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