Category Archives: Technology
21 Feb Pattern Recognition in Two Dimensions
Perceptual Grid We live in three dimensional space, and understanding three dimensions is critical to our ability to go places and do things, but we comprehend things in many dimensions. Our senses, however, tend to flatten things out. Images are projected on our light-sensitive retinas in exactly two-dimensional patterns. The rods and cones possess light-sensitive […]
18 Feb Insanity, Perception and Consciousness
Have you ever heard voices, seen people and things others can’t see, perceived colors, sounds or sensations that weren’t really there? The human mind has amazing abilities, sometimes giving us more output than is present in the input. Is this insanity, creativity or a fluke? I can’t answer these questions in this blog, but as we […]
12 Feb Conscious Phenomena
Conscious Phenomena For the past few posts, I have been exploring consciousness. Extra-sensory perception is a part, or an extension of consciousness. Are you sometimes psychic? Some people have truly remarkable extra-sensory capabilities while others do not. I read a short story by Ursula K. Le Guin, though I can’t for the life of me remember the […]
11 Feb Introspection as Empirical Science
Heightened awareness – inner vision – focus. I have looked to psychology, neuroscience and philosophy for clues about how to get computers to pay attention to all the right cues so they can engage in meaningful dialog with me. Much of what I encounter in the literature mixes experimental results with empirical observations. And many paths lead […]
11 Feb Conscious Sensibility
Watergate Revisited More than one President of the United States has been asked this question: “What happened, and how soon did you know about it?” Many cognitive psychologists perform experiments in which they ask subjects (people) the same question, seeking to mark the boundaries between conscious and unconscious phenomena. I recently spoke of mindfulness. Wakefulness may be a […]
08 Feb Seeing Within: Proprioception for Robots
I saw a couple movies awhile back, “The Terminator” and “Terminator 2” in which artificial intelligence in computers became hazardous to the survival of humanity. One of the premises, as I recall, was that the critical event that lead to the disastrous attempt of man-made machines to destroy humanity, was when they became “self-aware”. This […]
07 Feb Mindfulness
Imagine being able to flip a switch and get quantitative and qualitative improvements to your intelligence. Mindfulness, in the form of directing your attention or focus can induce changes in the structure and function of the brain. When I was in school, I learned that taking notes helped me not only focus better on what I […]