/sci/ - Science & Math

http://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2011/01/eight-weeks-to-a-better-brain/
>Participating in an eight-week mindfulness meditation program appears to make measurable changes in brain regions associated with memory, sense of self, empathy, and stress.

Enjoying your mid-tier brain /sci/?

You're standing by some railroad tracks and you see a trolley coming down them at high speed, out of control. If it continues on its path it will hit 5 unsuspecting workmen, and you (for the sake of the problem) know it will kill all of them. You can't warn them, because they're too far away.

Next to you is a lever. If you pull it, it will divert the train onto a second, parallel track with one worker standing on it. This worker will also be killed if it hits him, and you can't contact him either. What do you do?

Most people will answer "pull the lever" which is the correct response from a utilitarian point of view.

The problem continues, with:

You're on a bridge over a single track (with no junction), and you see the trolley heading down at high speed. Using some quick (but definitely true) maths you determine that the man sitting on the edge of the bridge has enough mass to stop the train, or at least slow it and create enough commotion to alert the 5 workmen. Do you push him, making him fall onto the track and die with certainty or don't you?

Now, 90% of people answer this second question that they wouldn't. I answer that I would. Apparently this lends itself to the idea I'm sociopathic. So my question is, are sociopaths more willing to make good ethical decisions by not being self centred? are the anti-social actually better for society than the social?

>http://www.simulation-argument.com/simulation.html
"Many works of science fiction as well as some forecasts by serious technologists and futurologists predict that enormous amounts of computing power will be available in the future. Let us suppose for a moment that these predictions are correct. One thing that later generations might do with their super-powerful computers is run detailed simulations of their forebears or of people like their forebears. Because their computers would be so powerful, they could run a great many such simulations. Suppose that these simulated people are conscious (as they would be if the simulations were sufficiently fine-grained and if a certain quite widely accepted position in the philosophy of mind is correct). Then it could be the case that the vast majority of minds like ours do not belong to the original race but rather to people simulated by the advanced descendants of an original race. It is then possible to argue that, if this were the case, we would be rational to think that we are likely among the simulated minds rather than among the original biological ones. Therefore, if we don’t think that we are currently living in a computer simulation, we are not entitled to believe that we will have descendants who will run lots of such simulations of their forebears. That is the basic idea. The rest of this paper will spell it out more carefully."

So, What does /sci/ think? Valid hypothesis? Satanic lies? I'd like to hear some opinions.

How much is it already possible to enhance our brains in order to obtain world supremacy?

Nootropics?
Transcranial magnetic stimulation?
Binaural beats?

If the brain suffers some injury in one part, can another part sometimes "pick up the slack" of that injured part?