A man who can read letters but not numbers exposes roots of consciousness • Hacker News Board

Re: A man who can read letters but not numbers exposes roots of consciousness

#81

Post by didibus » Sun, Aug 02, 2020, 8:31 AM UTC

kovac wrote: post #25

I don't understand how these experiments lead to the conclusion separates higher cognitive functions from consciousness. I fact I don't see anything that necessarily she'd any light into the roots of consciousness here. Can someone explain how the results of the experiment lead to that conclusion? This looks to me like, if it were a computer program, encoding/decoding of the symbols seems to be messed up for a largel…

That he could identity people, without being aware of it.

Basically, if there were faces inside a number, the EEG showed that his brain recognized the faces, but he did not know there were faces, instead he couldn't understand what he was seeing.

So the hypothesis conclusion from this is, recognizing someone's face happens separately from consciousness.

Basically, the experiment appears to show that your brain can recognize faces, without letting your conscience know about it. So you can't tell the face is there, but other part of your brain can.

Re: A man who can read letters but not numbers exposes roots of consciousness

#82

Post by pulkitsh1234 » Sun, Aug 02, 2020, 8:36 AM UTC

pulkitsh1234 wrote: post #70

Somehow this is not surprising for me, I have heard about experiments related to free-will wherein the brain already made a decision even before the conscious mind became aware of it. Thus putting doubts on our conscious experience of free-will. Also, in terms of problem solving, there are experiments which show that the brain calculates the answers and "presents" the answers later on to the consciousness. It's not l…

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neuroscience_of_free_will#Libe... For more context.

Re: A man who can read letters but not numbers exposes roots of consciousness

#83

Post by nabla9 » Sun, Aug 02, 2020, 8:38 AM UTC

asab wrote: post #6

I have also seen this example, where a man blinded by strokes still avoids obstacles and recognizes emotions, without any conscious awareness[1]. Is this the same phenomenon? [1] https://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/23/health/23blin.html

That's called blindsight.

In the published article they say that there is no evidence of blindsight. There is whole paragraph named: "No Evidence of Implicit Knowledge Found with Discrimination Tasks."

>Furthermore, we showed that he exhibited chance-level accuracy on two-choice discrimination tasks for these distorted stimuli, suggesting that his deficit did not spare the sorts of implicit knowledge sometimes found in other deficits of visual awareness

Re: A man who can read letters but not numbers exposes roots of consciousness

#84

Post by honeymilk_ » Sun, Aug 02, 2020, 8:51 AM UTC

User23 wrote: post #41

Xenograph wrote: post #16

> In contrast, when shown numbers with embedded faces, the number’s effect apparently swamped that of the face: RFS reported seeing neither; everything looked like spaghetti. Yet an EEG still showed the characteristic N170 spike for registering faces. Somehow, his brain was still processing and identifying a face—a fairly high-level skill—even though his conscious mind was oblivious. This deficit shows high-level cog…

Makes me think of this silliness I saw today: https://mobile.twitter.com/BFriedmanDC/status/12892831187305... I recommend first watching it with you eyes closed and after that seeing how you can manipulate your perception. It was easy to hear “brain needle” with my eyes closed.

Before a basic sense-percept arrives at conscious awareness it is transformed by various sub-minds. Insight meditation is about investigating this fabrication process. Here is a free resource on that topic for anyone who wants to take it further: https://www.dharmaoverground.org/web/guest/dharma-wiki/-/wik...

Re: A man who can read letters but not numbers exposes roots of consciousness

#85

Post by punnerud » Sun, Aug 02, 2020, 8:54 AM UTC

Like the Google Translate app that live translates from camera, there could be developed googles for him that translate everything that looks like 2..9 into his new representation of numbers.

