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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."
Saw this on HDNet... very very very cool..
I esp like the lady with the leads out of both sides of the back of her head....
She looked very Borg-Like.
...this is some neat shit.
:)
Personally, I find it facinating that the brain can so readily adapt to adding and removing hardware ( limbs ), but reading about it is even cooler.
What other computer do you know can learn how to use foriegn devices without a driver disk?
Mod me down with all of your hatred and your journey towards the dark side will be complete!
the best of these kind of devices (devloped in nasa labs) can only do 95% accuracy. sure that might be fine for say playing a video game(unless its fast pace), but if you tried to walk with 95% accuracy, you'd be the but of more jokes then the "how do you get bob dole out of a tree, wave to him" jokes.
but over all its really cool that they are even able to do this at all.
Printing out poster-sized Pr0n just by visualizing it?
Everybody... The day is now!!!
The original generic sig.
How do synapses encode the need for pr0n or cartoons? That's really the question.
And I ran him over with my SCV?
"I didn't run him over!"
"Did you THINK about running him over?"
*long pause*
I didn't run him over!
I mean, the rat can think about water, and get some water. But a rat's mind is way simpler.
Have you ever thought about suicide? Now imagine if when you thought about it a machine would come and kill you. Also I don't know about you, but I can't control my mind completely, sometimes I have thoughts that are completely unrelated with what I am doing... I really don't think I could trust a machine to make my thoughts come true, I'm sure in the future machines will be able to interpret the signals in your brain with a 99% precision, I just can't trust my own mind.
If we can control the machines, can someone else come back through the machine an control me??? Could I be hacked??? Would I have to have a firewall in my head???
Evolution or ID?
I remember a scene from "Macross Plus" Where two batteloids where flying and one of them was "neuro controlled". In a part, the neurocontrolled batteloid falls very fast and the other batteloid saves it from crushing into the ground, but as the "neuro" pilot regains control of his mecha, he wishes the other pilot was down(there is some grudge between pilots) and inmediately the mecha obeys the wish and wrecks the old batteloid!!. Be carful of what you wish, if you are hooked to a machine, you might get it!.
"The quality of life is inversely proportional to the number of keys on your keyring."
Now it's reading the brain. But eventually it will be reading a deeper part of the brain, and not needing the rest of it.
-I am an elective eunuch.
This could have a potentially incredible impact on impaired and disabled people. Imagine if Stephen Hawking would be able to work at the same speed his mind seems to function at? However, what about Mind through Machine over Mind? Put your helmet on, jack in, and remote control that fish - imagine the long-time deep-sea discoveries we could make - maybe even find a live Architeuthis?
Quidquid latine dictum sit, altum sonatur.
If you read 'The Light of Other Days' by Arthur C Clarke & Stephen Baxter you'll get a good insight into the possible consequences. While the book is centred around the idea that wormholes can be used to view anyone at any time, knowing what people think would have the same effect of first causing terrible unrest but eventually destroying barriers and allowing everyone to work together. It's a very interesting read and I feel that every day we get closer to that reality.
This does not answer how brain works at all :-) As a motor control neuroscientist by trade, I can tell that finding out what the brain actually doing has little to do with these neat things.
:-)
This is not to say that it's not important -- all kinds of prosthetic devices can be made to help people with disabled limbs or other parts of the motor control system -- so it's a great benefit to those people. The important thing is that these devices are still controlled by the human brain, and nobody has a good idea how.
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.
The mystery would be demonstrated to be solved when we can build a computer with massively parallel and slow (up to 1kHz) elements that can match human performance in tasks like tracking, reaching, as well as learning those tasks.
So far, all the beatiful performance of the cool gadgets is accomplished by super-fast feedback and super-fast computing elements. Our neurons are ways slower, but they do much better. Therefore, the whole essense and mystery of the brain is how to connect 10^10 shitty elements into a great learnable machine. Algorythms and parallelism are still the mystery of the brain, even if the popular science magazines claim otherwise
Still waiting for the implantable math co-processor, ideally with optically interfaced plotting/visualization capability ...
Imagine the possibilities.
Lurking in the desert
Then, before you know it, you've thought, "\rm -r *"
Okay, I saw something like this (minus the thought part) happen in real life once upon a time. A friend and I were just talking about people accidentally typing "\rm -r *" in the lab when suddenly, someone using the Sun boxes yelled "oh shit!" because he absentmindedly typed what we said.
Monsters, John! Monsters... from the id!
First you need something else!
Funny but if something did happen, the system would be a failure.
