Chronologically or by worth? =P

From Wikipedia: "A robot is an automatically guided machine which is able to do tasks on its own.." How are we not robots? Ok, so we're not made from steel, silicone and plastic but we are computer controlled machines, robots, all the same (albeit a wee bit more complex than what we are building at the moment).

Why should input to this immense, self-organizing computer be any different than output? Read up on Sensory Substitution (or augmentation, or perceptual augmentation, or whatever you feel like calling it).

Just as you say, the brain would figure out how the arm worked if allowed to explore and test. The same thing is true about sensory information presented to the brain through the skin, as long as there is a correlation between the signals going out and the signals coming in. What's the reasoning behind thinking that dropping the wire from the skin to the brain and just "plugging it right in there" would make a difference? Be it the correlation between telling your body to turn, feedback from the inner ear and proprioception and feedback from the feelSpace belt, or the correlation between sending random signals to a prosthetic arm and observing what happens.. I'm pretty sure the brain would figure it out on it's own.

You might be trying to be funny, but imagine for a moment being paralyzed down south. Think prosthetic penises won't be a hugely marketable item once they figure out how to make the feedback good enough that sensomotoric relations can take care of the rest and they figure out how to measure sexual excitation to initiate *cough* inflation..?

It's a brave new world (of Japanese one-on-one gang bang and gallons-of-synthetic-jizz-bukkake porn)!

Man, this whole morality-debate (weather it's absolute or relative, learned or inborn) gets me kind of riled up. The only thing needed to explain morale is The Cardemon Law (which is a Norwegian song from a children's play, and sounds absolutely retarded in English).

Empathy: most people have it, and instinctively know that if you kick someone in the shin it's going to hurt them and thus kicking isn't something you should do. Ability to reason: most people are supposed to have it (although observation seems to indicate otherwise), and even if you are completely void of empathy it really isn't that hard to see that getting punched in the nose hurts, other people have noses and seem otherwise similar to oneself, ergo one shouldn't punch people in the nose.

Apart from that, "morality" has no place interfering with peoples lives. Stem cell therapy? Brain implants? Genetic therapy? Could save and help hundreds of millions and will as soon as we get past religious dogma and morons trying to argue against something they don't understand.

Why does so many here seem to think this would be needed? I'm pretty sure you could hook up the prosthetic limb to more or less any signal picked up from the implants and send the patient to physical(/mechanical) therapy. The brain is easily the worlds biggest neural net, and incredibly flexible and adaptive. The way I figure, there is no effing way the sensomotoric correlations wouldn't emerge on their own with use and exploration.

I put on my Arm-y Helmet and grab my Two Handed Sword, finally Munchkin is one step closer to reality!

As a fellow web dev with little appreciable GUI (or at least graphical design) skills, I warmly recommend jQuery. It makes writing cross-browser JavaScript a dream. Also, jQueryUI is pretty damn awesome and lets you whip together a pretty smooth interface quickly and with very little code.

No, I attached the electrodes where the electrodes are supposed to go (TRFL || google), namely on the bony "knob" directly behind the ear. It really is worth trying. It doesn't give you the sense of turning, it "pulls" you to either side (depending in the direction of the current) in a very strange way.

For my part, I fit the "sweaty geek"-cliché all too well when the weather starts getting warm (except I shower and stuff). Having some form of active cooling in my keyboard/gamepad/mouse would easily be far more awesome than heating because after a few rounds of high paced console gaming, I tend to get somewhat sweaty palms. Something like this perhaps?

Finally! Someone besides myself who posts something related to sensory substitution/augmentation! ^^

The compass belt would be a cool add-on to a lot of games. Make one that works like the linked one (with real world input) but add a Bluetooth interface so you can also get information from games and such. From what I've read about the (crazy) level of integration with these types of devices, I'd bet something like that would add a very decent upgrade to the sense of immersion (if not exactly useful information) to many games.

What about Galvanic Vestibular Stimulation? I tried this with a 9V battery and a couple of makeshift electrodes fashioned from aluminum foil and duct tape. Ok, so I had no control of the current being passed through my head (which I believe should be <1,5mA) but when I popped on the electrodes, stood up with my eyes closed and flipped the switch.. Hell, I almost fell into my TV, and my friend who tried it actually did end up on the floor. It really does tip your balance in the direction of the anode, and I can imagine using this with f.ex. driving or flying simulator type games would be quite the experience.

