Gingerbread Man on 7/9/2010 at 16:20
I think so, yeah. Something along those lines, anyway. My theory is that this weird "paranormal" shit exists for the most part, but that it's about as magical and spooky as being able to catch a baseball when it's thrown to you. We just haven't figured out the psychology of it.
Phatose on 7/9/2010 at 16:21
All sensory input? But it's just a little section of the brain?
Weird. You think about the kind of filtration necessary to separate the noise from the information, and you'd expect it to need a giant hocking support network just to make anything remotely approaching a reasonable output.
Or is it simpler then that? Does this thing filter on the level of "Truck headed this way" or the level of "Loud, big, smelly, bright, and getting bigger?"
Gingerbread Man on 7/9/2010 at 16:34
It's really more about liminal thresholds (lol dept of redundancy dept) and being preconscious I can't imagine that it's able to semantically or conceptually differentiate input. But it is the signal-noise comb in ways we can't quite fathom on account of the nature of what's going on. It's some very tricky research to elicit the answer to a question that amounts to "what am I currently unaware of?"
Not easy. Fun, but not easy.
My other thought, shared by some actual, active scientists, is that a malfunction in this physical structure may result in the more intractable behavioral problems found in autistic people. Poor filtering equals overload, and people with autism frequently have a real problem with sensory stuff. It overwhelms them, shuts them down. Or something.
And yeah, I flash on Alien-finders when I talk about the pulvinar nuclei, too. :D
DDL on 7/9/2010 at 16:36
Quote Posted by Gingerbread Man
(eg a retinal cell is maximally sensitive: It can detect one single photon)
To be a massive pedant, it CAN detect a single photon...but under pretty specific circumstances (i.e. fully dark-adapted eyes in pitch black conditions). Under normal operating conditions it takes a lot more photons to cause it to fire. Plus, since it can only "fire nerve impulses or not fire nerve impulses", it acts as an inherent signal simplifier. Still pretty impressive, admittedly. Yay g-proteins!
But that's just me being a dick. The rest is awesome, and yes, scary.
Phatose: a lot of sensory processing gets laid down pretty early in life. A newborn baby has a whole fuckton more neurons than you or I do, but as it learns and pathways get established, it slowly pares them down to a select few, well-used networks. Plus some things are largely instinctive (perception of motion, etc). There are some interesting studies on "blind from birth" people who have recovered their sight (usually cataracts and the like, in areas with poor medical services): if you show a normal person a square superimposed over a circle, they say "it's a square and a circle". These patients haven't learnt any of that basic pattern recognition, don't make the connection, and thus report seeing various discrete shapes, like a square with a semicircle cut out of it, a semicircle, and a second semicircle (or whatever). If you make the circle start
moving, on the other hand...they can spot it.
Hang on, I'll find the link...
(
http://www.ted.com/talks/pawan_sinha_on_how_brains_learn_to_see.html)
FUN!
Phatose on 7/9/2010 at 16:52
Well, if "Circle overlapping square" requires learning, then concepts like truck sure ain't going on in pre-conscious filtering.
That said, how the hell do you usefully filter data with no concept of the contents of the data?
Is the pulvinar the part that filters out pain when shock sets in?
demagogue on 7/9/2010 at 17:27
This thread is like the elephant in the room just shot himself in the face with an RPG; there's elephant goo everywhere; and *then* everybody starts a calm, interesting and engaging conversation about something the elephant mentioned.
Well, since it is an interesting topic... I'll have you all know I have been quietly working on a robot for the past year or so, and I feel I have made some (little) progress on a workable system for awareness and working-memory. Not full-blooded consciousness, mind-you, but a decent system to pull diverse strands of data from all affective & effective modules into working-memory buffers for "use" ... loosely based on the ACT-R model, which is basically glorified data structures that let data be carried from one module to another with simple rules for entering stuff into and clearing out the buffer according to the "goal" system (so attention is like a grand "goal" pursuer). But I found the ACT-R model lacking in a lot of ways. We don't pay attention to just the things we want; rather the opposite, it's the job of attention to bring info to our minds that have the potential to affect our goals. I thought what the ACT-R system needed was a system built not on rule-sets and goals, but based on the relative expected utility of some types of data over others (utility being index of things that make the bot feel "good"; the inspiration here is Glimcher's model of the LIP area of the brain, which guides eye-saccades (& attention) based on the REU of looking at certain areas over others. I'm just applying that lesson to attention as a whole).
It was then that my robot began to see the world as it was, and not just as he wanted it to be.
One way I read GBM's theory is that what we sometimes call "psychic" experience is actually a breakdown or slip of normal experience, so that we get glimpses of the real magic that goes on behind the curtain. Everyday normal experience is actually the wondrous magical part; the fact that the sensational parts are hidden and it all seems so "normal" and "pedestrian" maybe the most wondrous part of all.
Edit: Fortunately nothing I said, building robots in my spare time and all, really expresses anything about my personality ... does it?
Queue on 7/9/2010 at 17:29
You better make sure that thing learns some religion.
Phatose on 7/9/2010 at 17:38
Quote Posted by demagogue
Edit: Fortunately nothing I said, building robots in my spare time and all, really expresses anything about my personality ... does it?
Not unless the robot has tits.
Kolya on 7/9/2010 at 17:55
You could always nail the robot to a stick to teach him religion.
Queue on 7/9/2010 at 18:02
:laff:
