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

#181

Post by radarsat1 » Sun, Aug 02, 2020, 6:44 PM UTC

brabel wrote: post #114

radarsat1 wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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. Seems to conflate consciousness and free will. Just because you're not conscious of it, your brain still made that decision. And your conscious mind can still go back on the decision and "change your mind".

> And your conscious mind can still go back on the decision and "change your mind". No, that's not possible. That's what those experiments are showing, you're just failing to grasp its consequences. If later you report "changing your mind", that will also have happened unconsciously, and you wont' even know why in your conscious experience: but you will be convinced you chose that - when you really haven't.

I hear what you're saying, but I'm still not sure that consciousness over a decision is what determines whether it was done of free will. Conscious or not, it was your brain making that decision. Not someone else telling your brain what to think.

Your brain thought about it, considered the options, made a decision, and then informed your consciousness of it. That doesn't undermine the idea of free will, it just changes how we think about consciousness.

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

#182

Post by pengstrom » Sun, Aug 02, 2020, 6:46 PM UTC

andai wrote: post #18

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…

Sometimes I read about split-brain experiments and wonder, if my brain were to split, which side I'd end up on?

There's very interesting research into this question. This video is easily digestible. https://youtu.be/wfYbgdo8e-8

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

#183

Post by JumpCrisscross » Sun, Aug 02, 2020, 6:58 PM 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…

> 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

I believe these studies were not able to be replicated. Also, we have no way to scientifically measure consciousness. So a study that purports to time it is measuring reaction speed, not consciousness per se.

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

#184

Post by Nasrudith » Sun, Aug 02, 2020, 7:06 PM UTC

lisper wrote: post #163

I call shenanigans. There is nothing inherently different about numbers and letters. They are all just abstract shapes. There is no possible way that evolution could have produced a mechanism that could distinguish between the two without training.

Couldn't the brain damage have essentially caused the state from the training process for those specific glyphs to fail with "garbage" associations? Thus he gets disoroentating confusion and reinforced revulsion when he tries to understand interfering with any occupational therapy to retrain it such that arbitrary glyphs lacking such associations didn't have those issues.

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

#185

Post by sireat » Sun, Aug 02, 2020, 7:08 PM 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.

Strange I only hear Brain Storm, eyes closed or open, reading or not reading,

Instead of Green Needle I am hearing a weird backwards sounding sound.

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

#186

Post by lisper » Sun, Aug 02, 2020, 7:15 PM UTC

Nasrudith wrote: post #184

lisper wrote: post #163

I call shenanigans. There is nothing inherently different about numbers and letters. They are all just abstract shapes. There is no possible way that evolution could have produced a mechanism that could distinguish between the two without training.

Couldn't the brain damage have essentially caused the state from the training process for those specific glyphs to fail with "garbage" associations? Thus he gets disoroentating confusion and reinforced revulsion when he tries to understand interfering with any occupational therapy to retrain it such that arbitrary glyphs lacking such associations didn't have those issues.

Yes, that's possible. (I actually missed the bit about the brain damage. I somehow got the impression that article said that he was born with this. I guess I skimmed too fast.)

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

#187

Post by demosito666 » Sun, Aug 02, 2020, 8:10 PM UTC

hackinthebochs wrote: post #162

vinceguidry wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is what I meant by "getting into the epistemological weeds" heh. I'll requote your definition with emphasis. > the intellectual and practical activity encompassing the systematic study of the structure and behaviour of the physical and natural world through observation and experiment . All three of the italicized aspects are not how the mind is studied. The mind is not a physical object. It cannot be observed or…

As far as the mind has physical effects, it can be studied scientifically. When I study a building by studying its steel frame, I am studying the building inasmuch as the steel frame is a component of the building.

Depends on what do you expect as an outcome of the study.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hard_problem_of_consciousnes...

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

#188

Post by hackinthebochs » Sun, Aug 02, 2020, 8:23 PM UTC

danielam wrote: post #174

montjoy wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh come now. > The mind is not a physical object. It cannot be observed or experimented with in a systematic way. So clearly false if you read the article, or have ever looked at an optical illusion. > ... because buildings and minds are not physical, natural things. They're unnatural things, conjured up by human invention and imagination Then likewise Ecology, Geology, Biology and all other sciences that cover syste…

>> The mind is not a physical object. It cannot be observed or experimented with in a systematic way. > So clearly false if you read the article, or have ever looked at an optical illusion. "Mind" vs. brain. For example, you will never observe the concept "triangularity" or the number 8 or the color "red" in a brain scan. You will see brain activity correlates between what is most likely someone perceiving an instanc…

>Every physical thing is particular. No abstract thing is particular. Therefore, no abstract thing is physical.

But abstract things can supervene on the physical. Information, for example, is abstract, but it supervenes on some physical stuff. Granted, information is not identical to any particular instantiation, but the abstract pattern can be manifested by a particular physical instantiation. You're welcome to call information immaterial if you like, but it presents no metaphysical difficulties for physicalism.

>Stubborn, dyed-in-the-wool materialists like the Churchlands or Dennett, instead of rethinking their presuppositions, have resorted to the pathetic tactic

Why are non-materialists so fucking angry? Incivility doesn't help your cause. If your arguments were good they would stand on their own without embellishment.

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

#189

Post by gweinberg » Sun, Aug 02, 2020, 8:41 PM UTC

djhaskin987 wrote: post #27

> That he could still interpret letters, Schubert says, lends support to the idea that the brain has a specialized module for processing numbers. This makes a lot of sense to me. I have almost no trouble at all remembering long strings of numbers, but I have the opposite problem with names. I cannot remember names to save my life unless I use them on a daily basis. I feel like this is a flip-flop from how most people…

It doesn't make any sense at all to me. It wasn't numbers as such he was having trouble with, he could still do math, he just couldn't recognize the symbols. And he was even able to learn symbols for numbers again,as long as they were new ones he made up himself instead of the standard symbols.

It's a bizarrely specific cognitive deficit. It's not like "I can't remember your name", it's more like "I used to know your name, and I can remember this new name I've made up for you, but when you tell me your 'real' name, not only can't I remember it, I can't even make it out, it all turns to static."

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

#190

Post by rini17 » Sun, Aug 02, 2020, 9:50 PM UTC

Nextgrid wrote: post #151

ketzo wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh man, I wonder what he pictured in his head if he tried to picture an 8 instead of read one? Nothing? Squiggles? Headache? Honestly, I could ask a billion more questions about this situation. So fascinating.

I would’ve asked him to draw digits, potentially with his eyes closed, to see if he still has a representation of the shape of digits in his mind.

I believe that's the actual drawing next to the digit 8?