Perhaps a headband or hat of some sort with proximity sensors and small button vibrators? Something like the Haptic Radar project only discreet enough that us nerds and geeks at least would consider wearing it now and then even when not gaming (because sensomotoric correlations are the key to integration). Like with the compass belt idea, add Bluetooth and the ability for games to override the real-world information. Perhaps an added sense of distance (just like the headband works in the real world) to walls and objects in an FPS game?

I have read the link and it didn't exactly convince me. Every person quoted in that article uses a horrid Strawman-argument. Taubes repeatedly says in interviews, debates and lectures that overeating obviously causes "excess accumulation of fatty tissue". The entire article seems to be based around the idiotic Strawman that that you can eat 10.000 calories of fat a day and loose weight which obviously isn't the case.

Agreed. This goes both ways though, especially when there is funding involved. In fact, most doctors risk huge lawsuits and revoked medical licenses if they recommend anything but the established high-carb diet and something does indeed go wrong (at least here in Scandinavia), no matter how stupid or unrelated it might be. This put together with the fact that ADA/AHA/ACA/etc. (just like the Norwegian government) can't suddenly start funding research trying to prove that said governmental instances has indeed been killing people for 40 years paints a pretty clear picture of why so many medical professionals are stuck in their dogma. Also, God complex. Again, due to my diabetes I know all to well that medical doctors and nutritionists quite nearly have a seizure if you so much as ask "why?" or "what if?" because there is no bloody way their 30-50 years old "facts" might be wrong.

Yes, sure. This is why Dr. Atkins, Dr. Hexeberg and Drs. Eades to name a few have treated thousands of deadly ill heart disease (inflammation of blood vessels) patients with a low carb diet and seen time and time again full recovery. This is why reducing carbohydrate intake lets fibromyalgia (basically inflammation of muscle tissue) sufferers get back to living life.

It all started in the 1950'es with Ancel Keys and his "7 countries study" that showed a clear correlation between heart disease mortality and fat intake, which was in fact a "22 countries study" that showed absolutely no such correlation at all. In fact, in the original data, countries like Greece and Norway consumed a huge amount of fat and had little to no heart disease at all but because of his need to be right and receive further funding, he did what any respected scientist would do and cherry-picked the data he needed.

You don't strike me as an idiot. Compare what your parents or grandparents ate to what you find on display in most supermarkets these days. My grandparents used quality meat, butter, eggs and vegetables, and potatoes that were worked off doing hard manual labor 12 hours a day 6 days a week (yes, carbohydrates need to be "burned" or they will be stored. The amount of work required though.. 30 minutes a day hardly burns a sporkfull of pasta). These days, more or less everything is labeled "Low fat!" or "No fat!" and is marketed as good and healthy for you which isn't a huge surprise. When the government says fat is bad, corporate entities will obviously flood the market with fat-reduced goods! Sure, a lot of people buy low-fat cookies instead of vegetables and fruit and bagels instead of bread but that doesn't invalidate my point. You aren't allowed to say that potatoes and bread are wholesome, good foods while sugar is bad because..

..a potato has the same effect on your blood glucose as 1/4 cup of pure sugar, only faster.

I'm not saying we're carnivores, but at least the idea that we are herbivores is completely debunked. We have no internal mechanism for digesting cellulose which is what herbivores mostly consume. You are correct that gorillas eat a lot of plant matter, but did you also know that they eat their feces several times to get any nutritional value from said plants? Humans have gotten to where we are by figuring out that a lot of stuff can be eaten if cooked, grains and meat included. This let us have an abundance of food available at all times because in summer/fall, we could eat fruits, vegetables, berries and berries and in winter, we could hunt and eat meats. It's a bit of a "chicken and egg"-scenario, but either way around we developed bigger brains so we could hunt, and the availability of and energy, vitamins and minerals contained in the fat and meat allowed us to survive the extra energy expenditure of having this larger brain.

We are omnivores dependent on our ability to cook the things we ingest, which gives us the ability to digest pretty much anything (except rocks and cellulose :P). This still doesn't change the fact that human kind has populated more or less the entire world, and the primitive peoples who eat low-carb and high-quality meats and fish are completely exempt from "diseases of civilization", nor does it change the fact that we populated areas of the planet where agriculture is neigh impossible (at a time when it wasn't even invented) because of our ability to survive and thrive on animal products.

