Re: Parallel Universes

From: Eliezer S. Yudkowsky (sentience@pobox.com)
Date: Tue Feb 11 2003 - 10:49:20 MST

  • Next message: Lee Daniel Crocker: "Re: artiificial poker player? (was. Re: Kasparov vs junior drawn)"

    Ramez Naam wrote:
    >
    > Lee, I think you may be referring to work done in the 1950s and 60s by
    > Jose Delgado. Delgado reported that he could relieve extreme pain, as
    > well as many of the symptoms of schizophrenia, by stimulating the
    > "septal pleasure centers" electrically. He describes this in his book
    > _Physical Control of the Mind: Towards a Psychocivilized Society_
    >
    > However, in that book he never talks about the patients having the
    > ability to self-stimulate.
    >
    > Also, Delgado is not exactly the most reputable scientist to have
    > lived. There are reasons to doubt whether the experiments he
    > describes ever really happened.

    Thanks, Mez.

    > Eliezer, I'm not sure if you were asking Lee about this result in
    > humans or the result in rats. The result in rats was produced by Olds
    > and Milner in 1954. Rats will indeed self-stimulate to the exclusion
    > of food and water, even up to death. (They do the same thing with
    > cocaine and amphetamines.)

    Already knew, but thanks again.

    -- 
    Eliezer S. Yudkowsky                          http://singinst.org/
    Research Fellow, Singularity Institute for Artificial Intelligence
    


    This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.5 : Tue Feb 11 2003 - 10:51:59 MST