Post No.: 0764
Furrywisepuppy says:
If one is young enough, even severe brain tissue loss and surgery can be recovered from and one can still subsequently live a decent independent life – and this is due to neuroplasticity. Neuroplasticity is generally greater when one is younger – the brain is still re-mouldable enough that the remaining parts of the brain can sufficiently make up for any lost parts of the brain.
Therefore much of the brain is not so much hardwired as flexibly-wired. There are specialised regions yet it’s oversimplistic to say that ‘there is one region for this function and another region for that function’ and that it’s all fixed. (It’s probably metaphorically like GPUs are specialised for processing graphics yet can be adapted for performing other computations, like they have been for cryptocurrency mining.) No region of the brain works in isolation either. The brain is a vast interconnected and dynamic system that is always changing. And we use 100% of it.
Our brains are extremely good at inferring patterns, so as long as the electrical signals that our brains receive are consistent for a given sensory stimulus or event then, given enough time, our brains will be able to learn, adapt and make at least some sense of those signals. At first, these signals may seem random and therefore meaningless but, over time, one will be able to make use of them, especially if these signals are cross-referenced with other signals coming in from an array of bodily senses. That’s essentially how normal (as in no-brain-damage) people develop and eventually make sense of their own sensory inputs as babies and infants.
Everything we perceive from the outside environment is a translation rather than a direct experience. Ultimately, experience, and our own version of reality, is created inside our brains – hence the ‘could we all just be brains in vats?’ thought experiment. People with certain eye problems can experience eye flashes, which are visible as ‘light’ even in a pitch-black environment. Anyone can rub their eyes to create temporary phosphenes. People with tinnitus experience ‘sound’ that doesn’t come from the external environment. Particles or waves strike our physical sensory organs, this sends signals to the brain, the brain processes these signals, and then we sense something. But sometimes the brain just does stuff then we sense something without external stimuli. This is most evident with those who have psychosis or hallucinations. Or indeed anyone can have dreams or nightmares while sleeping.
So what we experience as ‘light’ or ‘sound’ doesn’t have to come from photons hitting our eyes or sound waves hitting our ears from the outside world. And if our sensory equipment and/or brains are faulty or hijacked (perhaps from taking psychoactive substances) then we can perceive what we experience as light or sound even when there is nothing coming to us from external sources. The visuals we experience within our dreams, or the visual hallucinations experienced by those with psychosis, show us that what we experience as sight or sound is less about what comes from out there and more about what’s happening inside our heads.
Because our brains are very good at inferring patterns, maybe we therefore don’t have to be stuck with the eyes, ears, nose, skin and tongue we are born with then? Since our brains can eventually make sense or use of any electrochemical signal that has a pattern and maps consistently and proportionally onto events that happen in the external, or internal (sensations from within our body like feeling knee pain or our stomach growling), world – we could use any form of input to our brain. (As long as any electrical or chemical signals aren’t too strong that they fry or overwhelm our encephalons that is!) We could for instance create a sense that detects magnetic fields, infrared or ultrasound? We could even plug in streams of weather data or stock market data in order to eventually develop an intuitive sense of where the markets are moving? We already use cochlear implants to replace lost or missing hearing. This is called ‘interfacing’, like in regular electronics.
Furthermore, we could use the electrochemical signals that our brains output to directly control things other than our own biological bodies. These signals could control robotic arms. We could one day directly control remote drones on other planets with the intuitive ease of controlling our own limbs?
It’ll likely need a great deal of training though, just like how a baby takes many years before he/she can master just walking. Our senses are also reliant on each other to cross-reference information. For instance, when attempting to walk straight forwards with our eyes closed, we will tend to drift and walk in an arc over a large distance without the visual feedback to keep us going straight. This is despite having years of experience walking successfully in straight lines. (This highlights how highly specific our skills can be. We don’t exactly have lots of experience walking in straight lines – we have lots of experience walking in straight lines with our own legs (so not on something like stilts) and with our eyes open, plus other details we assume are always constant.)
If the information that our eyes and inner ears are receiving is incongruent or in conflict with what our bodies are apparently doing – like when ‘walking’ in virtual reality with a VR headset on – then this can cause nausea. (This highlights how much our senses co-evolved, and/or co-develop as we each individually grow up, and how they work together rather than independently.) Experiencing a fuzzy stomach lurch while falling in VR or in a dream, even though it was only visual stimuli rather than one’s body truly physically dropping from a height, once more shows us that so much about what our bodies feel is only down to what our minds perceive it is going through.
