Comment by carapace | Hacker News Reader

Comment by carapace | Hacker News Reader

If you connect a computer to a brain which element is the more sophisticated processing device?

The brain.

If you want high-fidelity cheap BCI don't bother with fancy sensors, galvanic skin response is enough. The trick is to use the high-powered processor to do the heavy lifting. You use hypnosis and create a simple feedback loop to calibrate e.g. one channel per finger and one per thumb. That gives you 8 data lines and a clock/ack signal. An eight-bit parallel port from your mind to your computer. You can now come out of trance and "type" by thinking at the machine in a certain way (no imaginary keyboard) and your verbal thoughts appear on the screen. Other output modalities are possible. It's fucking trivial, if you'll pardon my language.

It's ridiculous to connect a computer to a brain and then concentrate on the computer, rather than the brain, to develop control and communication systems. It's a bit like trying to move your bicycle using a skateboard.

But the greater problem with focusing on the CPU rather than the brain is that it reinforces a world that doesn't demand much personal growth to use powerful tools. BCI where the computer does the work relieves the user of learning how to operate his or her own brain. BCI-by-hypnosis requires the user to learn enough self-operation to be able to go into a light trance and learn a simple motor pattern, and the meta-lesson "side effect" is more valuable and more important than the ability to interact with computers with greater facility.

(BTW, I doubt this would ever be a mass-market product, because you're not just selling a peripheral at that point...)

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edit: Folks, I'm gonna ask that you please not downvote me on this one without saying something about why. I've never been able to get anyone to listen or take me seriously on this particular subject, and frankly that sucks. I know this works but no one cares and it's frustrating. So, again, please, if you think this is worth a downvote can you please take a minute and tell me why?

Because you're an unknown, uncredentialed agent using language usually associated with pseudo-science, and asserting it as if it were plain as day. Unfortunately, most people don't have enough time to give every idea that comes across their mind's desk a full and rigorous examination. So we all use heuristics to filter which ideas are worth engaging with. And by and large ideas that start with the word 'hypnosis' are not.

You may well be on to something, but the bar of attention is high, and it's much higher for you than for someone using more normative ideas and terminology. Most people are not going to have the deep,intuitive connection to the idea that you have. They'll need some mechanism for attaining that intuition for themselves. Some numbers, a demo, a proof-of-concept. Something that helps them overcome their trained skepticism.

You're advocating the use of the well explored EMG (electromyogram) interface. These exist and work but the amount of training to operate one is actually higher than training a person to move themselves. They're used for subvocal speech and no hypnosis is needed. Galvanic skin response is a subset of EMG.

The winner would be a plain old analog interface which you can operate with body movement, not to fine yet not too gross. Keyboard is a similar thing but digital. Mouse is analog but planar.

Getting higher dimensional than 3D + time is very hard (gestures) and that is what's required for speech or fully operating a machine. Thus the projections.

That’s cool! Have you actually done this? What clock rate can you achieve?

I forgot to mention in my main reply, I did set up a binary Boolean signal system as part of my exploration of hypnosis years ago. At first it was finger twitching, but then later the system was arm twitches, right for affirmative, left for negatory, non-response meant I[1] was framing the query in a way that precluded an unambiguous y/n answer. I made use of this "comm channel" for years, occasionally friends would remark on my odd arm twitches, eventually they "wore off" in the sense that I didn't need them anymore.

Anyhow, this is what I meant about "trivial". These days you could wear e.g. a Fitbit on each arm and "Ta-da!" you've got a BCI. You wouldn't even have to stop by RadioShack (RIP) or wire up IMUs to an Arduino.

[1] At a minimum you have to postulate three "entities": the perceive, the conscious mind, and the unconscious mind, for the model to make sense. In the above "I" the conscious mind is posing queries to "me" the unconscious mind, and I'm not mentioning the Perceiver at all.

@dmreedy Thank you. I really appreciate that.

@AstralStorm As you point out, GSR (or more generally EMG) isn't necessarily the best modality for this. But my point is that, whatever the comm channel's nature and characteristics, once you have connected a brain to a computer, it's useful to recognize that the more powerful and easier to program signal processor is the brain.

@h0p3 First, thanks. I am deeply weird and to me it's a compliment. ;-) Second, OMG your website is a custom TiddlyWiki? It looks fascinating. Email sent. Well met.

@trevyn I have not actually done this, no. To me it's trivial, and I don't want nor need to talk to a computer that intimately. (I'm one of those people who, despite using a computer daily for years, still "hunt and pecks". I actually can kinda touch-type, but my ratio of thinking to typing is such that there's not a great incentive to do better. Typing speed has never been the limiting factor in my life, so... Lazy.)

I expect you would be able to input text as fast as you could think it. You're not limited to eight bits. I would also explore methods like, e.g. "Dasher" http://www.inference.org.uk/dasher/ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dasher_(software)

And with modern NN techniques and an HD camera you could just point the camera at your face and calibrate facial expressions, pulse rate, etc...

@mrfusion It just makes it much easier to self-train and calibrate. In crude terms, the conscious mind has a lot of belief structures and other homeostatic things going on that interfere with communicating with the motor cortex. In a trance most of that stuff is temporarily offline and you can "go in" and "ask" parts of your brain (presumable we all agree that the brain is where this stuff is happening, yes?) to do things like "work with the NN to calibrate unambiguous signals" etc..., and it will typically "go along with" this sort of hypnotic suggestion.

The thing is, it's not like this is something you could franchise and open stores in malls or something. There's no mass market for hypnosis, techno-assisted or otherwise.

@kakarot Sure. Email sent.

I'd like to know more about what you have to say.

I've been looking through your post history. Please take this as a compliment: you are weird. I like it (I think I'm weird too). If you are interested in a penpal friendship, hit me up: https://philosopher.life/.

I don’t see what function the hypnosis is providing?

I'm interested in talking with you about this in length in a more private channel, do you have an email I can reach out to?

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