.
| Some, for better or worse, get in full-blown relationships
| with an AI. Doesn't this mean that it "feels" right, at
| least for some?
|
| We already know that among humans there are different kinds
| of intelligence. I'm reminded of the problem with
| standardized testing - kids can be monkeys or fish or
| iguanas and we evaluate tree climbing ability. We're making
| the same mistake by evaluating computer intelligence using
| human benchmarks. Put another way: it's extremely vain to
| say a system needs to be human-like in order to be called
| intelligent. Like if aliens visited us with
| incomprehensibly advanced technology we'd be forced to
| conclude they were intelligent, despite knowing absolutely
| nothing about how their intelligence works. To me that's
| proof by (hypothetical) example that we can call something
| intelligent based on capability, not at all conditional on
| internal mechanism.
|
| Of course that's just my two cents. Without a strict
| definition of AGI there's no way to achieve it, and right
| now everyone is free to define it how they want. I can see
| the argument that to define AGI you have to first
| understand I (heh), but I think that's putting an unfair
| boundary around the conversation.
| calepayson wrote:
| To anyone interested in this article I highly recommend "The
| Cerebral Code" by William Calvin.
| (https://williamcalvin.com/bk9/index.htm)
|
| It's the only theory of how the brain works that I've come across
| that seems like it could be valid. Unfortunately, like other
| posters have already mentioned, neuroscience is incredibly
| complex and we just don't have the tools to test it.
|
| Even if it ends up being completely wrong, it's a beautiful
| theory and well worth checking out!
| dleeftink wrote:
| The cerebral code as an ensemble of signals, music. Or rather,
| music as metaphor of neuronal patterning. Gives another
| dimension to being 'in tune' with someone.
|
| I think the clinical shift to focus on 'the individual' instead
| of the ensemble has overlooked the importance of inter-brain
| synchronisation, the process of which we are only start to
| grapple [0]. A feeling all to familiar to fellow musicians, and
| no doubt anyone involved in activities in which timing
| coordination is key.
|
| [0]:
| https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S01497...
| calepayson wrote:
| > Gives another dimension to being 'in tune' with someone.
|
| Love this.
|
| > I think the clinical shift to focus on 'the individual'
| instead of the ensemble has overlooked the importance of
| inter-brain synchronisation
|
| My sense is this is also the case for our cultural story of
| neuroscience. We can run massive analysis of the brain and
| what brain regions or neurons or transmitters are being
| used/activated and it all boils down to something we can't
| conceptualize. Even the principal components seem to be too
| complex for us to grock.
|
| With this barrage of complexity I feel like we have a (bad
| but understandable) habit of reducing to the individual. We
| talk about the grandmother neuron or what region x is
| responsible for. We harp on the cog sci of individuals and we
| run experiments where we try to isolate them for "confounding
| factors" (other people).
|
| I keep coming back to evolutionary theory as the middle
| ground between this over and under simplification of
| cognition.
| dleeftink wrote:
| I cannot find the source right now, but the past 20 years
| has seen a marked shift from individual to ensemble brain
| imaging, as individual brain responses (and by extension
| our imaging data) do not fully reflect or capture our
| natural state that is often far less compartmentalised. It
| took some advocacy for the field to move towards multi-
| brain imaging, not the least due to its technical
| challenges.
|
| On a deeper level, I also think the prior discrepency stems
| from how we perceive the world as individuals rather than a
| collective, our research methods implicitly reflecting this
| bias. In regards to synchronisation, you might find the
| following interesting:
|
| "Brain Waves Synchronize when People Interact" [0]:
| https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/brain-waves-
| synch...
| n4r9 wrote:
| Thanks for the link. Have you come across Dennett's multiple
| drafts model of consciousness, and if so how would you say this
| compares with that? Scanning the intro section of your link
| suggests that perhaps Calvin is modelling at a lower-level, but
| I don't pretend to understand either very deeply.
|
| > Even if it ends up being completely wrong, it's a beautiful
| theory
|
| Not just that, but I think it's vitally important to be able to
| demonstrate how much we can _potentially_ explain. There are
| some people that will never accept a physicalist model, but I
| suspect there are many who will happily accept it once they
| conceive of the possibilities. At least, that 's the process I
| went through when originally learning about evolution by
| natural selection.
| calepayson wrote:
| I love Dennett. I think he's a n incredible philosopher, at
| least when it comes to biology, but philosophy always leaves
| me wanting for the actual mechanisms.
|
| On a high level, I think Calvin's theory is in the exact same
| vein as Dennett's. Seems like we could sum them both up by
| saying the brain is paralleled and there is competition
| between thoughts?
|
| What grabs me about Calvin's work is he gets much closer to
| how this might work than anything else I've seen. Even
| cooler, I think he provides enough depth that we could
| potentially design a new architecture around his theory.