When you "think" about doing something, you are deciding via pros and cons, deciding outcome, looking at all options, recounting experience, true desire... on wether to do something or not. When you really decide to act, you act. That signal to act causes you to act. Thinking about acting is not acting. The final go ahead trigger to act is what matters. How else could you make a logical decision about anything? If you take out the thought process involved, we all would be living in a completely different world.
Consider the mouse and the bottle. If the mouse really wanted to get a drink, he would go over and get one. It's not like some force is holding him back and he keeps thinking about it but he just (slow superhero struggling voice) can't moooooooove.
Bad boys rape our young girls but Violet gives willingly.
Cool. (not)
...}
We could use this to build psionic exercise devices which restore our latent mind-over-matter powers.
Oh no. Psionic Wars, here we come.
{Honestly, I'm beginning to see what all the fuss is all about over The American Beast, in those Middle East sects
; -- the corruption of government starts with its secrets. a truly free people keep no secrets. --
This sort of reminds me of Ursula K. Le Guin's story, "The Lathe of Heaven". For the uninitiated, "The Lathe of Heaven" takes place in Portland, Oregon in the year 2002. Its main character, an insignificant working class man named George Orr (Bruce Davison who appears in "The X-Men" movie), is plagued by 'effective dreaming', where his dreams literally come true.
"Who are in control, they are not in control of anything - they don't even control themselves!" - Glen Beck
I'm sure most coders out there have dreamed of this ability for years. No more clunky keyboard interface to slow you down.
Typos would be a thing of the past. Imagine scanning though some source and noticing that you assigned 100 to a var rather than 10, before you can even refocus your eye on the line the value has been changed.
Grep would be a thing of the past! Need to change all the instances of a function name? Think it and its done.
I want to be the lawnmower man!
Apple free since 1990!
Look developers, just get speech recognition running already, willya? If what your software does to my luminous eloquence is any example of the current state of interface tech, that thinking-cap UI is going to lead to some pretty psychedelic dyslexic synaesthesia in photoshop once it gets that olfactory plugin I've been waiting for...
Damn those pesky terrorists
computers can recognize patterns and allow programming based on these patterns to say, know if a mouse is thinking about pushing his water lever. ...
what would happen to the mouse if, at long term, she knows that by thinking about pushing the lever she don't have to push that lever anymore, the computer can't find that previous pattern because the mice have forgotten the use of the lever. thus reprogramming is re-required. seems like an infinite loop
Doh !
What might be more useful, and even MORE controversial and ethically complex, is developing an implant that would suppress those thoughts before the offender has a chance to act on them at all.
Better yet, what happens when you feel like destroying the computer. Will it self destruct, or act in self defense?
It's good to use your head, but not as a battering ram.
Screw that "glowing face button" sissy BS. Impure-thought triggered testicle clamps are far more effective, for both prevention and deterrence. Purchase them here.
Funny but if something did happen, the system would be a failure.
Quite true. And it would only work with a consious effort I would think.
After all, when you lift your arm, the other arm does not also automatically lift. Your brain distinguishes between the right arm and the left arm.
I would think that this would work the same way. Just because you are thinking about "format c:" does not mean that you are acting on it.
The brain will learn new pathways, and you will have an extra "appendage" which you can control directly.
As an aside, you cannot move JUST the tip of a finger. Usually the whole finger (both joints) bend. Yet a friend of mine who has played a cello for many, many years CAN move just the tip of the left index finger. Not the right, just the left. That is one of the fingers used to select which notes you are playing. Over the years his brain learned the pathways to reach just the tip muscles.
- - - - - - - - - - -
I am a programmer. I am paid to produce syntax not grammar. Deal with it.
What this really opens up is the possibility of training animals to operate machinery. Imagine taking an aquatic animal (such as a dolphin) and using it (or its brain) as the central component in a spaceship autopilot.
By stimulating various parts of the brain (including pleasure centres), one could train it to respond to your input in the way you want - it already has the hardware to deal with three dimensional maneuvering, timing and calculating trajectories and intercepts.
This was used in a novel called Space, in which GM Squid controlled a space probe. In the novel, the squid became smart enough to do a runner with it.I would look up the author's name for you all, but try typing "Science Fiction" and "Space" into Google and see what happens
Aide-toi, le Ciel t'aidera - Jeanne D'Arc.