Protein does, in fact, raise blood glucose levels because if they didn't, eating a chicken fillet would kill you. Insulin is secreted as a response to protein consumption, and insulin lowers the blood glucose regardless of whether or not there is enough carbohydrate present to resupply. This is counteracted by secretion of glucagon which tells the liver to release glucose so you don't die. In the case of a ketogenic diet where the livers sugar-store is empty, the liver will convert an appropriate amount of the ingested protein to glucose. Still, the insulin-response to protein is utterly irrelevant to this discussion, as the insulin-response to carbohydrate is orders of magnitude larger.

A few bits of important "trivia". What does any 15-years old diabetic girl do to shed weight? She stops taking her insulin. Fat pours off, and any physician can confirm this. On the other hand, if you repeatedly inject insulin in the same general area, a lump of fat will build up. Any type 1 diabetic can confirm this, and the effect is quite dramatic in as little as 2-3 weeks.

My point? The fact that insulin promotes fat storage in the presence of energy you can't burn off is indisputable. I'm talking short-term here, as when you eat carbohydrates your blood glucose goes up and it has to go somewhere because elevated blood glucose has some very nasty side effects. Your neurons and other tissues use their share, the liver can store a bit and your muscles can store a bit (but unless you do regular, hard exercise these stores are barely touched). So where else can the body put the excess? That's right, in the ever-receptive fat cells!

Holy crap, I meant "a pound of steak"! I was proof reading my post and clicked "Submit" instead of "Continue Editing". Sorry, I do not "eat stake". -__-'

*sigh* So what about Dr. Robert Atkins? Dr. Michael R. Eades and his wife Dr. Mary Dan Eades? Dr. Sofie Hexeberg? Professor Wolfgang Lutz? Dr. Fedon Lindberg? Dr. Torkil P. Andersen? I could go on, and on, and on, but you get the point.

Yes, it's almost impossible to gain weight without consuming too many calories total, but have you read or heard any of the science Mr. Taubes often quotes? There are many places around the world where children die from malnutrition while their mothers are overweight. Now, most mothers would easily starve themselves to feed their children. How do you explain the coexistence of malnutrition and obesity within a community?

Japanese people also work far harder than most us Westeners, in addition to eating a lot of fish, shellfish, eggs and meat. Their overall sugar consumption is also faaar lower than most so-called "Americanized" societies. Obviously you should get a fair bit of complex carbs and it's not impossible to live well with quite a bit of them (all else being fairly optimal).

As I said, inflammation is one of the primary causes of pretty much every "life-style" disease out there, which is a fact. Insulin is pro-inflammatory, as is an Omega-3/Omega-6 balance too far in favor of Omega-6. You know how to get a lot of Omega-3? Fish, shellfish, eggs, (grass fed) red meats, etc. You know who eats a lot of these things? The Japanese.

Also, what we have done in recorded history has nothing to do with our biology or evolution. The fact is, we've been growing crops for the past ~10.000 years which in evolutionary terms is just barely a blip on the radar. Hunter/gatherers collected fruits and berries when they could and fattened up for winter, but otherwise ate what the hunters brought home. After all, wild carbohydrates aren't exactly "in stock" all year around while meat and fish is.

You know who has the lowest incidents of heart disease, stroke, diabetes and so on? The Eskimo, Inuit, Masai, and other "primitive" populations who have next-to no carbohydrates and a ton of meat and fats in their diets. These people aren't special, they are part of the exact same gene pool as us.

I'm sick of this debate, because all that should be necessary is to look at rates of obesity and diabetes before and after we suddenly got all the fatphobic propaganda. Hint: diabetes was almost a non-issue and obesity levels had been stable for decades. Out goes the fat (obviously replaced by carbs, because they had to be replaced by something), and BAM, obesity/diabetes epidemic.

I am sick of hearing about the insulin response of protein too. As a Type 1 Diabetic, I can tell you, hell even show you that eating a pound of stake barely raises my blood glucose, while eating a couple of slices of whole wheat bread makes it go through the roof. In fact, on a diet of 20-30g of complex carbs a day I can make do with 25 units of 12-hour insulin a day, while one single meal of "healthy" bread with lean meats and margarin alone needs about 25 units of fast-acting insulin.

I don't even know why I bother responding, but if you live on a what is, in essence a starvation diet and do hard physical labor pretty much every waking hour of the day, well of course you're going to be skinny.