Thanks very much for your thoughts!
"We can use EEG to intentionally activate an actuator that moves a body at a
distance, and so experience some sense of telekinesis that may seem supernatural
if we are unaware of the underlying mechanisms, if we do not have a "natural"
model of what is happening --we may generate/experience a supernatural model.I
am presently developing this technology to simulate the evocation of a spirit
into an artificial body (robot)."
please say more about this!
Joshua, you also wrote:
"This I suppose relates to your comment about humans sensing each other in a
room, e.g., you may have a "feeling" about someone which (by this model) means
you are processing information about that person, below your conscious
threshold. The difference between that and how computers communicate at a
distance is that computers do not yet have a conscious threshold in this sense;
the computer does not have a (self-)reflective gaze and cannot (genuinely) say,
"I feel something is good/bad about this situation, although I cannot say [i.e.
infer from available data] why I feel this way."
Indeed, intution has been said to be proven as something that can be trained
(and trained wrongly). Sadly I remember this only from a science TV programme
and have to reference at hand. But perhaps we are not that far off of simulating
intuition (in human robotic relations) as we might think? As new technologies
are being developed. Sensing the other persons emotion comes from face
recognition of emotions, muscle tensions, right? TU delft Robotics department
is currently working on natural tracking, meaning no black and white markers
needed anymore. Perhaps soon with facerecognition technology, it will not be so
hard. From there, something like 'common sense' ;-) (a very important sense?)
might take place. Calculating if a person shows 'angry muscles', holding a knife
high with raised pulse...might a robot not think: % 'bad'? A random percentage
based on data, simulating common sense, simulating a sense of empathy? In a way
it does not matter how much % is chosen, as one will 'learn' after that again to
make a new %, thus determining the 'character' of the robot. Results that end
often in the negative (below 50%) or in the positive (above 50%).
For instance robot makes a random guess: Bad = 75% > 'ask are you ok?'. I mean ,
is that not a question we ask, because we are taught to ask it? Do we need
consciousness for that? In that sense the '%' itself might be a form of robotic
qualia? Ergo, how do we know if one robots calculation to 75% is the same as
another robot's calculation that ends in 75%? And is the calculation itself a
form of 'sense experience' (for the Robots)?
I might be trailing too far here, but I'm interested in how thinking in % and
adding a form of duality (%hot, %cold, good bad) could simulate our senses and
perceptions.
PS Your comments reminded me of the magic balls that can guess your thoughts,
perhaps I might integrate that low technique in an artistic narrative in a way
that involves the wearer of the digital 'LSD'...hmm.
That magic trick the computer does is the first and only one I actually know
how to do, learned it when I was about 9...its about the maths...:)
Real nice of you to bring magic into the discussion in general. I actually
thought about magic for my project before in a different context, I wanted a
magician as a consultant, but more to talk to about how to divert attention to
compensate with slow rendering of video processing...
Regards,
Jennifer
________________________________
From: Joshua Madara <jamadara@gmail.com>
To: YASMIN DISCUSSIONS <yasmin_discussions@estia.media.uoa.gr>
Sent: Tue, January 18, 2011 4:50:46 PM
Subject: Re: [Yasmin_discussions] Around Simulation II - Simulated Senses and
the Un-Simulatable
Jennifer,
You ask some questions of interest to me, as my own interest in
simulation is in engineering machines that _do_ magic (in the
ritual/paranormal/supernatural sense, although there is some overlap
with legerdemain and such). We can readily simulate many of the active
behaviors of magic (many rituals can be expressed algorithmically),
but how to simulate the states that those actions are intended to
invoke and evoke?
The trouble I see with simulating telepathy is of having a model of
how telepathy works. But it may do to realize that the experience of
telepathy as anomalous cognition or communication, is anomalous to an
observer. When a mentalist appears to read your mind by studying
various clues that you are unaware of, she appears to have some
uncanny access to your thoughts. That is, in a sense, a simulation (of
something truly uncanny, if such a thing exists), and it applies as
well to computer programs that seem to read your mind (e.g.
http://www.cs4fn.org/mathemagic/magicshuffles/).
The situation is similar with EEG technologies such as the Emotiv
EPOC, NeuroSky/Mattel Mindflex. We can use EEG to intentionally
activate an actuator that moves a body at a distance, and so
experience some sense of telekinesis that may seem supernatural if we
are unaware of the underlying mechanisms, if we do not have a
"natural" model of what is happening -- we may generate/experience a
supernatural model. I am presently developing this technology to
simulate the evocation of a spirit into an artificial body (robot).
Getting back to telepathy, it is possible that what we experience as
tele-pathy (emotions over a distance?) and intuition is
sub/unconscious nervous activity, in which case the more we learn
about such activity, the better we should be able to simulate it. We
may imagine a robot that processes my subtle body "language" in such
as way that it seems to be able to "read" me, to intuit my state, my
intentions, etc. This I suppose relates to your comment about humans
sensing each other in a room, e.g., you may have a "feeling" about
someone which (by this model) means you are processing information
about that person, below your conscious threshold. The difference
between that and how computers communicate at a distance is that
computers do not yet have a conscious threshold in this sense; the
computer does not have a (self-)reflective gaze and cannot (genuinely)
say, "I feel something is good/bad about this situation, although I
cannot say [i.e. infer from available data] why I feel this way."
Sincerely,
Joshua Madara
On Mon, Jan 17, 2011 at 5:20 PM, Jennifer Kanary Nikolov(a)
<jenniferkanary@yahoo.com> wrote:
> Dear All,
>
> Hope you are doing well. Looking forward to another wonderful discussion!
Every
> time we think something cannot be simulated, it turns out that maybe we
> can...so what is un-simulatable now? Imagination? Intuition?
>
>
> As we await the first reactions, let me put forward my personal questions as
an
> opening teaser that you are free to ignore if in the meantime other
interesting
> things have been posted :)
>
>
> Today I spent three hours in a meeting with people who have experience with
> hallucinations and delusions, diagnosed as psychotic or schizophrenic, as you
> might remember, as an artist I am trying to simulate the subjective experience
> of this extreme mental state with a kind of Digital LSD...here the sense of
> self, sense of time and space, and sense of reality play an important role,
but
> shall we consider such senses in this discussion?
>
> One of the conclusions of the advisers who were present, was that I should aim
> to simulate Telepathy (the idea that you can insert thoughts into others and
> that they can do that to you). A phenomenon considered as a key symptom. In
> psychosis one often feels a connection to the world, and that all information
> comes in at a high speed on a kind of wired network. Now I ask myself and put
> this question forward to you. How might we simulate a so called 'six sense'
>such
> as Telepathy?
>
>
> And another murmur....computers can read the mind of other computers...and
> transfer over a distance. How is remote sensing by computers different than
>that
> of humans sensing each other in a room?
>
>
> Oh, and one more reference, there is a professor that seems to be able to
> simulate the sense of presence with what is often refered to as The God
Helmet:
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/God_helmet
>
>
> Regards,
>
> Jennifer Kanary Nikolov(a)
>
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