I'm sure most of you are aware the brain is a very complex system. I have a theory. The brain tries to relay information to the rest of our body as much as it can, although the rest of our body is complex I doubt it comes even close to the brain in terms of complexity. The brain can be thought of as a monitoring system; it relays information back and forth within the body. I think it is very conceivable to think that the brain is able to measure a lot more about our body in general than it is able to show the rest of the body. This means that in theory it is able to measure minor changes within the body (such as the start of a cold) before the changes reach a level deemed critical by the "system". Once a signal is deemed critical your body starts feeling it (such as the pains associated with a cold). Assuming my theory is correct why would it throw away such information? It is like any other monitoring systems; you just cannot keep all information and affect your entire system because of it. Your body quietly attemps to fight off a virus early on without your knowledge because of information relayed back and forth between it and the brain. If it is succesfull you will never be aware of it, should it reach a "critical" stage you are aware of it as you feel the symptoms. The body would not be able to handle all of these signals; no matter how complex the humain body is, there must be billions of signals alone. Your body is obviously aware of the cold before you are since it transmits information to parts of your body to produce the cells capable of fighting infections (as you can see here I'm not fammiliar with all the mechanisms of a cold but I'm sure I'm probably not too far off). Anyways; I'm leaving you with this thought: What if your body is able to detect the "Intrusions" of a cancer as it forms still in a stage that is very easy to kill? What if it can detect a foreign entity (such as the virus that causes AIDS?) What if the Brain wave patterns can be found....what if?
You think it's funny, but that's how you actually program in a stack-based language (Forth, Postscript, ...).
Did you know you can fertilize your lawn with used motor oil?
It's called "Ghost in the Shell" and discusses issues like this (it's an anime BTW). In the case of the article, though, there isn't any feedback or direct neural stimulation, so now you couldn't be hacked.
While the book is centred around the idea that wormholes can be used to view anyone at any time, knowing what people think would have the same effect of first causing terrible unrest but eventually destroying barriers and allowing everyone to work together.
Every action being publicly known would cause you to think through everything you do. Every thought being public would cause you to fear thinking too much - about ideas that might be too controversial, sexual fantasies you might want to indulge in, feelings of hatred and hurt towards someone and so on. If your thoughts take you too far, perhaps you'll be an Enemy of the People(TM).
I don't think it'll be a better world. I think peer pressure and desire of conformity would mold people into the same shape, strangling creativity, initiative and independent thought. Not to mention what sects and such could do - brainwash initiates until they too are true believers.
The only way it would be a good idea is if you could directly point to an action it would cause, in order to prevent it from happening - much like Minority Report. But the film convieniently circumvents the issue since they see nothing but thoughts that do result in murder.
What if instead, they would have to monitor every thought, destroy all privacy, and couldn't tell if a perpetrator really would go through with it until the very last second? To intervene at the mere thought of committing a crime? That's the thing about thought crime - if you want it undone, it is undone. If you no longer want to kill the guy, well then it simply hasn't happened and won't happen. And the mere thought of it, I think everyone is guilty of - if even for just a flash.
Kjella
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
Imagine going head-to-head (hehe) with someone in a game where you both put on your "mind caps" and you battle it out... and the winner is simply the guy who can think the fastest. Forget moving a goofy little thumbstick around and pressing buttons. Imagine the feeling of playing some FPS game and moving around in the game just by sheer willpower. Wow. With good enough graphics, you could probably forget that it's a game pretty easily.
Cool, but a little scary, too.
What the species as a whole does blindly may not be the right choice for an individual. For example, let's say that in Christmas 2012, the hot new gizmo is Microsoft Neural Implant 1.0. Huge numbers of people rush out and get one, and brain surgeons are swamped by the number of requests for implantation (a self-implantation feature is scheduled for version 2.0). Those in a real hurry fly to India and get the implant done cut rate, in Bangalore.
For a while, everything's cool and people walk around sending email and collaborating on projects in their heads. But then the great neural implant worm of 2013 hits, and billions of people are either lobotomized or killed.
At that point, the people who followed the OP's advice, "How about living in a way that our bodies were actually meant to. Exercising, working with our bodies, and communicating in person", are in pretty good shape. Evolutionarily speaking, they took a risk in not going along with what the rest of the species was doing - since they couldn't function effectively in corporations filled with wireheads, and this could have had a negative effect on their survival - but it worked out well for them in the end.
The point is, what's natural could perhaps be defined as whatever works over the long run. Cannibalism, for example, doesn't appear to be natural, since so few societies that try it seem to survive. There are many other "unnatural" behaviors which have similarly died out.
It's true that it's natural for us to try new things, but that doesn't mean that anything we can come up with is good/appropriate/natural, at least until those things have been proven to work to either enhance or at least not impede survival on a species-wide scale, in the long run.