Comments on: Psychicasm: we can all see 1/10th of a second into the future

By: john

john — Mon, 09 Jun 2008 01:18:01 +0000

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

By: UptakeInOH

UptakeInOH — Fri, 06 Jun 2008 05:34:42 +0000

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.

By: Vince Williams

Vince Williams — Fri, 06 Jun 2008 02:01:05 +0000

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.;-)

By: TDavid

TDavid — Fri, 06 Jun 2008 00:00:17 +0000

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.

By: Vince Williams

Vince Williams — Thu, 05 Jun 2008 22:14:14 +0000

Maybe something like that happened when my finger typed G instead of C.;-)

By: Vince Williams

Vince Williams — Thu, 05 Jun 2008 22:11:33 +0000

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.

By: TDavid

TDavid — Thu, 05 Jun 2008 16:01:22 +0000

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.

By: TDavid

TDavid — Thu, 05 Jun 2008 16:00:37 +0000

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.

By: Vince Williams

Vince Williams — Thu, 05 Jun 2008 02:30:18 +0000

It means that we humans are doomed to never truly apprehend even the present, much less prognosticate the future.

By: Vince Williams

Vince Williams — Thu, 05 Jun 2008 02:24:40 +0000

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.