/sci/ - Science & Math

>>5175279

Continued.

>Do genetics play a role? because not every kid enjoys the same thing

Yes. Everything psychological is also biological, and everything biological is at least in part genetic. When you develop a mental disorder, it is because your genetics made you susceptible to that disorder, even if your environment (everything happening outside of your body, including your social environment and chemicals in the air) caused the most drastic change. Likewise, your brain in its healthy state is very much a product of genetics. Identical twins, who have identical genetic coding, are very similar, though we often see differences more easily. In fact, adopted twins who are separated at birth often develop amazingly similar personality traits, and they are always significantly more likely to share mental illnesses.

But again, your reward pathways are dynamic, and even if they do not change, other parts in your brain that are responsible for signaling your reward pathways are capable of change.

So everything psychological has both a genetic and an environment basis. Many people actually don't realize that the "Nature vs. Nurture Debate" is no longer important to psychologists and neuroscientists, because almost everything is a product of both genetic and environmental factors. Personalities, temperament, likes and dislikes, and mental illnesses are all both genetic and environmental.

So I hope that all answers your questions.

I'm majoring in neuroscience. I'll probably pursue a Ph.D., though that might change depending on what the job market for a master's looks like. I'm interested in working on developing advanced (integrated) prosthetics.

>>5038584

We never defined intelligence. It is therefore not measurable. That is objective fact.

IQ tests measure IQ. IQ is defined as IQ. Someone with a low IQ could be strong in other areas of cognitive ability.

Now I want to collect some data. Help me if you will. What is your major, interest, or field of study? Also, have you been asked what your major, interest, or field of study is in a similar discussion previously?

>>5035426

Also, I just noticed that according to your chart, social scientists are often more intelligent than physicists and non-electric engineers. What are you trying to say here?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hard_and_soft_science

The discoveries of biology are easily and mathematically (statistically) verifiable, and are as concrete as any in chemistry or physics, if not more so.

>>4966612

There is a generalized naming schema for most different kinds of biologically significant organic molecules, as well as all organisms. You must know literally nothing about biology.

The general field of biology also involves more experimentation and empirical observation than either of the general fields of chemistry or physics, because biology is by far the fastest-growing and advancing science, and it has by far the largest number of distinct and legitimate (meaning they require meaningful and extensive study in the given field) specializations.

Psychology is a fairly hard science. Yes, it has problems with fraud, but it is very much steeped in the science of statistics. In fact, a psychologist is about to unveil in a new paper a technique that one can use to expose fraudulent studies that are already suspect using statistics alone.

Most people don't realize that in order for the psychology community to accept something as true, it must be satisfactorily verified through statistics. That is why studies in psychology are arranged on such an enormous scale: they have to know that more than just one select group of people conforms to an observation.

The problem is that until now, we haven't had many people using the basic math of psychology to check the validity of statements. In Freud's time it was quite often sufficient to simply state something as fact and point to a few convenient examples. Now they rely on cold, solid mathematics.

There is no official line that we can draw between the "hard" and "soft" sciences, because most of the defining comes from a position of snobbery. The kind of people who think that psychology can never be a hard science are the same people that think that the terms "psychologist" and "psychiatrist;" or "neurologist" and "neuroscientist" are interchangeable. The problem with scientists is that they live in extremely isolated communities. Physicists rarely know very much about any other field, and the same goes for psychologists, though both are quick to judge everyone else.

Working on a neuroscience degree. I am feeling more and more attracted to biomedical engineering, though, so I don't know. I might declare a second major.

>>4931540

>Cancer

Curing "cancer" is like curing "virus." It's just a name we give to a lot of similar disorders. It varies from field to field. You can cure some, but not others. Brain cancers are particularly troubling because they pretty much always return.

>AIDS

There is a tiny percentage (about 1% of white people) of people who are immune to the HIV virus. A transplant of bone marrow from one of these people cured a man of both HIV and leukemia at the same time. I believe someone else may have been cured of HIV this way as well. If we could grow this marrow in cultures, we could potentially cure HIV, though it would not be a real eradication of the threat: it would be out there still, and in order to immunize people we'd have to replace their bone marrow.

>Parkinson's

A group of monkeys had a minor visual-based process sped up by having fiber-optic cables implanted in their brains. Some of their brain cells were made light-sensitive by the use of engineered viruses, and then activated by lights. We could use this to either block or activate defective neuron clusters, thus potentially curing Parkinson's, which is caused by ineffective neuron clusters failing to fire or over-firing (I forget which).

>Alzheimer's

We are finding ways to manipulate and activate certain parts of the brain using powerful magnets. So far this has been used to warp people's moral compasses temporarily. However, it may be able to help with neurological disorders like Alzheimer's.

So be optimistic!

Wouldn't it vastly increase the density of the object being shrunk? Since matter would be conserved one would think that either the target would "shed" matter (in which case the technology would have to differentiate between what is and is not vital tissue, and perhaps even be able to reconstruct miniature organs from scratch material), or that the target would simply retain their mass, in which case coastal cities and warships would plummet to the bottom of the ocean.

But I'm kind of joking there. The real problem is that you could not shrink our brains and retain functionality. The best solution would likely be to find a way to transfer consciousness to artificial inorganic brains, which we would pair with miniature artificial bodies. Then we could start from scratch.

are computers really that different from our own brains? or is our brains very similar to computers?

when we get down to it, isn't out brain "simply" working an a 0/1 basis with neuron transmissions?


sorry if it's a dumb question, I'm not /sci/ material

Megascale engineering has its roots in science fiction. One of the first scientific examinations of megascale engineering was done by mathematician Freeman Dyson (1960) in which he discussed dismantling Jupiter to construct a shell around the sun to harvest all of its energy and provide a biosphere capable of supporting large numbers of people. Writer Larry Niven addressed some of the problems of gravity in Dyson shells by changing the form of the biosphere from a shell to a rotating Niven Ring. Other examples of megascale engineering exist in fictional literature but these are the most relevant for the discussion of MB.

Nanoscale engineering was first discussed by Richard Feynman in 1959. These ideas were extended by Eric Drexler in his 1981 PNAS paper and Engines of Creation. Much of the engineering basis for nanotechnology is documented in Nanosystems. Progress in the development of nanotechnology continues and no serious challenges against its ideas have been produced in the last ten years (Merkle, 1998). Estimates of its full scale development and deployment range from 10 to 30 years in the future.

As far as I'm concerned, the neuron is the most beautiful and amazing thing in nature.

Ask a student of the neurosciences anything.

The brain is only a bunch of well connected neurons.. THATS IT!! THATS FUCKING IT!!
couldn't the same architecture be created virtually?