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Blunderov
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"We think in generalities, we live in details"
  
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Thinking faster by altering your perception of time
« on: 2009-02-15 07:44:05 » |
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[Blunderov] A great deal of my personal experiences in respect of stress and time, chess clocks, result in me panicking and my subjective time seems faster, not slower. Or perhaps my hopelessly viscous synapse slow down even more. Either way, I wish I could learn to channel this pressure into a slowing-down rather than a speeding-up...
Once again, the penumbra of philosophy and science: a fascinating piece IMO.
(Many hyperlinks available on site.)
sentientdevelopments
Wednesday, February 11, 2009
Thinking faster by altering your perception of time - A SentDev Classic
This article from April 3, 2006 was inspired by the work of David Eagleman who will be guest blogging here next week.
People who undergo extreme short-term psychological stress often claim that time slowed down for them during the experience. Traumatic events like car accidents or lengthy falls often appear in slow motion to the person experiencing it.
Is this just a recall error? Or are people literally experiencing these events at an altered subjective time rate? If so, how could such a psychological phenomenon be accounted for? Obviously, time is not really slowing down -- but something is happening to the psychological interpretation of time.
One possible answer is to compare the human brain's "clockspeed" to that of a computer's. Some scientists now suspect that slowed time elapsement is an evolved defence mechanism similar to our fight-or-flight response. When time appears to have slowed down, we have more subjective time in which to deal with a crisis situation. Put another way, extreme stress helps us to think faster.
One scientist looking into this phenomenon is David Eagleman from the University of Texas at Houston. At his 'Laboratory for Perception and Action' Eagleman is attempting to understand the neural mechanisms of time perception. His team combines psychophysical, behavioural, and computational approaches to address the relationship between the timing of perception and the timing of neural signals.
At the experimental level, Eagleman is engaged in exploring temporal encoding, time warping, manipulations of the perception of causality, and time perception in high-adrenaline situations. Ultimately, he hopes to use this data to explore how neural signals processed by different brain regions come together for a temporally unified picture of the world.
In one of his experiments, Eagleman had volunteers perform a backwards bungee jump freefall while he transmitted a rapid succession of numbers to an LED on their wrists. He found that during the fall they were successfully able to read the numbers, which under normal conditions would have appeared too fast. [I have to say, that is one of the most interesting and original experiments I've heard of in quite time some]
Thinking about Eagleman's research at a practical level, it is thought that a better understanding of these mechanisms will result in interventions that will help people process information at higher rates. This kind of 'think faster' augmentation would slow time down in a subjective sense, which would enable an individual to operate at a higher level of cognitive efficiency.
This theme has been explored in a number of science fiction stories. In Frank Herbert's Chapterhouse: Dune, the ghola Miles Teg was able to engage in extremely fast physical combat due to his ability to rapidly process information. Teg was able to subjectively experience time in extreme slow motion. Similarly, Neo in The Matrix was able to dodge bullets by altering his perception of time elapsement. And in Greg Egan's Diaspora, uploaded posthumans had to drastically slow down their internal clockspeeds when conversing with biological humans; clockspeeds in the real world varied dramatically from the clockspeed utilized in supercomputer 'polises.' Also in Diaspora, a group of posthumans altered their perception of time to such a slow rate that they could perceive the rising and fallings of geological structures such as mountains.
Here in the real world, such neural enhancements are rare, but not entirely impossible. It is thought, for example, that hockey ultrastar Wayne Gretzky was able to perceive the flow of the game at a slower pace than his competitors, giving him more subjective time to plan his attack. This may in fact be the case. At the height of his career, Gretzky was not just a 'little better' than other players, he was dominating to a degree never before seen in sport, breaking records by extreme margins. And this from a player who was physically unremarkable--in fact, below average.
Just what kinds of interventions could enable humans to 'warp time' is a topic of some speculation. A recent Discover article titled "The Mind in Overdrive" offers some possible solutions. Psychotropic substances are one possible answer, as drugs like cocaine and amphetamines have been known to alter subjective time for users. Also, meditating Buddhist monks claim to be able to perceive time differently; through their mental discipline, they may be recreating the same effect that Eagleman is documenting.
I'm certainly hoping that something like this will eventually become accessible. It will be interesting to see how much more productive and "aware" one might be with the benefit of these sorts of interventions. It may even create an alternative sense of subjective reality.
And it would surely come in handy the next time you need to dodge bullets.
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letheomaniac
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Re:Thinking faster by altering your perception of time
« Reply #1 on: 2009-02-16 02:48:15 » |
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Quote:| Traumatic events like car accidents or lengthy falls often appear in slow motion to the person experiencing it. |
[letheomaniac] I experienced this very thing during the last car accident I was involved in. When I saw the headlights of the car that was about to plow into us through the windscreen of our car I actually had time to think 'Shit, this is it, I'm going to die' and then dive behind the seat (I was in the back and foolishly not wearing my seatbelt). Interestingly I remember that my colour perception was reduced to monochrome both just before and during the accident - perhaps the blood that would usually be used in my eyes was redirected to my brain to aid speedy cognition? 
