Dan Lloyd wrote:
>Hi,
>
>Well, it is quite simple to fool the brain as it does not bother to
>comprehend certain material. I read an article in New Scientist where they
>had an actor approach people and ask them for directions. During the
>conversation, some "workmen" passed between the two parties with an opaque
>sheet. At the same time, the actor was replaced with another person. I seem
>to remember that 40% of people did NOT notice that the person they were
>talking to had changed.
........

Well, there "are" many aspects to the issue. This one is mainly about
paying attention.
=============

>
>This also occurred with a gorilla-suited man crossing a basketball
>court......when people were shown a video of this and told to count the
>ball bounces, most did not notice the suited man. Only on the replay, where
>they were free from counting did they notice......then they said they could
>not believe that it was the same video.
>

This one is also about paying attention, plus the fact that, in many
ways, people can only do one thing at a time - specifically things
like thinking >1 thought or holding >1 conversation at a time.

The fact that you can drive, listen to the radio, and talk on the
cell phone simultaneously just means some things are committed to
memory/habit [driving] while others cannot be [carrying on a realtime
conversation]. After all, you certainly could not do all of these
things simultaneously when you were first learning how to drive.
Overload.

Plus you are not always "consciously" paying attention to everything
you are doing - rather things come and go. If a dog runs in front of
the car, then you stop talking and pay attention to the driving/etc,
then go back to talking after the event is over.

Interesting that, despite our having trillions of parallel neuronal
computations, we can really only give our attention to one thing at
a time. [this is prolly a "crucial" point too].
=============


>So, you could argue that most of what you experience from day to day is
>simply what the brain is creating from memory mainly because it does not
>have enough processing power to create every scene that it sees.


Actually, I think most of what you "experience" is from direct sensory
input directly bathing the sensory areas of the cortex, but it is
simultaneously compared against memory to determine whether it makes
any sense or not - or is a new and unique experience or not.

Related to this, I am reading a book called "The Creative Loop"
by Erich Harth, where he talks about "blindsight" among other things.
In people with a damaged visual cortex, they presented lights/objects
in the blind areas of the visual field, and the people were actually
able to both point to and recognize the objects, even though they
said they "saw" nothing.

This is a not a miracle, rather due to the fact that radiations from
the eye go to several parts of the brain. What "is" important is
that the subjects had no "conscious" awareness of the objects even
though information was received. [so this says something about how
consciousness actually works].

This brings up the whole idea that 90% or so of what the brain does
is totally below the level of consciousness or awareness. So maybe
what this says is that "consciousness" itself isn't really all that
magical a thingie. It is really just the ability to sense new
input [visual, tactile, whatever] and compare it against stored
memories, and to simultaneously "realize" you are doing it.

At any rate, Harth makes a case that this last is really what
consciousness/awareness amounts to. There is really not a "little
man" [ie, homunculus] inside your brain looking at a movie screen.
==============


 Scale this
>down and you might have "simpler" animals only being able to process very
>limited amounts of visual information - they actually have to use their
>imagination or memory much more to recreate what they are seeing (although
>they are not, as they probably never saw it in much detail in the first
>place). (Then again, do you need to have vision to be self-aware? I think
>not)
>

Actually, I think it is exactly the opposite.

Lower animals have essentially "no" stored memories, but simply
process input in realtime, in the limited way allowable by their
limited neuroanatomy. They simply react and react and react, with
very little "comparison" or "reflection" to past activities taking
place. Some animals do have "limited" learning abilities, and in
those cases there is some comparison, and the amount is probably
graded in relation to where the animal is in the animal hierarchy.
===============


>I wouldnt like to get into the conjectures on what is "mind" and "soul"
>because it will probably end up with a debate on religion. I will say,
>though, that "lower" forms (say cats/dogs/pigs etc) of life can be said to
>have a distinct personality (arguably a soul).....as life becomes more
>simple, you could argue that "personality" begins to approach programmed
>responses to stimulus (maybe these life forms do not have a soul?). On the
>basis of that, do humans just have a more complicated set of programmed
>responses?
>

As mentioned before, I think there is a continuum of consciousness,
awareness, whatever you want to call it, in the animal kingdom. The
level is [roughly] analogous to looking at the world thru a shutter
with different F/stops. Lower animals have a tiny view, we have a
relatively large view.

As Harth says, the ability to manipulate realtime input along many
modalities, and compare it in realtime to "stored" memories is the
key to why we are so intelligent compared to lower animals, which
do not have the same anatomy. They lack the large parallel sensory
bandwidth, as well as the large central store of past memories, as
well as the ability to manipulate and compare same, and take
successful actions. With them it is more a sense-react hardwired
pathway. Apparently, all 3 capabilities develop roughly in parallel
as you go up the ladder in the animal kingdom.
========


>As usual, this is just an open ended discussion and no one can ever be
>correct without accepted proof or evidence - there can only be conjecture.
>Still, that is half the fun.

Right on.

[BTW, this does all have something to do with designing bots].

- dan
===========

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