My experience of a temporary scotoma (blind spot)
Aug 27, 2020, 9:21a - Consciousness
Last December I had a once-in-a-lifetime experience. It was quite serendipitous too, because I have been thinking about this medical condition and researching it for the past 5 years... So here goes.
Before I jump in and say what happened to me, I want to give a bit of background. It has been known for at least 150 years if ... more »
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Poonam
- Aug 27, 2020, 10:34p
Very interesting. When you explained your new experiment to me you didn't share your personal experience. I am not surprised. It is a very keen observation on your part and a fascinating study of the visual cortex if you pursue it further.
It also reminded me of the old camaras that would blind you for a bit with their flash...although,I did not pay attention to what I saw after I was blinded and for how long.
Anyway sounds like a good experiment but please don't try it in yourself again...you have your mice for that.
Good luck!
Bharti
- Aug 31, 2020, 11:13a
Very interesting. This explains the feeling that at times I was oblivious to my surroundings. Good luck with your research and would be very interested in your findings
Ed
- Sep 1, 2020, 5:38a
Great to see this blog still kicking! I've been coming here for the past decade (mostly for the wormweb.org).
Elon
- Jul 3, 2021, 4:23a
Interesting blog mate, please consider to apply for neuralink , just checked your amazing track record on linkedin.
Kat
- Dec 11, 2022, 6:07p
I have visual field lossloss. Yep totally just unaware I'm missing vision now infact I forget even seeing a driver next to tyou, in the car was normal 4 yrs ago! Mine is permanent I have a refractory error. When faced with light stare at sun close eyes I only get the orange dots in remaining vision areas never lost one's. Note cerebral hemmorage and infarct py.
Cardinal
- May 7, 2023, 12:22p
I've also experienced this once a couple years ago, A small region of my eyesight just kind of disabled itself and I see how my brain was filling in the gaps, using the surrounding vision to assume what should be there. It lasted around 30 minutes and then faded away.
Someone
- Jun 11, 2023, 3:00p
This is migraine aura
Thoro
- Dec 16, 2024, 7:28a
I got the blurry thing. Spots that are blurry and flicker when blinking.
Kenton
- Jan 17, 2025, 5:38p
That’s a migraine my friend. I get 1 or 2 a year, if that and have for 20 years. Your description is just like I’d would describe.
A Follow-up on X, after 12 years
Dec 1, 2019, 10:19p - Life
Man, it has been almost 3 years since my last blog post. Having a kid sure does make time scarce in a way I had never experienced.
I found myself writing a long email response to a stranger on an important topic, so I figured that could be a blog post.
He wrote:
I came across you while considering the ... more »
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cptobv
- Dec 3, 2019, 4:53p
i experienced x with lsd. no anxiety, food was better, etc
nikhil
- Dec 3, 2019, 5:03p
cptobv,
Does X occur every time you take LSD? How long does X last - only while you are on LSD, or after?
Kirk Carlson
- Aug 17, 2023, 12:28p
Definitely are not missing anything. Nothing today seems close to what they were in the past. In fact for the little bit of euphoria you get you have so much more in consequences. It makes sense that as we advance in science that the people making things would get better at making sure you want more. It's like it's purposely designed to do very little other than make sure you want more and before long there is no stopping. Fortunately thanks to boss training when I came across it I could tell something was wrong and kept my distance.
The way
Mar 24, 2017, 11:47p - Poetry
I think
about what it would be like
to not think
the way that I think.
Not thinking about thinking
To just think, straight up.
A trap laid beyond my feet.
Is the sadness of the loss
of the second parent
easier to bear
because of
the loss of the first?
Does sadness vaccinate
against future sadness?
Do darts that ... more »
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Tim
- Apr 19, 2017, 12:32p
Ended up here somehow from looking at a chemotaxis simulation you made - because I wanted to make my own and was disappointed that one exactly like I wanted already existed. Didn't know what I expected to see when I got here, but as someone who has been really sad about their parents declining health, it strange to know someone else has wondered in much the same way I did. So thank you for both the science and the introspection. Gotta get back to lab work now.