| alok-g wrote:
| Am curious, how deep or detailed is this? Is there enough
| material there that someone could understand and write a
| program out of it to simulate or make something useful? (My
| sense looking at the book contents is that it isn't.) Thanks.
| calepayson wrote:
| It provides a clearer direction than any other theory of how
| the brain works that I have come across. But no, it's not
| going to be simple project to implement. Maybe if you've got
| a strong background in ML you could hack something together?
|
| Still I can't recommend it highly enough. Act I is enough to
| grock the concept and you can crush it in an evening.
| damnitbuilds wrote:
| Think this is bad?
|
| Psychology is worse, much worse, and yet is used around the world
| to make many, many life-changing or life-ending decisions.
| jajko wrote:
| Which part of psychology?
|
| To me as a layman, getting interested in what makes people
| tick, how different issues manifest, how bad childhood and
| especially missing good father figure affects people proved
| invaluable.
|
| But I dont mean clinical psychology, university textbooks etc
| but rather easy to digest popular stuff from ie Jordan Peterson
| (before he got addicted and crazy).
|
| Understanding (ex)girlfriends, colleagues, parents,
| politicians, everybody and especially myself. People cant shock
| or surprise me these days.
| mvieira38 wrote:
| Maybe off topic: I can't for the life of me figure out how
| therapy isn't a scam. CBT as proposed and studied in lab
| settings can't really be applied in the wild like most evidence
| based therapists try to, and the results of therapy I come
| across always seem extremely underwhelming. Maybe for some
| cases like severe phobias there is something to be solved, but
| do we really need to be paying thousands of dollars a year for
| a therapist to say "hey, maybe if you'd invest more in hobbies,
| social relationships and a healthy lifestyle you would feel
| better"?
| bildung wrote:
| _> CBT as proposed and studied in lab settings can 't really
| be applied in the wild like most evidence based therapists
| try to,_
|
| Because that part is wrong, apart from the underlying inner
| working being dissected in labs (the cognitive science part),
| the therapy part it is well studied in the wild - and it
| works.
|
| _> and the results of therapy I come across always seem
| extremely underwhelming._
|
| So you mean anecdotes? Of course you recognize the
| underwhelming results - the people where it worked well are
| less noticable, by definition.
|
| _> Maybe for some cases like severe phobias there is
| something to be solved, but do we really need to be paying
| thousands of dollars a year_
|
| That you have to pay money has been a decision of the society
| you reside in. It doesn't have to be this way, and in fact it
| isn't in most industrialized countries.
|
| _> for a therapist to say "hey, maybe if you'd invest more
| in hobbies, social relationships and a healthy lifestyle you
| would feel better"?_
|
| That is a strawman, not CBT.
| mtlmtlmtlmtl wrote:
| >"hey, maybe if you'd invest more in hobbies, social
| relationships and a healthy lifestyle you would feel better"
|
| "Just saying" the above is not what CBT is, though. I've had
| a lot of CBT and other kinds of therapy, and I've never had a
| therapist just tell me "so don't do that", or "do more x".
|
| It's about analysing your own thinking(cognitive) and
| actions/habits(behavioral) in cases where those are keeping
| you stuck in a miserable situation, and identifying what you
| can do to change them.
|
| Sure, if you put the most inanely over-abstracted
| construction on it like "just live healthier and you'll feel
| better", it sounds meaningless, but the implicit assumption
| there is that's something you can just decide to do, and
| succeed in. That's not the case for many people, and those
| people can benefit from CBT.
| pixl97 wrote:
| Eh, therapy can vary widely in quality.
|
| And peoples lives can also vary in quality. If you're raised
| in a nest of narcissists it is likely you'll have a very
| skewed view on relationships and your idea of normal could be
| considerably different from the average and have negative
| effects on your social relationships. Sometimes you just need
| a 3rd party to tell you that's not normal.
|
| Coming from a family of narcissists myself they quite
| adamantly stuck to the idea that therapy was a total scam.
| Though my observing their behaviors it is my believe they are
| really saying "Therapy is a total scam because they didn't
| tell me what I wanted to hear".
| moi2388 wrote:
| It generally is. People like being heard. But usually they
| sort themselves out during the first therapy. If that fails
| usually more therapy doesn't solve anything either.
|
| As somebody who studies psychology.. If a psychological study
| says A, it's more likely to be actually B. The quality of
| research is much, much worse than people think.
