MartinB comments on Christopher Hitchens and Cryonics - Less Wrong

11 Post author: James_Miller 08 August 2010 08:32PM

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Comment author: Risto_Saarelma 09 August 2010 06:02:33AM 3 points [-]

A good example would be one that either significantly changes how we see the world, plate tectonics definitely qualifies, or will make people change their behavior in some way if assumed true.

Adult neurogenesis is a recent discovery, but it seem to change either that much. Human brains are still finicky and brain damage is very, very scary. I'm also not aware of there being any movement for adult neurogenesis warranting the attention of skeptics before the discovery was conclusive, which there apparently was for continental drift.

Meditation is a better example though. The discovery of actual beneficial neurological changes is likely to make people meditate more. It's not a very strong example though, as I don't think skeptics have been very hostile to meditation itself before the findings (unlike claims that meditators can levitate, cure cancer and bring about world peace). The fact that an exercise repeated regularly through many years leads to measurable anatomical differences isn't exactly a paradigm shift related to our understanding of human physiology either.

Comment author: MartinB 09 August 2010 08:12:40AM 0 points [-]

Neuroplasticity. A few episodes of the brainsciencepodcast deal with them, and the book of Norman Doidge: the brain that changes itself. Nutrition is a topic that is still up for grabs.