Hacker News: rdgthree

New comment by rdgthree in "Anthropic is expanding to Colossus2. Will use GB200"

rdgthree — Thu, 21 May 2026 03:40:49 +0000

xAI had a lot of negotiating power here because Anthropic had ~0 comparable options and ultimately desperately needed the compute now. So, it wouldn't surprise me if data sharing was an explicit part of the agreement

Continuous inhalation of essential oil increases gray matter volume in the brain

rdgthree — Tue, 24 Feb 2026 19:15:26 +0000

Article URL: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/38331299/

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47141343

Points: 1

# Comments: 1

Solubility in olive oil predicts anasthetic potency of a compound

rdgthree — Mon, 23 Feb 2026 17:24:17 +0000

Article URL: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theories_of_general_anaesthetic_action

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47125432

Points: 3

# Comments: 0

A dead fish moves upstream when its body resonates with vortices in water [pdf]

rdgthree — Wed, 21 Jan 2026 16:45:01 +0000

Article URL: https://liaolab.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/10/2006Beal_etal.pdf

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46708109

Points: 5

# Comments: 1

Alzheimer's disease starts in childhood in polluted Mexico City (2020)

rdgthree — Fri, 19 Dec 2025 03:46:19 +0000

Article URL: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/32006765/

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46322081

Points: 5

# Comments: 0

Incidence of Dementia Before Age 65 Among 9/11 Attack Responders (2024)

rdgthree — Thu, 18 Dec 2025 05:38:27 +0000

Article URL: https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamanetworkopen/fullarticle/2819907

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46309229

Points: 9

# Comments: 0

New comment by rdgthree in "40 percent of fMRI signals do not correspond to actual brain activity"

rdgthree — Tue, 16 Dec 2025 18:28:40 +0000

Nothing to add to this conversation in particular, but just wanted to say - truly amazing paper. Well done!

New comment by rdgthree in "Researchers seeking better measures of cognitive fatigue"

rdgthree — Sun, 14 Dec 2025 20:44:36 +0000

Should have added one sooner! Here you go: https://1393.xyz/rss.xml

New comment by rdgthree in "If a Meta AI model can read a brain-wide signal, why wouldn't the brain?"

rdgthree — Sun, 14 Dec 2025 19:49:02 +0000

I appreciate that you feel this way, but the mechanisms behind exactly which neural circuits are activated by TMS are simply not yet fully understood.

From 2024:

> Transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) is a non-invasive, FDA-cleared treatment for neuropsychiatric disorders with broad potential for new applications, but the neural circuits that are engaged during TMS are still poorly understood.

[0]https://journals.plos.org/ploscompbiol/article?id=10.1371%2F...

New comment by rdgthree in "If a Meta AI model can read a brain-wide signal, why wouldn't the brain?"

rdgthree — Sun, 14 Dec 2025 17:41:22 +0000

Of course!

But also:

> Although the biology of why TMS works isn't completely understood, the stimulation appears to affect how the brain is working.

https://www.mayoclinic.org/tests-procedures/transcranial-mag...

I think it's reasonable to assume there's room to sharpen our understanding of it quite a bit.

New comment by rdgthree in "If a Meta AI model can read a brain-wide signal, why wouldn't the brain?"

rdgthree — Sun, 14 Dec 2025 17:33:50 +0000

The whole argument hinges on the idea of tuned resonance: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-025-07988-2

New comment by rdgthree in "If a Meta AI model can read a brain-wide signal, why wouldn't the brain?"

rdgthree — Sun, 14 Dec 2025 14:23:58 +0000

If you're interested in my personal chain-of-thought on the subject:

This was where I started pulling this thread (October 2025): https://1393.xyz/writing/could-the-root-cause-of-alzheimers-...

And this is an even further ancestor of the ideas (December 2023): https://1393.xyz/writing/are-we-only-conscious-while-were-le...

I'm operating off of my own subjective experience, and this idea lines up tightly with System 1 and System 2 in cognitive psychology.

It seems that many jump to "AI psychosis" when one mentions magnetic fields, but the evolutionary tree is very straightforward:

1. Nature evolves magnetoreception for navigation

2. Eventually, a brain in nature with magnetoreception accidentally "hears" its own magnetic field with with resonance

3. That lossy global summary of the brains ends up being an evolutionarily advantageous "higher-order sense"

4. Evolution sharpens the blade for many years

On first principles, that seems perfectly viable and even likely given that magnetoreception was such a boon for survival for all life.

Just glad others are finding it interesting!

New comment by rdgthree in "If a Meta AI model can read a brain-wide signal, why wouldn't the brain?"

rdgthree — Sun, 14 Dec 2025 13:52:08 +0000

Not necessarily - I think it works like Daniel Kahneman's System 1 and System 2. Your conscious system is System 2 - when it's not working correctly, you just fall back to System 1.

Independently, since the whole idea relies on resonance, it may be the case that an fMRI doesn't actually interfere with the "stochastic resonance" mechanic quite like TMS (transcranial magnetic simulation) seems to.

If you model the brain this way, dementia looks like a clear breakdown of System 2, which is an interesting thought experiment even if the mechanics aren't perfect: https://1393.xyz/writing/alzheimers-is-the-symptom-not-the-p...

New comment by rdgthree in "Researchers seeking better measures of cognitive fatigue"

rdgthree — Sun, 14 Dec 2025 03:50:34 +0000

In cognitive psychology there's all sorts of evidence that we have two distinct processes, but I don't think anyone has really mapped it to a physical system yet.

Modeling two physical systems is pretty interesting though because dementia ends up looking like a clear failure of System 2. Really neat idea generator even if imperfect.

New comment by rdgthree in "Researchers seeking better measures of cognitive fatigue"

rdgthree — Sun, 14 Dec 2025 02:16:19 +0000

I think Daniel Kahneman's System 1 (habits, unconscious) and System 2 (learning, "error correction", conscious) are physical systems, and System 2 takes a LOT more energy to run.

So, when you get tired, System 2 leans more and more on the much more energy efficient System 1. So you get behaviors that look like unrestrained habits: poor impulse control, lowered emotional regulation, etc

Edit: I wrote more about this idea if anyone is curious: https://1393.xyz/writing/alzheimers-is-the-symptom-not-the-p...

If a Meta AI model can read a brain-wide signal, why wouldn't the brain?

rdgthree — Sun, 14 Dec 2025 01:43:33 +0000

Article URL: https://1393.xyz/writing/if-a-meta-ai-model-can-read-a-brain-wide-signal-why-wouldnt-the-brain

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46260106

Points: 141

# Comments: 92

Alzheimer's is the symptom, not the problem

rdgthree — Wed, 03 Dec 2025 20:10:30 +0000

Article URL: https://1393.xyz/blog/alzheimers-is-the-symptom-not-the-problem

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46139414

Points: 3

# Comments: 0

New comment by rdgthree in "Could the root of Alzheimer's be magnetic?"

rdgthree — Sun, 02 Nov 2025 18:48:29 +0000

Did you read it?

New comment by rdgthree in "Could the root of Alzheimer's be magnetic?"

rdgthree — Sun, 02 Nov 2025 18:42:53 +0000

These have always felt like symptoms of the problem to me, so perhaps just downstream effects! Definitely not sure, obviously plenty of complexity to this one.

Could the root of Alzheimer's be magnetic?

rdgthree — Sun, 02 Nov 2025 18:29:09 +0000

Article URL: https://1393.xyz/blog/could-the-root-of-alzheimers-be-magnetic

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45792319

Points: 2

# Comments: 5