Kirk
- Aug 17, 2023, 12:51p
Thinking can be a bit overwhelming. I find that when I'm lacking in something I'm thinking of how fixing. I think it is important that as I go on I remember to stress less and try to not put myself in positions to need to stress.ive recently experienced loss. As I'm healing I wonder if I'll ever be whole again. My parents are getting up there wonder how ill feel when they are gone.
Sadness sparks
Mar 24, 2017, 11:12p - Poetry
Sadness sparks
that energy everlasting
a welt of wounds
shallow, deep
compounding
manifesting
creation
that is life
making us be.
Sadness plunges
the soul down
to that home
of sensitivity
conceiving no ills
but them all.
To break through sadness
to mend the tears
that wet separation
only to be chucked back
treading
enclosed
inescapable.
Remembering finality
to resuscitate
that ... more »
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The End of LendingClub?
Jul 14, 2016, 12:05p - Investing
There are 2 parts to this story. The first is about LendingClub's (LC's) actions as a company, and the second is about my returns on the site.
Early on in LC's history (2007-2009), they advertised a 9% return for investors, right on the front page of their website. I was always skeptical of this from the beginning, because I didn't ... more »
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chandl34
- Jul 7, 2018, 8:35a
Another issue with capital losses is there is a limit you can claim per year. If you over-invest in LendingClub (or other similar platforms), you will always have more capital losses than the yearly limit. It seems the only way to claim those carry over losses is to de-invest completely from LendingClub.
Kirk
- Aug 17, 2023, 1:10p
It's sad to watch It. Some companies have the ability to make a lot of money, and they just don't do it properly. It's a shame the truth is. What can you do about it? Unless you create your own company and then you your own 2 diligence. Really wish those numbers would have sounded better, though.
Can the Bitcoin be Money at a National Scale?
May 25, 2016, 12:50a - Economics
I was at a neuroscience conference (SFN), and instead of absorbing some of the fresh science compressed into the San Diego Convention Center, my mind was elsewhere. By the third day I had had enough, so I just started walking and ended up in Little Italy.
It was November 2013, and the media had declared Bitcoin a Category 2 tropical ... more »
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Neha Narula
- May 30, 2016, 3:52p
I'm still digesting what you wrote, but I think you are missing a few things.
Bitcoin is the first cryptocurrency, not the last, and as such, it's not a good idea to ask the question of whether it *as it exists right now* will be successful, but, whether a later iteration (potentially based on bitcoin, potentially not) will be successful. So, really, we want to know two things 1) are there fundamental problems in cryptocurrency design that cannot be fixed and 2) once its fixable problems are fixed, will it be useful?
- #6: Have you heard of Zcash? An anonymous cryptocurrency.
- #5: I think part of the reason cryptocurrencies have the potential to drastically lower transaction costs is exactly because there is no recourse. This increases confidence that a transaction cannot be reversed. An example: let's say I buy a very fancy ming vase from you, and then break it. Now let's say the government decides that the money I used to buy that vase was stolen. Can they reclaim it from you? Who gets made whole, and who doesn't? If there's a risk that a payment won't be final, then that risk will be reflected in the price of the item.
I think their advantage is that cryptocurrencies will enable software-defined payments, without an intermediary. At the moment, all digital money transfer is owned by a private institution (bank, paypal, credit card company, etc). There is no open platform for the transfer of digital money.
nikhil
- Jun 1, 2016, 4:39p
Hi Neha,
I agree that Bitcoin can be improved on. Part of the point of my analysis was to identify areas that should be addressed, *if* someone wants to make a cryptocurrency that displaces a national currency. There certainly can be other utility asides from usage as a national money, but this is the use case I chose to focus on here.
I think despite the potentially addressable issues with privacy (thanks for the pointer to Zcash) and recourse (perhaps through insurance?), the property of stable value seems hard, in the current speculative climate. Perhaps more importantly, I think more compelling advantages of a distributed, non-sovereign digital currency over a sovereign currency need to be clearly articulated or discovered before non-sovereign currency can displace an established sovereign currency.
You seem to think that a lack of recourse is a good thing. While your specific scenario of stolen money is one case, I think a more common case is buying something and discovering that it is not as you expected, so you want to get your money back. eBay and Amazon implement recourse in these circumstances. If a product is not as described, then they will cover the cost, even if the seller does not accept returns. People clearly prefer this kind of guarantee over the no-recourse approach you seem to favor, even if it does increase costs somewhat.