Re: A man who can read letters but not numbers exposes roots of consciousness

#86

Post by mantap » Sun, Aug 02, 2020, 8:55 AM UTC

macleginn wrote: post #78

henriquemaia wrote: post #57

> Somehow, his brain was still processing and identifying a face—a fairly high-level skill—even though his conscious mind was oblivious. I'm maybe wrong about this, but isn't the ability to recognize faces a fairly low-level skill? Case is point being other social animals having it, like apes, monkeys, or even sheep [1] (who can even recognize human faces [2]). So maybe they're here referring to the ability of seeing…

There is a difference between “low level” and “human specific”. Faces are highly complex geometrically, while numbers, such as 8, are simple. Animals sure can recognise simple shapes ( https://docsmith.co/2007/01/can-animals-recognize-shapes/ ), but they cannot endow them with abstract meanings, such as "number 8". The person in the article lost the basic ability of recognising very simple shapes while still being ab…

Babies can recognise faces so I would definitely class it as low-level. Anything you can do as a baby is low-level.

High-level are things like reading and writing that are learned rather than evolved.

Re: A man who can read letters but not numbers exposes roots of consciousness

#87

Post by akiselev » Sun, Aug 02, 2020, 9:17 AM UTC

pulkitsh1234 wrote: post #70

Somehow this is not surprising for me, I have heard about experiments related to free-will wherein the brain already made a decision even before the conscious mind became aware of it. Thus putting doubts on our conscious experience of free-will. Also, in terms of problem solving, there are experiments which show that the brain calculates the answers and "presents" the answers later on to the consciousness. It's not l…

All of the research you describe can be safely bundled into the same category as "dead salmon shows brain activity on an fMRI if you squint hard enough." It's phrenology for the 21st century, except with dyes and MRIs instead of head shaped calipers.

The second you say the words "conscious mind", you leave the realm of science. At best, "consciousness" is an abstraction used by psychiatrists and laypeople over much deeper, more complex, and less understood concepts in neuroscience. The field has yet to differentiate the roles neural plasticity plays between newborns, the average college student, and brain trauma victims - let alone grapple with the implication that our brains are the result of a billion years of evolution.

The nature of human intelligence is far wilder than you or I can imagine, Horatio, but publish-or-perish cannon fodder is clearly not the answer.

Re: A man who can read letters but not numbers exposes roots of consciousness

#88

Post by Razengan » Sun, Aug 02, 2020, 9:21 AM UTC

“Intelligence” is a 100 different little daemons running in tandem.

I’m surprised at how this analogy almost never comes up in a community of programmers.

Re: A man who can read letters but not numbers exposes roots of consciousness

#89

Post by jimmaswell » Sun, Aug 02, 2020, 9:35 AM UTC

stordoff wrote: post #58

Marsymars wrote: post #42

Reading is weird. I've never had migraines, but a few years ago suddenly, and briefly, lost the ability to read and write. After a number of doctors and tests ruling out a TIA, best guess is one-time transient aphasia from a migraine aura.

Migraines in general are weird. It's rare[1], but I can occasionally tell when a severe migraine is about to occur because rooms feel too big. I walked into my bathroom a few days ago (which is about 2mx2m/6'x6'), and each wall seemed about 2 feet longer than it should, and the far corner looked about 3 feet too far away (it was more a feeling than a visual disturbance - it's hard to describe). I felt _small_, which…

I've never had a migraine but I've definitely had that feeling like the room was too big. I think it only happened once or twice as a kid from a fever or something.

Re: A man who can read letters but not numbers exposes roots of consciousness

#90

Post by henriquemaia » Sun, Aug 02, 2020, 9:37 AM UTC

mantap wrote: post #86

macleginn wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is a difference between “low level” and “human specific”. Faces are highly complex geometrically, while numbers, such as 8, are simple. Animals sure can recognise simple shapes ( https://docsmith.co/2007/01/can-animals-recognize-shapes/ ), but they cannot endow them with abstract meanings, such as "number 8". The person in the article lost the basic ability of recognising very simple shapes while still being ab…

Babies can recognise faces so I would definitely class it as low-level. Anything you can do as a baby is low-level. High-level are things like reading and writing that are learned rather than evolved.

Good point. So whoever wrote that got it wrong, right?