Cant watch from my location, just want to know if he is the inspiration for the blind character in my favourite movie, Contact.
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Tim Doucette, a blind astronomer who built the Deep Sky Eye Observatory
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Re: Tim Doucette, a blind astronomer who built the Deep Sky Eye Observatory
#12if you can't view the video in the link from your location, it's on youtube too:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sHKopqVI_cw
Re: Tim Doucette, a blind astronomer who built the Deep Sky Eye Observatory
#13Human evolutionary history may beg to differ in that the nervous system has evolved to be optimal for processing input from the natural senses; but the mighty truth is it is all mere signals. With sufficiently biochemically sophisticated interfaces, and potentially medicine to ease the adaption, any signal source can become a sense. I must underline that a link between "a sense" and the neurvous system can be monodir…
In case it’s interesting, the book Livewired talks about this. The author also has a company called Neosensory which converts sound into physical vibrations on a wristband
Re: Tim Doucette, a blind astronomer who built the Deep Sky Eye Observatory
#14Оадылкжйдпжыджржуоэужэеээну
Re: Tim Doucette, a blind astronomer who built the Deep Sky Eye Observatory
#15Not available in my location: "There was a problem providing access to protected content."
Please let me know if someone has a mirror/alternate link.
Re: Tim Doucette, a blind astronomer who built the Deep Sky Eye Observatory
#16Human evolutionary history may beg to differ in that the nervous system has evolved to be optimal for processing input from the natural senses; but the mighty truth is it is all mere signals. With sufficiently biochemically sophisticated interfaces, and potentially medicine to ease the adaption, any signal source can become a sense. I must underline that a link between "a sense" and the neurvous system can be monodir…
> any signal source can become a sense.
A new sense?
That's unheard of. We can map any signal to an existing sense, but not create a new sense/sensation.
That would be one of the most relevant developments in human history and a gigantic step towards cracking the whole qualia problem.
Re: Tim Doucette, a blind astronomer who built the Deep Sky Eye Observatory
#17Human evolutionary history may beg to differ in that the nervous system has evolved to be optimal for processing input from the natural senses; but the mighty truth is it is all mere signals. With sufficiently biochemically sophisticated interfaces, and potentially medicine to ease the adaption, any signal source can become a sense. I must underline that a link between "a sense" and the neurvous system can be monodir…
> any signal source can become a sense. A new sense? That's unheard of. We can map any signal to an existing sense, but not create a new sense/sensation. That would be one of the most relevant developments in human history and a gigantic step towards cracking the whole qualia problem.
I suppose the extreme version of the parent comment's vision would be to develop entirely new neurological circuits that can process, interpret, and integrate some arbitrary new source of data in the world. I agree that that's kind of unimaginable now, but give infinite monkeys infinite typewriters and one of them will probably hook up the company's sales data to a new section of cortex just to see what would happen.
I read a more interesting takeaway, perhaps: that we can — and do — develop new "senses" for any given signal we can perceive. A possibly-shoddy example of this is what social media does to us: the social networks provided everyone with a novel social sense, and indeed everyone who uses social networks perceive and attenuate to that sense in different ways.
This has practical implications: given that we don't have infinite cognitive capacity or even much moment-to-moment bandwidth, we should be careful about which of these digital senses have our attention.
There're obvious links here to "augcog" (augmented cognition; [1]), but also I feel like Ackoff's five assumptions about "management misinformation systems" are relevant somehow[2].
Interesting to think about!
[1]: Especially DARPA's work and similar — https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Augmented_cognition#DARPA's_Au... [2]: https://www.jstor.org/stable/2628680
Re: Tim Doucette, a blind astronomer who built the Deep Sky Eye Observatory
#18Human evolutionary history may beg to differ in that the nervous system has evolved to be optimal for processing input from the natural senses; but the mighty truth is it is all mere signals. With sufficiently biochemically sophisticated interfaces, and potentially medicine to ease the adaption, any signal source can become a sense. I must underline that a link between "a sense" and the neurvous system can be monodir…
> any signal source can become a sense. A new sense? That's unheard of. We can map any signal to an existing sense, but not create a new sense/sensation. That would be one of the most relevant developments in human history and a gigantic step towards cracking the whole qualia problem.
If one's eyes were replaced with the signal generator, I believe the parts of brain that process vision normally could adapt to this almost as well aa if a "new" sense had evolved. Full adaptation may require that it's done as a child or use of some drugs / theraphy. Perhaps trasncranial stimulation could be used in one form of adaptation theraphy.
Re: Tim Doucette, a blind astronomer who built the Deep Sky Eye Observatory
#19This was so heartwarming
Re: Tim Doucette, a blind astronomer who built the Deep Sky Eye Observatory
#20[deleted]