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Brains Speed Up Perception by Guessing What’s Next

quantamagazine.org

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Re: Brains Speed Up Perception by Guessing What’s Next

#61
post #28

How timely! I recently attended a nephew's soccer game. Having never played, I didn't really know what was going on. It seemed to me that I had a much harder time perceiving what happened; I was forever asking someone to tell me what they saw, even though I was looking at the same thing. If a lot of perception is predictive based on previous experience, it makes sense that I felt like I was half blind.

A really interesting example of this in my life is racquetball. When you first start playing it can be difficult to know if the ball hit the wall or the ground first. With experience it’s pretty easy to tell. You are still looking at the same thing. But some inexperienced players I play with ask wether it hit the ground or not. Interestingly for me at least I couldn’t tell you exactly where it hit or even how it bounced getting there I just know wether it hit the ground or not.

Re: Brains Speed Up Perception by Guessing What’s Next

#62
post #9

> Imagine picking up a glass of what you think is apple juice, only to take a sip and discover that it’s actually ginger ale. Even though you usually love the soda, this time it tastes terrible Even brains aren’t safe from speculative execution vulnerabilities

Well said. This is also why diverse thinking is a thing, e.g. 'inexperienced' folk who're aren't scarred yet will see things with fresh eyes.

Re: Brains Speed Up Perception by Guessing What’s Next

#64

This reminds me of the work John Carmack did when he was writing QuakeWorld, which in 1996 was quite playable on a 56k modem! He started off predicting 300ms of lag on the client side, but it was too glitchy when the correction came in. He landed on a more conservative strategy, and his writeup is a touchstone of Computer Science lore for me: https://fabiensanglard.net/quakeSource/johnc-log.aug.htm I wonder if you co…

How much of this improved network code made it back into the original Quake engine, and therefore into Half-Life 1? To this day, I have yet to find a multiplayer engine for an ego shooter which feels as perfect as the one in HL 1. For lack of a better description, the Half-Life 1 (and mods) multiplayer game-play just felt (and still feels) crystal clear. This has to be one of the major reasons why Counter-Strike became so big.

Re: Brains Speed Up Perception by Guessing What’s Next

#65

This ties in quite nicely with Karl Friston's Free Energy Principle: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NIu_dJGyIQI There are so many strands of neuroscience that show predictive coding now. There's a really nice example in the use of common vs unusual words in sentences. If you're using fMRI to scan someone while they read these two sentences: The jam on the motorway made everything slow. The jam on the motorway made e…

Also related: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/N400_(neuroscience)

Re: Brains Speed Up Perception by Guessing What’s Next

#66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This happened to me drinking soda water, I thought it was just regular old tap water, went to take a huge sip and immediately spit it out in disgust. I normally hate soda water, but that time I especially hated it.

Walgreens sells a sparkling water that inexplicably has artificial sweetener, though it's not sold as "soda" but as "sparkling water." I bought it expecting, you know, sparkling water and the experience of getting a mouthful of unexpected aspartame was... memorable.

The same thing happened to me at Aldi.

Re: Brains Speed Up Perception by Guessing What’s Next

#67

This ties in quite nicely with Karl Friston's Free Energy Principle: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NIu_dJGyIQI There are so many strands of neuroscience that show predictive coding now. There's a really nice example in the use of common vs unusual words in sentences. If you're using fMRI to scan someone while they read these two sentences: The jam on the motorway made everything slow. The jam on the motorway made e…

> You'll see a flash of activity when people read the word "sticky"

I noticed that my gaze actually jumped back to "jam" when I read "sticky".

Re: Brains Speed Up Perception by Guessing What’s Next

#68

This ties in quite nicely with Karl Friston's Free Energy Principle: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NIu_dJGyIQI There are so many strands of neuroscience that show predictive coding now. There's a really nice example in the use of common vs unusual words in sentences. If you're using fMRI to scan someone while they read these two sentences: The jam on the motorway made everything slow. The jam on the motorway made e…

Cool! This sounds similar to koans: "a paradoxical anecdote or riddle, used in Zen Buddhism to demonstrate the inadequacy of logical reasoning and to provoke enlightenment." If you explore the meaning of language enough you'll realize it doesn't really make sense. Everything is based on context and assumptions that we take for granted when communicating. But if you dig deep enough (and it's really not that deep anywa…

I think you can make unambiguous sentences: "I walked one mile today." Unless context specifically indicates the very rare possibility that walked is personal shorthand for another activity, it's a pretty unambiguous statement.

Re: Brains Speed Up Perception by Guessing What’s Next

#69
post #64

This reminds me of the work John Carmack did when he was writing QuakeWorld, which in 1996 was quite playable on a 56k modem! He started off predicting 300ms of lag on the client side, but it was too glitchy when the correction came in. He landed on a more conservative strategy, and his writeup is a touchstone of Computer Science lore for me: https://fabiensanglard.net/quakeSource/johnc-log.aug.htm I wonder if you co…

How much of this improved network code made it back into the original Quake engine, and therefore into Half-Life 1? To this day, I have yet to find a multiplayer engine for an ego shooter which feels as perfect as the one in HL 1. For lack of a better description, the Half-Life 1 (and mods) multiplayer game-play just felt (and still feels) crystal clear . This has to be one of the major reasons why Counter-Strike bec…

From Wikipedia [0]:

The engine also reuses code from other games in the Quake series, including QuakeWorld, and Quake II, but this reuse is minimal in comparison to that of the original Quake.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GoldSrc#Development

Re: Brains Speed Up Perception by Guessing What’s Next

#70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Cool! This sounds similar to koans: "a paradoxical anecdote or riddle, used in Zen Buddhism to demonstrate the inadequacy of logical reasoning and to provoke enlightenment." If you explore the meaning of language enough you'll realize it doesn't really make sense. Everything is based on context and assumptions that we take for granted when communicating. But if you dig deep enough (and it's really not that deep anywa…

I think you can make unambiguous sentences: "I walked one mile today." Unless context specifically indicates the very rare possibility that walked is personal shorthand for another activity, it's a pretty unambiguous statement.

I can think of two different ways to interpret that sentence.

1: They went for a walk as a single activity on top of their regular daily walking, and that walk was a mile long.

2. They walked a total of 1 mile throughout the entire day, including regular walking around the house/office etc.

I do agree with the sentiment though, there definitely are plenty of unambiguous sentences you can say in everyday conversation.

Perhaps "my refrigerator is currently powered on" is an arbitrary example that works.

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