| fragmede wrote:
| You can only get out of therapy what you put into it, so if
| there only problems you are bringing to your therapist are a
| need for investment in hobbies, social relationships, and a
| healthy lifestyle, then that's all you're gonna get. Now,
| it's entirely possible that really is all you need, but for
| those stuck in traumatic response loops due to eg PTSD from
| respressed memories of childhood, leading to, say, a string
| of failed relationships with toxic people who don't respect
| your boundaries because you didn't have a good model for them
| growing up, therapy can be quite useful for helping people
| heal from generational trauma and break the cycle. It sounds
| cliche to blame it all on bad reaction to things that
| happened in childhood, but, well, we did all have one (unless
| you didn't; early parentification is an acknowledged failure
| mode), and even if the worst was emotional stunted parents
| (as documented by the book Adult Children of Emotionally
| Immature Parents), childhood that was totally fine on the
| surface may not have been.
|
| Again, of course, if you are a well adjusted adult, and no
| one in you life is clamoring for you to get therapy, then
| chances are, either you've pushed anyone and everyone away
| that cares for you that deeply, or you don't need it, both of
| which are totally possible.
|
| As for if it's a scam? That word gets thrown around too
| easily these days. Do they cost a lot? Yes. Are you worth it?
| Also yes. That's not to say all therapist are equal, and
| someone that's great for you might be terrible for the next
| person, and some of them are just bad. (There are also those
| that are quite good!) As there are with all things. Going
| into therapy with specific goals on things you want to work
| on (eg irrational anger at some specific thing that's ruining
| your life) tends to help it not be just an ongoing extra
| expense like a gym membership, if that's not what you want.
| At the end of the day, they're stuck in the system as much as
| you are, and paying them also makes it feel more balanced in
| that they're being paid listen to you go on and on and help
| you with your ish. You wouldn't/shouldn't treat your friends
| so one-sidedly. That said, it's entirely possible to pay to
| see a therapist and not get anything out of it. I will admit
| to that as a possible failure mode, but it's a failure mode
| and there are certainly success stories out there of people
| turning their life around and becoming happy well-adjusted
| adults.
| keybored wrote:
| What's the practical difference wrt. psychology (whether it
| can solve it) between the problem of not being able to get
| over a phobia and the problem of not being able to apply
| rationally simple life advice? Why is the former "something
| to be solved" but the latter one is not?
| pocket_cheese wrote:
| I think therapy can be used very strategically. Maybe you
| want to end a friendship and don't know how to break it to
| them. Or maybe you don't like the way you are being treated
| by someone and you want to know effective ways of setting
| boundaries. Therapy can be super useful in giving you the
| tools to confront difficult emotional/psychological
| situations.
| dvh wrote:
| "Human brain is too big to be understood with current technology,
| that's why scientists use simpler organisms to study brain.
| Flatworm's brain has 52 neurons. We have no idea how it works."
|
| I've read this few years ago, how far we've come?
| xkcd-sucks wrote:
| Just for cultural reasons, a roundworm's brain with 302 neurons
| (each one always in the same place spatially and topologically
| I might add) is likely better understood. And we don't have a
| great idea of how it works. But the OpenWorm simulation project
| seems to have current development
| https://github.com/orgs/openworm/repositories
| leptoniscool wrote:
| it looks like we can now actually use brains as computers:
| https://corticallabs.com/
| perching_aix wrote:
| i'm simultainously unsurprised and blown away. i should rewatch
| the anime _Psycho Pass_ sometime.
| Gooblebrai wrote:
| How is the anime related?
| perching_aix wrote:
| The show is oriented around a fictitious law enforcement
| technology called the Sibyl System. This system is capable
| of determining the intent of people, and based on that, it
| can predict crimes and criminal intent, allowing law
| enforcement to preventively take action. The kicker is, as
| the MC learns, that there are people who the system doesn't
| seem to work on.
|
| Minor(?) plot point spoiler ahead for season one:
|
| _Later on the story the main character further learns that
| the system is actually a mainframe made up of living human
| brains connected together. Hence the relation._
| Gooblebrai wrote:
| I'm really fascinated by the idea of biological computers.
| Doesn't get enough recognition.
| pedalpete wrote:
| We keep plugging biology into our understanding of physics, which
| I believe, is the greatest limitation to our understanding. We
| don't know what we don't know.
|
| What I mean by this is that we thought we understood the body
| when we understood thermodynamics. The blood pumps through the
| heart, goes to the brain, nutrients feed the muscles, etc etc.
| Then we discovered how electricity works and we thought "oh! of
| course, it's all electric!" The heart pumps because of
| electricity, and the nerves are all electric synapses, etc etc.
|
| I fully expect in the future we will look at quantum mechanics
| and apply that to our understanding of biology (if we aren't
| doing that yet), and down the rabbit hole we will continue.
|
| That doesn't mean we can't do some incredible things with our
| current understanding of the brain, I work in neurotech at
| https://affectablesleep.com, where we are increasing the
| effectiveness of deep sleep. We know the mechanism we can use to
| trick the brain to increasing the synchronous firing of neurons
| which define deep sleep, but we don't know WHY it works.
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