Another use case for recourse that seems to be a more common occurrence with Bitcoin is straight up wallet theft, due to a thief stealing someone's private key. Imagine if you came home one day to discover that your savings had disappeared, and there was no one to call who could investigate the theft and return the money. At the very least there needs to be something like FDIC insurance for Bitcoin addresses, and it would be even better if there was a specific process to investigate such theft, outside of reporting it to the local police.
Why is it valuable to have "software-defined payments"? What does that even mean? What is the real value in having an open platform for digital money? Just because something is open doesn't mean it will inherently succeed in the market (e.g. Microsoft and Apple OS' are closed systems that dominate the consumer PC market).
Neha Narula
- Jun 5, 2016, 8:13p
This is a good debate!
Yeah, I don't think I care that much about Bitcoin displacing a national currency. I'm just more interested in what a widely-used digital currency can enable.
By programmable currency, here's what I mean: There's no ubiquitous, common API for money. We have tons of digital money (credit cards, paypal, venmo, ACH), but none of it works together, or if it does, exchange between different forms is slow or incurs high fees. For example, within Europe digital payments work very well, but how hard is it to open a European bank account as an American? Why doesn't my bank work with venmo?
Because there is no cheap, common payments platform, I think there are a lot of applications that have not been built. For example, check out some of the stuff that 21.co is pushing, like renting out your dormant resources. We still don't have micropayments. What if I could do things like easily charge people to use my open wifi network by the byte?
You misunderstand me about recourse -- recourse is incredibly valuable, but the question is at what layer in the money stack does it occur. Ebay and Visa and whatnot make me whole again without necessarily stopping payment or recovering payment from the wrong-doing party -- it's built into their cost structure for them to just occasionally eat these kinds of things. That makes a lot of sense! But if I buy something from a stranger off craigslist with cash and it turns out it wasn't what it seems, I can't go to the federal reserve and demand that they stop the dollar bills I used to pay from circulating. Even if millions of dollars of my cash was stolen I can't do that. Bitcoin seems the same to me -- why should Bitcoin wallets be FDIC insured? Especially if there is no company/bank acting as the entity to be insured? Perhaps we could have individual FDIC insurance but what does that look like?
nikhil
- Jun 17, 2016, 10:38a
You are making 2 points. The first argues for the value of programmable currency, which can sit on top of any currency, either fiat or crypto. The second argues that recourse isn't always necessary with any currency, as demonstrated when you pay for something using cash and don't receive what you expect to. I will address both points separately (though they are interconnected).
First, I think the reason we don't have general programmable money is not because of an absence of tech, but because of a rejection of risk. So far, banks and governments (and individuals?) have aired on the side of relatively slow money transfer services which allow time for human intervention. This slowness lets banks satisfy anti-laundering and other regulations meant to reduce criminal activity. Additionally, it lets individuals call their bank to report a theft or accidental transfer, enabling the bank to block pending transactions that would have cleared in 2-3 days.
In fact, at the central banking level there is programmable money in the form of the SWIFT system. There, significant thefts have already been demonstrated. Most recently, the SWIFT system was hacked at Bangladesh Bank to authorize $1B in unauthorized transactions from the Bank. The theft was limited to $81M because most of the orders were blocked, supposedly because they misspelled the word "Foundation" in the recipient's name. The orders were (likely) intentionally issued at times when Bangladesh Bank was closed for the weekend, while the Fed was still open to effect the transaction. The Fed even tried to contact the Bank on the phone, but since they were closed, they could not be reached and they authorized some of the transfers nonetheless.
So programmable transfer of fiat currency already exists at the largest scale and carries very high risk, so I suspect that the system will undergo some improvements to reduce that risk, which will invariably cause the slowing of transactions. Cryptocurrencies do not implement any such anti-theft measures, either human review or automated, and I think these would be important to reduce theft and support adoption.
Furthermore, in addition to monitoring for theft, there is monitoring of money transfers for regulatory reasons, including anti-terrorism and anti-laundering. These probably require review of some transactions, further slowing transfer rates. Cryptocurrencies might legally be required to implement these regulations as well, if they became more widely used. This seems difficult, and perhaps even against the anti-government spirit at the source of cryprocurrencies.
