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Novice pilot skills improved via expert-pilot brainwave patterns

kurzweilai.net

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Re: Novice pilot skills improved via expert-pilot brainwave patterns

#21

Post by Uptrenda »

I remember looking into tDCS quite recently with the thought of boosting intelligence as there are actually consumer devices available right now that claim to be efficacious at increasing attention, memory, etc. Part of that process involved looking at the studies on Google, checking out meta-analysis etc - and what I found was there didn't seem to be enough evidence to conclude anything substantial.

Anyway, picture me staring at a bunch of electrodes on a fancy, high tech startups website and seriously considering whether strapping them to my head was a good idea. I felt kind of ridiculous even entertaining the thought after the scant scientific evidence - especially if the end goal was to increase IQ. Needless to say the device did increase IQ but only through the direct act of not purchasing it.

(I don't mean to be so negative but intelligence doesn't seem that easy to hack.)

Re: Novice pilot skills improved via expert-pilot brainwave patterns

#22

Post by cjhveal »

pygy_ wrote: post #17
BWStearns wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I read the "mock brain stimulation" as meaning the headset seemed to be doing something but was doing nothing. I guess the critique of the experiment would more or less stand, though it'd be slightly rearranged. Maybe dropping weights on any part of the body improves performance?

It's "sham stimulation" (that's the technical term used in research) and, in the case of direct current stimulation, it means what you described. The current used for tDCS is too low to be perceived, so no current is an acceptable placebo.

Ah, now I know! Serves me right for not reading the original paper before criticizing their experimental method. Thanks for the technical term. I see that the sham stimulation can still incorporate some ramp-up and ramp-down current, but I'll have to dig deeper to understand how those brief currents (or lack thereof) affect the quality of the control and the specifics of this experiment.

Re: Novice pilot skills improved via expert-pilot brainwave patterns

#23

Post by laxatives »

Is it wrong to think Kurzweil has gone off the deepend? I know he was extremely productive in his early years, but everything about him just makes him seem like a crank who spends most of his energy marketing himself as some kind of thought leader. IMO anyone who calls themselves a "futurist" has very little to contribute to the technology they are preaching.

Re: Novice pilot skills improved via expert-pilot brainwave patterns

#24

Post by gremlinsinc »

laxatives wrote: post #23

Is it wrong to think Kurzweil has gone off the deepend? I know he was extremely productive in his early years, but everything about him just makes him seem like a crank who spends most of his energy marketing himself as some kind of thought leader. IMO anyone who calls themselves a "futurist" has very little to contribute to the technology they are preaching.

He's ALWAYS been a crank, this generations mad genius, doesn't mean he's wrong though. Just means our world is about to explode as AI starts infiltrating EVERYTHING. But he's contributed PLENTY to the future -- AI needs to be able to "see" and "hear" and understand what it sees and hears, and he created OCR technology AND voice to speech -- both of which had to come before Super AI's could ever be conceived. So he definitely knows what he's doing and is helping push us towards that means.

Re: Novice pilot skills improved via expert-pilot brainwave patterns

#25

Post by fit2rule »

cjhveal wrote: post #10

I'd have liked to have seen two control groups. One group which received the "mock brain stimulation" and another which received no brain stimulation. It may be the case that playing noise into someone's brain has a detrimental effect on performance which is less prevalent when the stimulus roughly corresponds to the activity of a healthy brain. If you drop a heavy weight onto someone's foot, they're likely to perfor…

I think there needs to be another control group - people who are not aware that they are doing the experiment.

The reason is that I am not convinced that this experiment shows causality with regards to the transferred brain waves - rather that it shows that novice pilots who think they may be getting expert-pilot brainwaves sent to them, simply perform better.

Which is to say, I think that what this experiment shows is that those who have willed themselves to be recipients of expert-pilot brainwaves, simply become better pilots.

Re: Novice pilot skills improved via expert-pilot brainwave patterns

#26

Post by fit2rule »

gremlinsinc wrote: post #24
laxatives wrote: post #23

Is it wrong to think Kurzweil has gone off the deepend? I know he was extremely productive in his early years, but everything about him just makes him seem like a crank who spends most of his energy marketing himself as some kind of thought leader. IMO anyone who calls themselves a "futurist" has very little to contribute to the technology they are preaching.

He's ALWAYS been a crank, this generations mad genius, doesn't mean he's wrong though. Just means our world is about to explode as AI starts infiltrating EVERYTHING. But he's contributed PLENTY to the future -- AI needs to be able to "see" and "hear" and understand what it sees and hears, and he created OCR technology AND voice to speech -- both of which had to come before Super AI's could ever be conceived. So he de…

Must the future be owned by narcissists and hubris?

Re: Novice pilot skills improved via expert-pilot brainwave patterns

#27

Post by adwf »

cpncrunch wrote: post #18
lifeisstillgood wrote: post #2

That is without a doubt the freakiest thing I have read this week. (Tl:dr - they recorded trans-cranial currents in motor and working memory areas of experts landing a plane and replayed that or a control into novice pilots heads. The novices perfeomed 33% better.)

Where does it say they performed 33% better? The only mention of 33% is: "the reduced variance reached statistical significance in >33% of individual N-back trials comparing DLPFC stim with DLPFC sham" which means something completely different. I think this study might be terribly overblown.

Aboslutely. I'll admit to not having read the actual study, but saying that 33% of pilots improved is fairly meaningless. You could also say that 67% of pilots didn't improve.

It might even be the case that those 67% that didn't improve had half of them get worse. In which case we'd have 1/3 improve, 1/3 no change and 1/3 get worse. Or in other words, a boring average distribution that means absolutely nothing...

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