Why you think your phone is vibrating when it is not
bbc.com
bbc.com
Your sensory mechanisms, like any other means of detecting anything, are less than perfect. Therefore you're going to get some false positives (thinking your phone is vibrating when it isn't) and/or some false negatives (not noticing when your phone really is vibrating).
It's possible to trade off between these by adjusting the threshold for detection. There's no reason why the optimal point (or the approximation to optimality that your brain actually chooses) should give no false positives; more likely it will give some false positives and some false negatives.
The end.
(This tradeoff occurs all over the place. One interesting example, due to Justin Barrett, is the suggestion that (1) one thing our brains are set up to detect is signs of agency -- something purposeful acting in our vicinity, and (2) it is generally better for us to be too sensitive (thinking there is a tiger hiding in the trees when there isn't really) than not sensitive enough (not noticing the tiger, and getting eaten). And that this is the mechanism underlying a lot of belief in the supernatural: we see something, have the feeling that someone or something must have made it that way on purpose, and on looking closer fail to find any good candidates ... and are then liable to conclude that something we can't directly detect made it so.)
seriously?
(I felt slightly dirty googling for a proxy - not something I've done in many years..)
I'm assuming you're happy with yours and would recommend it?
I am happy with mine. It's not life-changing, but it's very nice. I'm a little disappointed with its stability. There is a very fun Arkanoid clone for the Pebble[1], but a bug in it managed to not only lock up the game, but the whole watch until the charge ran out and I was able to recharge and reboot it.
[1] http://www.mypebblefaces.com/view?fID=1890&aName=justdoit&pa...
So why can it not work with a Pebble? Just because it can't run their app?
"We're sorry but this site is not accessible from the UK as it is part of our international service and is not funded by the licence fee. It is run commercially by BBC Worldwide, a wholly-owned subsidiary of the BBC, the profits made from it go back to BBC programme-makers to help fund great new BBC programmes. You can find out more about BBC Worldwide and its digital activities at www.bbcworldwide.com."
Personally I don't understand why the BBC specifically blocks UK users from free BBC Worldwide content, but I'm sure it makes sense to someone.
Does that mean if I abstain from paying the fee I can view it?
The real flaw is not having a redirect/transparently rendering the ad-free page.
There is, however, a sidebar with Editor's Picks - presently topped by "Facebook vs Sperm."
edit: a word.
Perceptual illusions provide one of the clearest ways to show that sensations reflect factors other than external stimuli. Here are two illusions, in different sensory modalities, that demonstrate the strong top-down influence of the brain on perception: The rubber hand illusion [1,2] and the McGurk effect [3,4]. The rubber hand illusion is particularly relevant because it is quite similar to the phantom phone vibration effect.
1. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rubber_hand_illusion
2. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TCQbygjG0RU
3. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/McGurk_effect
4. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G-lN8vWm3m0
EDIT: Here's an additional example to consider. People generally can't tickle themselves. The sensations are less strong when one touches oneself than when someone else does so. The explanation for this is that the brain automatically discounts sensations which arise as a result of self-motion. This has obvious advantages, namely that you don't constantly overstimulate yourself just in the process of moving through the world and are as such better able to attend to important externally generated stimuli.
Do you have to think consciously to yourself about moving your legs when you are walking? Even when you are running or dodging around complicated obstacles? Do you have to think about breathing? When you read are you thinking about the form of each letter and mentally going "ok, that's a T, oh, and that's an H, and hey here's an E, and then a space, that must be the word 'THE', ok, moving on..."? No, parts of your brain seamlessly and automatically do all that work for you, even though sometimes it can be complex work requiring your higher cognitive abilities. For example, if you are reading a hand written note and there is a word that is hard to read your brain fills in a huge amount of context and filters out and in potential possibilities and you can even consciously make a choice on which word is the most likely, but it can all happen quickly and smoothly with the workings that happen automatically doing so without you even being aware of them or how they operate.
That's how your brain works. It's not a matter of a simple machine with a little homunculus pulling at levers, it's a conscious part married to a whole lot of little unconscious parts. In order to learn something (like typing or reading or walking or rock climbing or driving or baseball) you need to use repetition to train up the unconscious parts.
Incidentally, it's also why techniques such as meditation are so powerful, because they allow you a degree of meta-control over your mind. Because not only are actions like walking or typing mostly unconscious so are things like mood and state of mind. But you can train yourself to control those aspects just as you can train yourself to walk a different way.
A lot of neuro/cognitive science results are not "intuitive". You cannot tell how your brain works only by what it's consciously doing. The conscious part is just the tip of the iceberg of the processing the brain does and when.
>When I feel a phantom phone vibration, it's as if I'm actually experiencing the sensation, not as if some low-level part of my brain reached out into my frontal lobe and started sounding the "phone is vibrating" alarm.
And yet you're not "actually experiencing the sensation" -- in the sense that the real world state does not correspond to it. So it very much is like your brain started sounding the "phone is vibrating" alarm.
The brain can create whole experiences and illusions from nothing at all. Not only in dreams (obvious example), but also in experiments with sensory deprivation.
What I find is that if the iphone is within, say, a few inches of the speaker phone periodically, with the phone not in use and the handset in the cradle, the speaker on the phone makes a sound which clearly is being triggered by something in the iphone (and I repeat this is across several models - original to 5). So it is possible that what is being picked up is the same type of signal that the speaker is picking up but by the part of our body that the phone is right next to.
I don't think it's applicable to the situation. For one, it has nothing to do with the vibrating part.
It's anecdotal but it didn't stop until I decided that my phone would never vibrate again. This is only moderately inconvenient to me as I also refuse unless I'm aware of a real window of availability to turn on a ringer at all.. If I answer my cell phone it's because I saw the display light up.
However, since getting a Pebble I have reduced my missed call rate to 0%.
Does anyone have a UK link?