Psychicasm: we can all see 1/10th of a second into the future |
Loading ...Think I’m going to get my own 800 psychic line going. Call me and pay me several dollars a minute so I can predict what happens 1/10th of a second into the future.
Bummer that I’m not special, a study says you have this not so mystical power too:
Researcher Mark Changizi of Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in New York says it starts with a neural lag that most everyone experiences while awake. When light hits your retina, about one-tenth of a second goes by before the brain translates the signal into a visual perception of the world.
Next time you’re complaining about lag on your game du jour, remember even you have lag. How about that? Somebody get Madam Mortuus The Misfortunate Teller on the line.
TD, if this lag is a physiological fact, then we’re seeing into the past, not the future, since all sorts of things could happen in 1/10th of a second, and I wouldn’t see them until after the fact.
If your sensory experience lags behind the action, you’re seeing the past, not the future.
Comment by Vince Williams — June 4, 2008 @ 7:24 pm PST
It means that we humans are doomed to never truly apprehend even the present, much less prognosticate the future.
Comment by Vince Williams — June 4, 2008 @ 7:30 pm PST
Vince - reread the article, it’s pretty fascinating. What is happening is our mind is making up what it thinks will happen 1/10th of a second before it actually happens so as to seem in real time. It’s not a past thing from my understanding at least.
Comment by TDavid — June 5, 2008 @ 9:00 am PST
It’s the reason you aren’t smacked in the face with a baseball — for example. You see it coming at you and you *know* it’s going to hit you if you don’t do something.
Comment by TDavid — June 5, 2008 @ 9:01 am PST
TD, the article implies that Changizi arrived at his theory by thought experiments— I’d like to see the results of his empirical research in Cognitive Science so I could better understand his ideas.
If he’s right, though, why wouldn’t our brains ’see’ a baseball thrown by a pitcher who wound up and then dropped the ball at the last moment before launch (this is a thought experiment) in a deliberate attempt to fake the viewer out.
Following Ghangizi’s logic, it seems that our brains would anticipate the expected follow through and would ‘hallucinate’ a false future of the ball being thrown before it fell to the ground.
Comment by Vince Williams — June 5, 2008 @ 3:11 pm PST
Maybe something like that happened when my finger typed G instead of C.;-)
Comment by Vince Williams — June 5, 2008 @ 3:14 pm PST
Your example or my interpretation of the article seem flawed (or both). The ball coming ‘at’ us would be an event that wouldn’t alter in 1/10th of a second. If he dropped the ball it wouldn’t ever be coming at us, thus no prediction that it might hit one in the face. 1/10th of a second is pretty fast and it would take more than that to register it leaving somebody’s hand and moving toward us, unless maybe my hand was right in front of your nose to begin with. I should have included a JavaScript that showed just how fast that is in the post for fun, but it’s easy enough to code something that showed just how fast that actually is.
Comment by TDavid — June 5, 2008 @ 5:00 pm PST
I have to admit that I was trigger-happy and fired off the comment last night without reading the article. Changizi’s theory is provocative— I’m still trying to wrap my mind around the idea.
The article was just a teaser, really.
It’s not how fast 1/10th second is or the counterintuitive nature of his theory that ‘throws’ me (sorry), it’s the philosophical implications for our sensory experience of the universe and what it says about how much we perceive as reality is created by our own minds.
It’s a lot to ponder.
This is why I read MakeYouGoHmm— you can never see it coming.;-)
Comment by Vince Williams — June 5, 2008 @ 7:01 pm PST
I am going to take the article and share it with my class. We are pursuing our speech and language degrees and neurology is a topic of interest to us. I hope it generates half the discussion it did here. I always enjoy reading the replies. This is where the smart people hang out.
Comment by UptakeInOH — June 5, 2008 @ 10:34 pm PST
Read this in the New Scientist. It is certainly something quite hard to comprehend
Check this out. It’s an interesting read.
http://www.thisislondon.co.uk/news/article-23395112-details/Is+this+REALLY+proof+that+man+can+see+into+the+future/article.do
John
Comment by john — June 8, 2008 @ 6:18 pm PST