Recommended Posts

Mind blown: A great talk by David Eagleman about "sensory substitution" --- the notion that we can attach any sensors we want to our peripheral nerves and our brains will learn to understand them.
 
http://fora.tv/2013/09/28/the_future_of_being_human

There are also a couple of other talks on the video that aren't as interesting.

Darrell

P.S. Sorry, but I can't get the video to embed.

 

(Note from MSK: Here ya' go.)

 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Darrell,

Damn, that looks good.

I have Incognito: The Secret Lives of the Brain by David Eagleman, but I haven't read it yet. (Life is short and neuroscience is long, even neuroscience for the layman... :) )

This talk is right up my alley.

I will definitely be watching the video in the near future. Maybe even today, but not sure...

btw - I embedded the video for you. The embed code is kind of hidden on the video at the site and you have to enable html on the post to get it to work.

Michael

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Darrell,

I couldn't resist and I had to see it.

Really cool. I haven't delved deep into synesthesia before, but it does knock your socks off.

(Graak... at the end of the day, bottom line, I hate using clichés. :) )

David Eagleman is a lot younger than I imagined. I have one of his books, but I have not even examined it. Well... because of this video, I now have skimmed it a bit. And it just went up near the top in my "to read soon" pile.

It's great (to me) how he hits dead center in my notion that humans don't have sense organs for certain parts of reality. Or refinements of sense organs. I don't remember his exact words, but he was spot on when he said we think all of reality is the way we perceive it and that's a bias. I loved his comparisons to other animals that have different perspectives. His notion of the brain processing all sensory inputs in the same fundamental manner, irrespective of what those inputs are, is also the way I look at it.

I did not know the other two speakers, Natasha Vita-More and Jer Thorp (here is his blog).

I am not as up on transhumanism as I want to be, although I am drifting in that direction. I know Nathaniel Branden was messing around with this for a while. (In fact, I am a fan of a good friend of his, Ken Wilber, but I have only scratched the surface on reading Wilber's works.) I imagine Vita-More is a heavy-weight in that field, but I did not resonate with her as a person. And I wanted to. She just comes off a bit too snooty or condescending, but not in her words or even in the intention of her message. It's the body language and inflection of tone. Maybe it's just me...

Although it is hard to explain outright what Jeb Thorp is into without the reader watching the video, I do look at a site once in a while that reminds me of what he does: Information is Beautiful. This site is not connected with Thorp as far as I know and it is primitive compared to what he does, but it gives a notion. Also, Thorp's domain is metadata, not simple data for business or marketing or whatever like at that site.

Thanks for posting this video. I might look at some of the others from Syfy's Being Human 2013 conference.

Michael

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Darrell,

I couldn't resist and I had to see it.

Really cool. I haven't delved deep into synesthesia before, but it does knock your socks off.

(Graak... at the end of the day, bottom line, I hate using clichés. :smile: )

David Eagleman is a lot younger than I imagined. I have one of his books, but I have not even examined it. Well... because of this video, I now have skimmed it a bit. And it just went up near the top in my "to read soon" pile.

It's great (to me) how he hits dead center in my notion that humans don't have sense organs for certain parts of reality. Or refinements of sense organs. I don't remember his exact words, but he was spot on when he said we think all of reality is the way we perceive it and that's a bias. I loved his comparisons to other animals that have different perspectives. His notion of the brain processing all sensory inputs in the same fundamental manner, irrespective of what those inputs are, is also the way I look at it.

Hi Michael,

That's also the way I look at it and always have. But understanding something intellectually and understanding the implications are two different things and the notion that people are able to gain direct perceptual experience of the world through man-made sensors just blew me away. Our brains are amazing. I don't have Eagleman's book, but I should pick it up.

I did not know the other two speakers, Natasha Vita-More and Jer Thorp (here is his blog).

I am not as up on transhumanism as I want to be, although I am drifting in that direction. I know Nathaniel Branden was messing around with this for a while. (In fact, I am a fan of a good friend of his, Ken Wilber, but I have only scratched the surface on reading Wilber's works.) I imagine Vita-More is a heavy-weight in that field, but I did not resonate with her as a person. And I wanted to. She just comes off a bit too snooty or condescending, but not in her words or even in the intention of her message. It's the body language and inflection of tone. Maybe it's just me...

Although it is hard to explain outright what Jeb Thorp is into without the reader watching the video, I do look at a site once in a while that reminds me of what he does: Information is Beautiful. This site is not connected with Thorp as far as I know and it is primitive compared to what he does, but it gives a notion. Also, Thorp's domain is metadata, not simple data for business or marketing or whatever like at that site.

Thanks for posting this video. I might look at some of the others from Syfy's Being Human 2013 conference.

Michael

I wasn't as impressed with Vita-More. I think the word you're looking for is pretentious. I'm not sure she is as much of a heavy weight as she appears to be. I didn't see all of her graphics because I was doing something in the kitchen while I was listening to her talk, but I wasn't all that impressed nor did I feel like I learned much from her talk. Nothing against her, just didn't do anything for me.

Jeb Thorp's talk was interesting. Just viewing data in different ways can give a person insights that he (or she) might not have otherwise. It's not my area of interest, but it will probably be something coming to a computer near you in the near future. Who knows what wonderful applications will develop as a result of just looking at data in novel ways.

Darrell

P.S. Thanks for embedding the video. I couldn't find the html code on the site.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 1 year later...

Create an account or sign in to comment

You need to be a member in order to leave a comment

Create an account

Sign up for a new account in our community. It's easy!

Register a new account

Sign in

Already have an account? Sign in here.

Sign In Now