I am comfortable calling myself “somebody who knows a lot about this field”, especially in relation to the average EA Forum reader, our current context.
I respect Karl Friston as well, I’m looking forward to reading his thoughts on your theory. Is there anything you can share?
The CSHW stuff looks potentially cool, but it’s separate from your original theory, so I don’t want to get too deep into it here. The only thing I would say is that I don’t understand why the claims of your original theory cannot be investigated using standard (cheap) EEG techniques. This is important if a major barrier to finding empirical evidence for your theory is funding. Could you explain why standard EEG is insufficient to investigate the synchrony of neuronal firing during suffering?
I was very aggressive with my criticism of your theory, partially because I think it is wrong (again, the basis of your theory, “the symmetry of this representation will encode how pleasant the experience is”, makes no sense to me), but also because of how confidently you describe your theory with no empirical evidence. So I happily accept being called arrogant and would also happily accept being shown how I am wrong. My tone is in reaction to what I feel is your unfounded confidence, and other posts like “I think all neuroscientists, all philosophers, all psychologists, and all psychiatrists should basically drop whatever they’re doing and learn Selen Atasoy’s “connectome-specific harmonic wave” (CSHW) framework.” https://opentheory.net/2018/08/a-future-for-neuroscience/
You link to your other work in this post, and are raising money for your organization (which I think will redirect money from organizations that I think are doing more effective work), so I think it’s fair for my comments to be in reaction to things outside the text of your original post.
I’m glad to hear you feel good about your background and are filled with confidence in yourself and your field. I think the best work often comes from people who don’t at first see all the challenges involved in doing something, because often those are the only people who even try.
At first I was a little taken aback by your tone, but to be honest I’m a little amused by the whole interaction now.
The core problem with EEG is that the most sophisticated analyses depend on source localization (holographic reconstruction of brain activity), and accurate source localization from EEG remains an unsolved problem, at least at the resolution and confidence we’d need. In particular we’ve looked at various measures of coherence as applied to EEG and found them all wanting in various ways. I notice some backtracking on your criticism of CSHW. ;) it’s a cool method, not without downsides but occupies a cool niche. I have no idea what your research is about but it might be useful for you to learn about for some purposes.
I’m glad you‘re reading more of our ‘back issues’ as it were. We have some talks on our YouTube channel as well (including the NA presentation to Friston), although not all of our work on STV is public yet.
If you share what your research is about, and any published work, I think it’d I’d help me understand where your critiques are coming from a little better. Totally up to you though.
Edit: probably an unhelpful comment
Hi Mike,
I am comfortable calling myself “somebody who knows a lot about this field”, especially in relation to the average EA Forum reader, our current context.
I respect Karl Friston as well, I’m looking forward to reading his thoughts on your theory. Is there anything you can share?
The CSHW stuff looks potentially cool, but it’s separate from your original theory, so I don’t want to get too deep into it here. The only thing I would say is that I don’t understand why the claims of your original theory cannot be investigated using standard (cheap) EEG techniques. This is important if a major barrier to finding empirical evidence for your theory is funding. Could you explain why standard EEG is insufficient to investigate the synchrony of neuronal firing during suffering?
I was very aggressive with my criticism of your theory, partially because I think it is wrong (again, the basis of your theory, “the symmetry of this representation will encode how pleasant the experience is”, makes no sense to me), but also because of how confidently you describe your theory with no empirical evidence. So I happily accept being called arrogant and would also happily accept being shown how I am wrong. My tone is in reaction to what I feel is your unfounded confidence, and other posts like “I think all neuroscientists, all philosophers, all psychologists, and all psychiatrists should basically drop whatever they’re doing and learn Selen Atasoy’s “connectome-specific harmonic wave” (CSHW) framework.” https://opentheory.net/2018/08/a-future-for-neuroscience/
You link to your other work in this post, and are raising money for your organization (which I think will redirect money from organizations that I think are doing more effective work), so I think it’s fair for my comments to be in reaction to things outside the text of your original post.
I’m glad to hear you feel good about your background and are filled with confidence in yourself and your field. I think the best work often comes from people who don’t at first see all the challenges involved in doing something, because often those are the only people who even try.
At first I was a little taken aback by your tone, but to be honest I’m a little amused by the whole interaction now.
The core problem with EEG is that the most sophisticated analyses depend on source localization (holographic reconstruction of brain activity), and accurate source localization from EEG remains an unsolved problem, at least at the resolution and confidence we’d need. In particular we’ve looked at various measures of coherence as applied to EEG and found them all wanting in various ways. I notice some backtracking on your criticism of CSHW. ;) it’s a cool method, not without downsides but occupies a cool niche. I have no idea what your research is about but it might be useful for you to learn about for some purposes.
I’m glad you‘re reading more of our ‘back issues’ as it were. We have some talks on our YouTube channel as well (including the NA presentation to Friston), although not all of our work on STV is public yet.
If you share what your research is about, and any published work, I think it’d I’d help me understand where your critiques are coming from a little better. Totally up to you though.