Slashdot Mirror
Remote Controlled Rats
sclatter writes: "They aren't precisely robot rats, but
these little rodents can be cued to perform different actions through electrodes implanted in their brains. Could be a boon for search and rescue in collapsed buildings!" As one skeptic in the article says, though, "Without the gee-whizery, without the remote-control and so on, that this kind of thing was possible has been obvious for decades."
from your Neuromancer catalogue just yet.. Basically all this is is the ability to "train" the rats entierly through manipulating different sectors of their brains. They zap one portion, which cues the rat. The rat turns around. The rat's Reward Sector is stimulated. Next time when the rat gets the original zap he'll turn around automatically because he thinks he'll get a reward.
Woohoo. I do the same thing with my dog, but I use my voice and biscuits instead of aligator clips.
While its a nice thought, you may want to re-read the article. It looks like the rats are "controlled" simply by stimulating the area of the brain that would tell the rat that its whisker brushed against something, causing it to turn the other way, and when it did so, it would get a pleasureable reaponse. Its not as if they're destroying its thought process. A similar situation would be those blinders sometimes shown on some horses. Right side pulled allowing light in; horse sees it and goes that way. Nothing cruel about it.
This was also done with cockroaches.
> The capacity for remote control of human beings is scary. Imagine having your actions
> involuntarily overriden by a remote source. Scary stuff...
The likely reality of "human remote control", if it's done at all, is scarier: being rewarded through your pleasure centers until you want nothing more than to follow the commands. Your actions aren't involuntarily overriden, you are *eager* to follow any commands given.
Chris Mattern
I used to keep pet rats. The reason I stopped was because they have very short lifespans; I got sick of getting attached to cute, smart, affectionate little balls of fuzz and having them die within a couple of years. They each have their own personalities and their own feelings just as much as dogs or cats do. And gram for gram, they're probably smarter than any other animal on the planet. Also, they're extremely clean.
...
Are wild rats vicious? Of course they are, but so are wild dogs and wild cats. Raised by loving owners, they're wonderful creatures. Now, whether you think more traditional domestic animals have any rights or not is a separate issue
The correlation between ignorance of statistics and using "correlation is not causation" as an argument is close to 1.
by Michael Crighton = about a violent antisocial criminal with psychomotor epilepsy who is given electrode implants to blunt his own seizures but learns how to give himself seizures in order to kill and cause mayhem.
"A good Read !!!"