I comment on a provocative article by Robert Epstein, arguing that we should abandon the metaphor of brain-as-computer and consider instead brain-as-transducer.
This is another of my practice videos, taking an article that a friend shared on facebook as a prompt for discussion. The article can be found here.
Paul Campbell:
Sep 29, 2021 at 03:23 PM
Having just read this article for the first time, i can see where he is going with it and i agree on some levels, but disagree with other realms as such. Ok this is how i see why we, or our brains, can make up these things, and why i dont think they are mysteries. Everything is alive in its own time. If you had a time machine and went back to your 4th birthday, you would see yourself and everyone else, who were wit you at that time. You are there, alive as a 4 year old, with all the other people around you, not only that but, if you went outside from your house, you would see everyone else who was alive at that time. You could interact with them just like you could have done back then. Take the time machine back to 1898, 1611, 1247, 1066, etc, you will see people, alive in their own time. This is where i think we get the signals from that cause these "mysteries" however this theory could be complete nonsense too, but its what i belive could explain where these dreams etc come from. Our brain is able to pick up on these messages from another time and translates them into music, voices, visions of places we have never visited and so on. Of course this has no way of being proven as true but it would help explain a lot of these things.
On the video editing, i like the overlay effects of the article but would have liked a couple of seconds more to read the whole of the part you displayed, but its fine as i just paused the video to read it. The video was well edited and the framing looks good, the slightly different angle at which you filmed it to the first video, i think looked better in this video as the light for me, looked better. Yes i enjoyed it, and look forward to the next one.
rseabrook:
Sep 29, 2021 at 04:18 PM
Your time travel theory has as much evidence behind it as Epstein's "other realms" theory - maybe you should have an article in Discover magazine!
Thanks for the feedback on the video. I'll take note re the long text - either pause or don't put up so much at a time in future. I'll probably keep tinkering with the framing and lighting for a while, but I'm getting somewhere near, I think.
I'm glad you enjoyed it!
Paul Campbell:
Oct 07, 2021 at 09:25 PM
This video shows how many worlds could exist all at once
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kTXTPe3wahc
Amanda Foxon-Hill:
Oct 02, 2021 at 10:11 PM
Interesting stuff.
I haven't read the article and am instead dwelling on what you introduced and my initial response to it. As such, my big question is 'why not both?' From my layperson's perspective I feel the computer analogy may best suit the brain hardware while the transducer may be suit the programs we chose to run. The fact this is a living, changeable system means the two aspects respond to one another creating that X factor we often can't fathom.
rseabrook:
Oct 03, 2021 at 10:29 AM
Hmm, my intuition would be the other way round. Transducers seem inherently hardware-ish to me, whereas representation - the stuff of computing - is something that might or might not be done by a brain (or anything else), so is more software-ish. But yes, a system that includes both transduction and information processing seems more likely than one that's purely one thing or the other. Thanks for that.
Bruce Shaw:
Jul 16, 2022 at 09:22 PM
The transducer instead of a computer smacks of offering an alternative just for the sake of it . I have personal experience of hearing music from inside my head as opposed to coming from outside it is infact a well known symptom of tinnitus and is accepted in the medical world as such .
I enjoyed your vlog .