Discontinuous progress is possible (and in neuro areas it is way more possible than other areas). Making it easier for discontinuous progress to take off is the most important thing
[eg, reduced-inflammation neural interfaces].
MRI data can be used to deliver more precisely targeted ultrasound//tDCS/tACS (the effect sizes on intelligence may not be high, but they may still denoise brains (Jhourney wants to make this happen on faster timescales than meditation) and improve cognitive control/well-being, which still has huge downstream effects on most of the population)
Intelligence enhancement is not the only path [there are others such as sensing/promoting better emotional regulation + neurofeedback] which have heavy disproportionate impact and are underinvestigated (neurofeedback, in particular, seems to work really well for some people, but b/c there are so many practitioners and it’s very hit-and-miss, it takes a lot of capital [more so than time] to see if it really works for any particular person)
Reducing the rate at which brains age (over time) is feasible + maximizes lifetime human intelligence/compute + and there is lots of low-hanging fruit in this area (healthier diets alone can give 10 extra years), especially because there is huge variation in how much brains age.
I’m friends with a group in Michigan which is trying to do this. The upside risk is unknown because there are so many unknowns (but so little investment too, at the same time) - they also broaden the pool of people who can contribute, since they don’t need to be math geniuses. There aren’t really limits on how to grow organoids (a major question is whether or not one can grow them larger than the actual brain, without causing them to have the degeneracies of autistic brains.). More people use them to focus on drug testing than computation.
Doing vasculature well is one of the hardest near-term problems (frontierbio is working on this though some have questions of whether or not the blood vessels are “real vessels”), but scaffolding is also one (maybe there are different ways to achieve the same level of complexity with alternative scaffolding—https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-022-16247-7 ). Thought emporium used plant tissue exteriors for scaffolding—though this obvs isn’t enough for complex brain tissue.
Bird brain organoids may be an interesting substrate b/c bird brains do more than mammalian brains with limited volume, and also don’t depend as much on 5-6 layer cortical architecture or complex gyrification/folding structure.
[note: I know that current progress of organoid research seems like it will never go fast enough to “make it”, but discontinuous rates of progress cannot be ruled out]
Discontinuous progress is possible (and in neuro areas it is way more possible than other areas). Making it easier for discontinuous progress to take off is the most important thing
[eg, reduced-inflammation neural interfaces].
MRI data can be used to deliver more precisely targeted ultrasound//tDCS/tACS (the effect sizes on intelligence may not be high, but they may still denoise brains (Jhourney wants to make this happen on faster timescales than meditation) and improve cognitive control/well-being, which still has huge downstream effects on most of the population)
Intelligence enhancement is not the only path [there are others such as sensing/promoting better emotional regulation + neurofeedback] which have heavy disproportionate impact and are underinvestigated (neurofeedback, in particular, seems to work really well for some people, but b/c there are so many practitioners and it’s very hit-and-miss, it takes a lot of capital [more so than time] to see if it really works for any particular person)
Reducing the rate at which brains age (over time) is feasible + maximizes lifetime human intelligence/compute + and there is lots of low-hanging fruit in this area (healthier diets alone can give 10 extra years), especially because there is huge variation in how much brains age.
https://www.linkedin.com/posts/neuro1_lab-grown-human-brain-organoids-go-animal-free-activity-7085372203331936257-F8YB?utm_source=share&utm_medium=member_android
I’m friends with a group in Michigan which is trying to do this. The upside risk is unknown because there are so many unknowns (but so little investment too, at the same time) - they also broaden the pool of people who can contribute, since they don’t need to be math geniuses. There aren’t really limits on how to grow organoids (a major question is whether or not one can grow them larger than the actual brain, without causing them to have the degeneracies of autistic brains.). More people use them to focus on drug testing than computation.
I know many are trying 2D solutions, but 3D is important too (https://scitechdaily.com/japanese-scientists-construct-complex-3d-organoids-with-ingenious-device/?expand_article=1&fbclid=IwAR0n429zFV4uQnyds94tuTCFbPNdSdJecpMreWilv6kpQTRacgw64LTTZp4)
Doing vasculature well is one of the hardest near-term problems (frontierbio is working on this though some have questions of whether or not the blood vessels are “real vessels”), but scaffolding is also one (maybe there are different ways to achieve the same level of complexity with alternative scaffolding—https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-022-16247-7 ). Thought emporium used plant tissue exteriors for scaffolding—though this obvs isn’t enough for complex brain tissue.
Bird brain organoids may be an interesting substrate b/c bird brains do more than mammalian brains with limited volume, and also don’t depend as much on 5-6 layer cortical architecture or complex gyrification/folding structure.
BTW, carbon-nanotube computing might be worth exploring. Here’s a preliminary app: https://www.americanscientist.org/article/tiny-lights-in-the-brains-black-box
look up thought emporium!! Potentially tangentially relevant: https://www.nature.com/articles/s42003-023-04893-0, Morphoceuticals, https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fnins.2019.01156/full, augmentationlab.org, https://minibrain.beckman.illinois.edu/2022/05/06/webinar-review-understanding-human-brain-structure-and-function-with-cerebral-organoids/, https://www.spectrumnews.org/news/organoids-hint-at-origins-of-enlarged-brains-in-autistic-people/ (INSAR has sev presentations of those who grow autistic brain organoids)
(talins)!
[note: I know that current progress of organoid research seems like it will never go fast enough to “make it”, but discontinuous rates of progress cannot be ruled out]