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"You can't teach an old dogma new tricks." - Dorothy Parker
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Blunderov
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"We think in generalities, we live in details"
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Re:Thinking faster by altering your perception of time
« Reply #2 on: 2009-02-22 06:57:33 » |
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[Blunderov] (I went to the Milnerton Flea Market today. There I saw a magnificent picture of that awesome symbol of America - the Bald-Faced Eagle. But I didn't buy it.)
sentientdevelopments.com
Tuesday, February 17, 2009
Will you perceive the event that kills you?
David Eagleman is guest blogging this week.
When light strikes your eyes, it takes some hundreds of milliseconds before you become conscious of the event. As a consequence, you are always living in the past. This strange fact of our existence is well known is neuroscience, but there’s an interesting, underappreciated consequence: you may not ever become aware of the thing that kills you.
Cormac McCarthy addresses this point in his post-apocalyptic novel The Road, in a scene in which the main character has his pistol leveled on a miscreant. The malefactor challenges: “you won't shoot....they [my companions] will hear the shot.”
The protagonist replies, “Yes they will. But you won’t.”
“How do you figure that?”
“Because the bullet travels faster than sound. It will be in your brain before you can hear it. To hear it you will need a frontal lobe and things with names like colliculus and temporal gyrus and you won't have them anymore. They’ll just be soup.”
One way to appreciate the slowness of your perception is to compare it to the speed of mechanical devices. Take this incredible, sobering "anatomy of a crash," as described in an Australian magazine and echoed on Tom Vanderbilt’s blog. With fine-grained temporal resolution, it analyzes what happens when a stationary Ford Falcon XT sedan is struck in the driver’s door by another vehicle traveling at 50 kilometers per hour:
0 milliseconds - An external object touches the driver’s door.
1 ms - The car’s door pressure sensor detects a pressure wave.
2 ms - An acceleration sensor in the C-pillar behind the rear door also detects a crash event.
2.5 ms - A sensor in the car’s centre detects crash vibrations.
5 ms - Car’s crash computer checks for insignificant crash events, such as a shopping trolley impact or incidental contact. It is still working out the severity of the crash. Door intrusion structure begins to absorb energy.
6.5 ms - Door pressure sensor registers peak pressures.
7 ms - Crash computer confirms a serious crash and calculates its actions.
8 ms - Computer sends a “fire” signal to side airbag. Meanwhile, B-pillar begins to crumple inwards and energy begins to transfer into cross-car load path beneath the occupant.
8.5 ms - Side airbag system fires.
15 ms - Roof begins to absorb part of the impact. Airbag bursts through seat foam and begins to fill.
17 ms - Cross-car load path and structure under rear seat reach maximum load.
Airbag covers occupant’s chest and begins to push the shoulder away from impact zone.
20 ms - Door and B-pillar begin to push on front seat. Airbag begins to push occupant’s chest away from the impact.
27 ms - Impact velocity has halved from 50 km/h to 23.5 km/h. A “pusher block” in the seat moves occupant’s pelvis away from impact zone. Airbag starts controlled deflation.
30 ms - The Falcon has absorbed all crash energy. Airbag remains in place. For a brief moment, occupant experiences maximum force equal to 12 times the force of gravity.
45 ms - Occupant and airbag move together with deforming side structure.
50 ms - Crash computer unlocks car’s doors. Passenger safety cell begins to rebound, pushing doors away from occupant.
70 ms - Airbag continues to deflate. Occupant moves back towards middle of car.
Engineers classify crash as “complete”.
150-300 ms - Occupant becomes aware of collision.
The last line is the zinger. Early studies by Benjamin Libet suggest that the last line should perhaps read as high as 500 ms, although others, such as Daniel Dennett, have correctly pointed out that it is impossible to measure the moment of onset of conscious experience, so the exact timing will never be known.
Just as the explorer David Livingstone appreciated the biological kindness of stress-induced analgesia, there may an equivalent kindness in the slowness of perception.
David Eagleman is a neuroscientist and a writer. His book of literary fiction, Sum, debuted internationally this month.
http://www.sentientdevelopments.com/
Saturday, February 21, 2009
Why do we love slow motion video?
David Eagleman is guest blogging this week.
During my studies of human time perception I’ve become fascinated by a peripheral question: why do we love slow-motion photography so much? Movies like The Matrix and 300 use time warping as a standard tool in their cinematographic toolbox. The success of this approach has leaked into commercials and music videos and almost every other action film on the scene. Even comedian Dave Chappelle has noted our love of slow-mo: to demonstrate that everything “looks cooler in slow motion,” he shows how his experience in the laundromat changes from mundane to sexy as soon as it is replayed slowly (in slow motion, the old woman by the washing machine becomes a young model tossing her locks of hair in the breeze).
So why is time warping so successful and engaging? I propose three reasons.