So motion sickness actually happens in the brain, not the stomach. It involves the incongruence between the electrical signals that the brain is receiving from the eyes, the vestibular system and the sense of proprioception. As the best current hypothesis goes anyway – it’s interpreted as a poisoning hence the instinctive vomit response and fever-like overheating.
How much motion sickness we experience depends on our genetics and what we do. We won’t feel it when driving because we’re in control of the movements. There are drugs that work for some better than others. We can also control our breathing to reduce it.
Regarding VR sickness, some people experience it worse than others, like women compared to men – although some argue that many of these differences are due to most current headsets being designed by and to suit particular people i.e. Caucasian males. Research is thus still ongoing. Some scientists believe that it’s down to postural instability rather than, or along with, sensory conflict theory? A low refresh rate and screen resolution certainly makes it worse. We can train ourselves to not experience VR sickness though, similar to ‘getting your sea legs’ with motion sickness in general – which all comes down to training our brains again.
So there’ll likely be huge personal learning curves for our brains to get used to anything new. But due to the generally greater neuroplasticity of children’s brains, it’ll likely be easier for children to adapt to this potential future world (as children tend to find with any new technology compared to old people!)
During almost every waking moment, we’re generating lots of different thoughts that aren’t relevant to the task presently at hand (including thoughts about food, revenge, or sexual thoughts for those at or above puberty age!) yet we’re able to control our walking, swimming or whatever movements without being sufficiently disturbed or interrupted by these fleeting thoughts. So there is a large amount of unwanted noise for the signal we want our brains to really focus on. Wearable brain-computer interface systems today currently rely on mastering the control of relatively gross brainwave patterns, and if the user is distracted for just a split-second then this can result in losing control of the machine. So this sort of technology requires a lot of refinement and/or users need a lot of training before it can reliably work with a wide set of thoughts instead of just a few broad brainwave patterns like associated with ‘focus’ and ‘relax’. It again currently and foreseeably takes a massive amount of practice and concentration.
But whilst genetic evolution is relatively glacially slow, this type of technology could be the shape of how human life will be like in the future? Each person could shape their own sensory experiences, to extend their narrow windows on reality; and people could plug other parts onto themselves or plug themselves directly into other bodies to extend their functions and capabilities. With our organic brains as the processors, we can theoretically plug to any kind of input or output possible i.e. we could become part-organic, part-artificial cyborgs, or live completely sensorially immersed in virtually created worlds?
That’s if we’re not already unknowingly existing as brains in vats right now? We could even be several conceptual layers down as brains in vats creating the notion of living as brains in vats? (I say ‘we’ – you could be just creating all this that ‘I’ have written about here inside your own brain(!) :O You could be just interacting with yourself, and everyone else are just avatars in your own reality here…) If not, something similar to ‘brains in vats’ could still be the destination of the specie’s far future existence, with everybody living in either their own private virtual universe or a shared metaverse?
Well, we’re usually sufficiently fooled by our dreams when we’re having them. All you can know for sure is that at least a ‘you’ exists, whatever form ‘you’ are, because you evidently have the capacity to ponder such philosophical questions!
You could possibly even upload your mind (i.e. copy your brain’s neural wiring schematic to the very last detail) onto external media or an artificial machine, then shed your current biological form, and (a copy of you can) live hypothetically forever? But will ‘it’ be and act like a human even though it lacks, for example, any ageing effects that are present in biological machines? Part of the authentic human experience is the knowledge that life is finite and could in fact end at any moment, thus what will it mean to be an ‘immortal human’? Will it still be ‘you’ or will it be merely a clone of you? (For a deeper exploration into the philosophical conundrums presented by cloning, see Post No.: 0585.) And even if this were all possible, what about the ethics?!
A concern with advanced brain-computer, mind-machine, brain machine, neural control, or direct neural interfacing, technologies is that they could be used to collect a ton of personal brain data and read our direct thoughts – which is probably the most intimate and private data we could ever own. And not only that but they could be used to directly influence our thoughts and in turn behaviours or perceptions of reality. The manufacturers or service providers will aim to write to our brains, ostensibly for our benefit, but it could easily be for their or someone else’s benefit.
And even if the technology could control a brain, it won’t necessarily mean we will get to finally understand how brains work to create consciousness, because it could be like drinking water to quench a first without ever needing to understand how the body is technically using that water to make you feel less thirsty. But the chances are we will understand the inner workings of brains at least a little bit more.
Woof! Our own version of reality resides inside our own heads. So perhaps we shouldn’t blame anyone for choosing the blue pill and preferring to remain in a mental world where the steak tastes juicy and delicious…
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