To conclude, I don't think general programmable money, on fiat or cryptocurrency, without human approval, stands a chance for 2 reasons. First, there is too much risk of unintentional transfer, including theft and accident. Second, and related, there is a significant amount of regulation that money transfer services must comply with.
To your second point on recourse: if you buy something on craigslist and pay cash, you assume the risk that you may not get what you expect. You can just as easily offer to pay with a credit card via paypal/venmo, and have someone else assume the risk for a fee (aka insurance). The point is that you have flexibility as a user of dollars. With cryptocurrency, you don't yet have that flexibility. And I think this flexibility is yet another feature necessary for wider adoption of cryptocurrency.
It seems that there might be the hope of recourse with cryptocurrency after all. I'm sure you've seen that the DAO was hacked, after raising the equivalent of $150M in ether. WSJ has a brief article about it here: http://on.wsj.com/28Kmatj. I thought all was lost, but interestingly the Ethereum Foundation froze the thieving account and is forking the codebase to restore the stolen ether. I'm surprised that they think they can do this, because it means that they can control the distributed network of miners. Perhaps this is true because the network remains small with limited mixing services. I doubt this could be achieved by Bitcoin, which must have many more miners, many of whom are in China and may not care about theft.
********
To summarize, I think a single additional feature might be necessary for wider adoption of cryptocurrency. Cryptocurrencies may benefit from a second, "slow" coin transfer process which would occur if the transaction must undergo additional review because it triggers (a) concern of theft or (b) regulatory review. For example, transactions above a certain value would be subject to "slow" transfer, or transactions in which the sender wants a slower transaction, which might be a requirement for insurance.
nikhil
- Oct 22, 2018, 5:07p
An article on WSJ asking the question, "Can Bitcoin become a dominant currency?"
https://www.wsj.com/articles/can-bitcoin-become-a-dominant-currency-1540174021?mod=hp_major_pos18
Jennifer S
- Oct 7, 2022, 6:41a
Hey Nikhil
I was led into your blog randomly reminded on LinkedIn. And reading your latest post the blind spot experience, and several pieces of article several years back.
Really enjoyed your writing! No matter what topics (varying from science to personal/spiritual experience/ finance), you always put in lots of background and critical thoughts lol :)
Wishing you all the best with the research and hoping you at some time invested in the bitcoin ;p
Cheers
Kirk
- Aug 17, 2023, 2:01p
So much information. I learned a lot. Gained a understanding that I didn't have before.
Noise reduction on Epson projectors = Motion Blur
Apr 16, 2016, 6:44p - Technology
Occasionally, I discover that something that should be known online is not. And occasionally when this happens, I figure out the solution. This happened yesterday, so I wanted to record it on the net.
Internet, this one is for you.
About a month ago, I bought a refurbished LCD projector, an Epson Powerlite Home Cinema 2030, to setup a home ... more »
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Siddharth Bhatla
- Apr 28, 2016, 4:56a
Maybe it is the higher bit-rate of Blu-ray player that's the actual culprit for overloading the frame-buffers/RAM of the projector's image processing unit....
Turns out that noise reduction is required more in amateur videos whose bit-rate is naturally set lower ( upto 20 Mbps for Phone Cameras ) by camera designers to save memory for longer videos..
Conversely, Professionally created footage, has higher bit-rates ( 50-70 Mbps for High End DSLRs ) and Blu-ray can support upto 40 Mbps, and Imperfections like Noise is dealt with in Production Stage so we don't much of it in Broadcast-ed / Distributed Media... So Designers at EPSON may have taken that assumption while including those Noise Reduction settings in the projector's menu.
Glad to Hear from you !
Siddharth Bhatla
siddharthbhatla_2000@ymail.com
Anonymous
- Jan 26, 2019, 9:33p
Thank you !
Money: The Unauthorized Biography by Felix Martin
Mar 19, 2016, 10:34p - Book Notes, - Economics
It has been a very long time since I last wrote a Book Notes entry (in fact, the last one was in 2007). During PhD grad school (2007-2015), I didn't write any Book Notes because I barely read books, as journal articles fully absorbed my attention. Now that grad school is finished, we've finished our move from Boston to Oakland, ... more »
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Ramaswamy
- Aug 29, 2017, 9:52p
Very detailed notes. Very helpful for me as I was writing the review of the book for my blog investments.manofallseaso s.com
Thank you
Ram
yt
- Mar 22, 2019, 10:48p
thank you so much for the notes!
helps a lot with my essay.