1: More time gives a proxy for denser memories
I recently posted about the claim that time slows during a life-threatening event. To the best that we were able to address this, our studies suggested that the impression of slowed time is a trick of memory: denser memories are laid down during salient events, yielding more than the normal amount of detail when read back out. So one can speculate that slow motion video gives a proxy for this extra-dense memory: by presenting a scene slowly, one can enjoy a rich experience with plenty of time to dwell on all the details that normally leak away from us. In other words, when a movie scene is presented slowly we can grab onto and remember many details, just as we do during a real-life high-adrenaline moment.
This idea can explain the natural introduction of slow motion videography into scenes of violence. The first American movie to use slow motion was Bonnie and Clyde. Much to the shock of the audience, the cinematography went into balletic slow motion as the two main characters of the movie met their violent end under a hailstorm of bullets from the police. As Bonnie and Clyde lived out their final seconds, the audience got several extra seconds in which to appreciate it. The director, Arthur Penn, had an intuition about what he was doing; he reported: "The intention there was to get this...attenuation of time that one experiences when you see something, like a terrible automobile accident." Although critics at the time called the slowing of the death scene gratuitous and callous, the idea caught on. Giving the audience a heightened ability to catch and remember details worked well and has been imitated thousands of times since.
But note that not all interesting slow-mo videography involves high-adrenaline situations, indicating that there may be more to it--and this leads us to the next point.
2: Slow motion extends human perception by unmasking hidden data
From a transhumanist perspective, slow motion videography is a technology that allows us to extend our senses beyond their natural capacities. It allows the revelation of data hidden in the folds of time, just as a microscope allows us to appreciate the wonders of a fly's wing or a microbe's choreography.
As one example, consider microexpressions, the fast movement of facial muscles that pass rapidly and unconsciously over peoples’ faces. Microexpressions are normally not accessible to awareness (the owner’s or the viewer’s) because they are too brief. But they can reveal all sorts of secrets, including when someone is lying. For example, when Susan Smith got on the TV news to plead for help in finding her kidnapped children, a slowed-down version revealed micro-expressions that could suggest (at least, with the benefit of hindsight) that she was lying about the whole event. Slow motion video unmasks the world of these temporally hidden facial clues.
Moreover, by unveiling things undetectable by consciousness, slow motion can allow not just temporal sleuthing but temporal intimacy. Consider this passage by the British sports writer Matt Rendell about the 1998 Tour de France winner Marco Pantani. Writing about the use of super slow-motion cameras in sport, Rendell penned what I consider to be one of the most beautiful passages in sports writing:
Now, as he rides towards victory in the Giro d’Italia, the camera almost caresses him. The five seconds between the moment Marco appeared in the closing straight and the moment he crossed the finish line are extruded to fifteen enduring seconds. The image frames his head and little else, revealing details invisible in real time and at standard resolution: a drop of sweat that falls from his chin as he makes the bend, the gaping jaw and crumpled forehead and lines beneath the eyes that deepen as Marco wrings still more speed from the mountain. Then – and it must be the moment he crosses the line – he begins to rise out of his agony. The torso rises to vertical, the arms spread out into a crucifix position, the eyelids descend, and Marco's face lifts towards the sky. It is a moment of transfiguration, visible only in super slo-mo or in still – and only the best of the finish-line photographers catch it. Super slo-mo shows us something we could never otherwise see – involuntary gestures Marco never chose to reveal, perhaps because, without super slo-mo technology, he cannot know he makes them. The public knows more about Marco than Marco himself: a truth, we are tempted to imagine, and one that has nothing to do with the race outcome as such, for the pictures frame out the finish line and the clock, and show nothing of his work rate, muscular toil or the relative positions of the riders that yield the race result. Instead, we find ourselves looking into Marco’s face the way a mother and her baby might, or lovers at the moment their affection is first reciprocated.
3: Time-warped video holds our attention by violating expectations
Finally, note that brains develop deeply-wired expectations about Newtonian physics. For example, when a ball gets thrown in the air, your brain unconsciously uses its internal models to predict where and when is it going to hit. These models are so ingrained into our nervous systems that if you lob a tennis ball to an astronaut in zero-g, he will still move his hand to catch it as though he’s in a normal 1-g environment.
I suspect that the high level of engagement during slow-mo video is related to a violation of these expectations about physics. Imagine you are watching The Matrix, and Trinity leaps into the air to kick an agent. Your brain makes (unconscious) predictions about exactly when she’s going to come back down. But, shockingly, time slows down and Trinity hangs in the air longer than expected. Your expectations about when she will land have been violated.
As for why we find this interesting, it is probably because these violations hold our attention. Attention is maximally engaged when predictions are violated (an old idea that Jeff Hawkins summarizes nicely in his book On Intelligence). So my speculation, then, is that we like time-warped video because it is very attention-engaging: we are constantly getting the temporal predictions wrong, and so we are constantly on alert. In support of this, a very engaging style of cinematography is to rapidly alternate between speeding and slowing (think of the battle scenes in 300), thereby holding our attention throughout.
David Eagleman is a neuroscientist and a writer. His book of literary fiction, Sum, debuted internationally this month.
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