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Mind Over Machine
broKenfoLd writes "Monkeys moving robotic arms by manipulating a cursor on a computer screen, simply by thinking about it? Mice who cause their water tube to dispense some refreshing H2O just by wishing it? Signal processing and decoding has long been a dream of Matrix fans and lazy system administrators for years, and science is amazingly keeping up! Popular Science's Carl Zimmer has written a fascinating piece documenting recent progress in decoding brain signals and interpreting commands issued from thoughts alone. If you heard a single violin playing Beethoven's 5th, you would be able to tell what piece of music was being played even though the rest of the orchestra was not heard. In the same way, by monitoring a relatively few neurons, computers can recognize patterns and allow programming based on these patterns to say, know if a mouse is thinking about pushing his water lever.
You can pass the time waiting for Matrix-style video games and motionless system adminstration/utilization by reading the full article."
It would be interesting to have a cell-phone implant. You can call your friends and relatives, and always get them and know what they are thinking. And MAN, it would get annoying!
How about living in a way that our bodies were actually meant to. Exercising, working with our bodies, and communicating in person. Eventually we will just be sitting at home, in a lazy-boy with our brains plugged in to a network and all work from home. But, that would suck!
http://github.com/gbook/nidb
Popular Science, ya gotta luv'em. I just wish the track record was a bit better, after reading about the nextgen dirigibles off and on for years I'm just a bit disapointed, that sounded like so much fun. Probe in my head? Less so.
;-) but still...
Mod me down, off topic troll
I'd like to see a simple switch based on brain activity that would toggle on during sexual thought/arousal and toggle off in the absence of that.
Jesus sweet fucking christ I sure as hell don't want to see that! What the hell are you thinking?
Children could then be taught that if somebody's "face button" is glowing when that person is asking them to [get in the car|go play with a cute pet|have some candy|etc.], to run and get help.
Why don't we just teach children that when a "person is asking them to [get in the car|go play with a cute pet|have some candy|etc.], to run and get help" without the face-button shit?
GMD
watch this
They talk about using this for people with disabilities. This would be great for sure but ... interpret though.
;-)
they say in the article that they need to "train" the computer beforehand (no pun intended)
before it can
My question, which was not answered in the article, is: Are every brain emmitting the same signals for the same action
or do they need to "train" the program for every new user (monkey)? I would think that every individual have a somewhat
unique "brain signature" and if it is the case, how can a totally impaired person train a computer to use an artificial arm or
leg or whatever if anyway he isn't able to move a "joystick"?
Can the computer associated anything as an input to compare with the brain activity?
Could (let's say ) S. Hawking program the system by blowing in a tube harder or smoother for example?
Am I clear?
I'd rather be sailing...
The fact is, you can probably hook up whatever device to whatever portion of the brain (e.g. an artificial arm to you toenail brain area) and after some practice the subject will learn now to move it. So when they say "we don't see the brain as a mysterious organ anymore" they are telling you a bold-face lie.
Does the mouse get water by thinking about water, or by thinking something completely different that happens to trigger the machine? Once he figures it out, he'll do it again when he's thirsty.
$x='S24;r)>63/* h@<5+oZ)32"5cz';$me='phroggy'x$];
$x=~y+ -xz+\0-Tx+;print$_^chop$me for split'',$x;
Nice try, but women don't enjoy porn.
They've got this thing with emotional bonding and sensible family life.
Nice try, but I know several women who do enjoy porn. You're just not getting to know the right women.
Porn isn't about objectification. It's about visual stimulation. It does not exclude or preclude emotional bonding or sensible family life - unless you have an unhealthy preoccupation with it.
Just remember: everyone's different. Not everyone shares your particular problems with sex.
Coming soon - pyrogyra
The real exciting part isn't about the machine learning what the brain is doing, but rather the brain learning how the machine works. Near the end of the article, he talks about a cluster of neurons that grew in the monkey brains after the implants, and would fire only when the implants were active. The monkey's brain, in effect, sensed a new presence and adapted to it within minutes of its arrival.
If you've ever tried learning an activity that instinctive reflexes like skateboarding or ice skating or even playing the piano, you realize that no matter how much instruction someone gives you, at some point you feel like once you've done it enough, you just "get it". It's the whole muscle memory thing, how your brain encounters something new and just adapts, learning exactly which neurons to fire at the right moments to get the desired affect. Seeing neuron's grow and cluster especially for the robot arm is indicative that the monkey's brain can assimilate the arm and treat it as a natural extension as opposed to a external tool with an awkward interface. In geekspeak, it's like a kernel that, on detecting a new device, can probe it, learn the API, and build its own device driver automatically, without ever knowing anything other than that it's something on the other end of a bus.
Extending that line of thought, who's to say that if the signal processing and classification algorithms advanced far enough to classify even our thoughts, our brains wouldn't be able to instinctively learn how the mind-readers worked and retaliate in return?
My experience with women is just that they don't like (or won't admit liking) porn. I've never met a woman who would not scoff at my browsing usenet for porn, for instance.
In most cases, it just requires communication about the subject. If you explain why you like porn, it's not longer a problem.
No, it doesn't mean you love them any less.
No, you don't necessarily want them to do those things.
No, they're not being screwed*; they get paid thousands of dollars for this.
Explain that it's visual stimulation, and it means that you're not pawing at them for sex all the time - that it gives you options. Explain how men basically want sex all of the time (believe it or not, most women do too... it just surfaces in different ways - it's more emotional than physical).
And if you're going to watch porn with a woman, don't go for usenet stuff or bargain bin video store pornos. Get yourself some of the classy Adam & Eve stuff designed for couples, which actually have a real plot (or at least, more of a plot than most), and pick the video based on what you know turns her on.
You'll be surprised. Sure, not all women will react that way - a lot will react exactly as you've described. But the only way to truly find out is through in-depth, honest communication. And that takes effort.
* erm... well, you know what I mean.
Coming soon - pyrogyra