Kirk Carlson
- Aug 17, 2023, 10:52a
I skim through a portion of. It in a few areas. I guess that makes sense in my head. Definitely want to sit down and read through it all. Life has a wave. I don't know, setting the. Tone. I like the idea of continuing talks with you. Definitely like the idea of writing in my future rather than digging ditches and being dependent on other people. I also hope that i'm not crazy in making this statement. I will get to reading this in the next few hours and get back to you. But I'm really hoping that just in what I saw is that we continue talking for a while and eventually I continue to write and somewhere along the way. I've got a whole lot of money. That's gonna be coming in and taking care of my family. And everything, so. I know a whole lot of money can mean a lot of different things to a lot of people Thanks to a lot of different people, but if I'm right and you've been following me, then you know how I live and what money I'm used to. Forgive me for not editing voice. Recording
Kirk
- Aug 17, 2023, 3:07p
I never looked at it that way.I always looked at it like the government was bailing out these companies and we are all struggling and I guess I never thought about how much they print money to protect economy as a whole and how larger companies are in the position to spread it or at least keep people employed. I might need to read that again.
Third time around, has anything changed?
Feb 11, 2016, 10:52a - Life
I am now on a break from working a specific job, the third such break of my life.
My first break came in 2002, after graduating from college. From June until October, I had all my time to myself. With Dave, I tried to start a company selling live concert CDs at the end of shows, called Music Mint. I ... more »
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omar
- Feb 11, 2016, 12:07p
that's a pretty remarkable conclusion based on this paucity of facts. might what you did at stanford, google and mit say something about whether you've changed or not? or are those just jobs, like F work man am i right?
also, i never knew about the vacuum cleaners. i must've missed that post. when i change the settings now, in chrome, and click the button, the vacuums don't start up. you might want to fix that, or mark the page deprecated.
glad to see you writing again
Nicky
- Feb 11, 2016, 2:04p
so fun to read. Also, that baby is so lucky to have such an interesting and loving person as a father.
nikhil
- Feb 14, 2016, 11:28a
see omar, even after all the years, you still read my blog!!! what more proof do you need that nothing has changed :)
sure, my interests have varied - stanford was all about learning how to code and do product design, google was executing with those skills, and mit was about learning neuroscience and trying to figure out a way to study the mechanism of consciousness. so the transition from consumer product design to neuroscience is vast, yet i still sit here, with my unstructured time, doing more or less the same thing.
omar, because you asked, i've fixed the vacuum cleaners to properly restart when you click the button, after the game has finished. that was actually an old bug that i just never fixed.
Neha
- Feb 15, 2016, 9:26a
What books did you read about money? I'm also interested in money, since I've been learning about Bitcoin. Also, how did you decide on that Coursera class?
nikhil
- Feb 15, 2016, 10:17p
Neha!
I finished reading "Money - An unauthorized biography" a few weeks ago, and am going at "The Empire of Value" right now. The second one is a translation from French, and it's much less clear than the first. I got a lot of good ideas out of the first book, and I'm planning to blog about both soon.
The Coursera class was recommended to me by a stranger who contacted me about C. elegans stuff. We chatted on the phone and realized we were also both interested in economics, and he had listened to those lectures and recommended it. I am on lecture 6 now - so far it is really a class less about money and more about banking, which is interesting in its own right. It's amazing how we are able to use so many things without needing to understand how any of them work.
The Real Nikhil
- Feb 21, 2016, 5:52p
hi, I really want to have the username @nikhil on twitter, is it possible for you to change it so I can have your @? I will pay if necessary
nikhil
- Feb 24, 2016, 10:11p
How much will you pay for the handle? I have gotten many other nikhils already asking for it too.
Some news about my worm research
Sep 23, 2015, 7:57p - Science
I recently published my second first-author paper, rounding out the work of my time in grad school. MIT News wrote about it, and I was also interviewed by Lab Equipment about the research. Enjoy!
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