Why it is important to define the term "free will" before arguing whether we 
have it:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N6S9OidmNZM

For the zinger, start five minutes in. :-) But it's worth watching the whole 
thing. Creepy.

-- 
Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
   Forget "focus follows mouse." When do
   I get "focus follows gaze"?

Post a reply to this message

On 26-1-2010 19:34, Darren New wrote:
> Why it is important to define the term "free will" before arguing 
> whether we have it:
> 
> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N6S9OidmNZM
> 
> For the zinger, start five minutes in. :-) But it's worth watching the 
> whole thing. Creepy.

Do you happen to read alt.fan.douglas-adams?

Post a reply to this message

Darren New wrote:
> Why it is important to define the term "free will" before arguing
> whether we have it:
> 
> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N6S9OidmNZM
> 
> For the zinger, start five minutes in. :-) But it's worth watching the
> whole thing. Creepy.
> 

For all the talk about determinism, they managed to avoid mentioning why
they can pinpoint a decision 6 seconds ahead of time instead of a whole
minute or more. They reduce the 'I' into the combination of conscious
and subconscious, and then wave off free-will as the subconscious.

Which means that 'I' still has free-will.

Post a reply to this message

andrel wrote:
> Do you happen to read alt.fan.douglas-adams?

No. My ISP stopped carrying newsgroups a while ago, and all the web 
interfaces to them are too painful to be worth trying to use.

-- 
Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
   Forget "focus follows mouse." When do
   I get "focus follows gaze"?

Post a reply to this message

Sabrina Kilian wrote:
> Which means that 'I' still has free-will.

I don't think they waved anything off at all. That's why I said you have to 
ask what the words "free will" mean before you can discuss whether you have 
it. I would think there are people who would say that the ability to predict 
what choice you're going to make before you yourself even know what that 
choice is indicates a lack of free will.  *I* don't agree with that stance, 
but that's because that isn't how I define free will.

I thought the idea that someone else knows your decision significantly 
sooner than you do is a pretty strange idea.

-- 
Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
   Forget "focus follows mouse." When do
   I get "focus follows gaze"?

Post a reply to this message

On 26-1-2010 22:07, Darren New wrote:
> andrel wrote:
>> Do you happen to read alt.fan.douglas-adams?
> 
> No. My ISP stopped carrying newsgroups a while ago, and all the web 
> interfaces to them are too painful to be worth trying to use.
> 
I asked because in that newsgroup there was yesterday this message:
----------------------------------------------------------------------
The Eighth Douglas Adams Memorial Lecture: Professor Marcus du Sautoy:
“42: the answer to life, the universe and prime numbers”

The Royal Geographical Society, London, SW7 2AR

Thursday 11 March 2010

7.30pm (doors open 6.30pm)

We are very pleased to announce that Professor Marcus du Sautoy will
be giving the Eighth Douglas Adams Memorial Lecture. He will be giving
a talk on a very Douglas themed number - the number 42!

Marcus du Sautoy is the Charles Simonyi Professor for the Public
Understanding of Science and Professor of Mathematics at the
University of Oxford and a Fellow of New College. He has been named by
the Independent on Sunday as one of the UK's leading scientists. In
2001 he won the prestigious Berwick Prize of the London Mathematical
Society awarded every two years to reward the best mathematical
research made by a mathematician under 40. In 2004 Esquire Magazine
chose him as one of the 100 most influential people under 40 in
Britain and in 2008 he was included in the prestigious directory Who’s
Who.

Comedy writer and television & radio presenter, Clive Anderson has
provisionally agreed to MC the Eighth Douglas Adams Memorial lecture.

Tickets: £15

Available from: www.savetherhino.org or call 020 7357 7474
----------------------------------------------------------------------

I had never heard of this guy and twice within 24 hours made me suspicious.

Post a reply to this message

andrel wrote:
> I had never heard of this guy and twice within 24 hours made me suspicious.

Oh, no. I just got the link off a social site, so maybe someone else was 
interested because of that.

-- 
Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
   Forget "focus follows mouse." When do
   I get "focus follows gaze"?

Post a reply to this message

Darren New wrote:
> Why it is important to define the term "free will" before arguing 
> whether we have it:
> 
> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N6S9OidmNZM
> 
> For the zinger, start five minutes in. :-) But it's worth watching the 
> whole thing. Creepy.
> 
I have noticed that when I walk to and from a destination on a city grid 
I always take a different route to and from because each time I take the 
route that arcs a little to the right of the destination.

Post a reply to this message

Darren New wrote:
> I thought the idea that someone else knows your decision significantly
> sooner than you do is a pretty strange idea.
> 

Then you have to define 'when you know' and, even stranger, 'you'. The
brain, obviously, 'knows' at the time that the firings show up on the
FMRI or PET which ever they are using. Perhaps it knows even before
that, and we just do not know what to look for. From a biological point
of view with out the possibility for an outside 'self', you 'know' when
the neurons start firing. That there is a delay may be nothing more than
the filtering that the brain does with vision prediction. [1]

Alternatively, allowing for a possible outside 'self', the firing of
neurons may just be the initial 'handshake' between the self and the body.

Define free will how you like, that is only the middle step of the whole
problem.


[1]http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-1081006/84-cent-tennis-points-wrong-umpires-tricked-optical-illusion--reveals-study.html

Post a reply to this message

"Darren New" <dne### [at] sanrrcom> wrote in message
news:4b5f5a71$1@news.povray.org...
> Sabrina Kilian wrote:
> > Which means that 'I' still has free-will.
>
> I don't think they waved anything off at all. That's why I said you have
to
> ask what the words "free will" mean before you can discuss whether you
have
> it. I would think there are people who would say that the ability to
predict
> what choice you're going to make before you yourself even know what that
> choice is indicates a lack of free will.  *I* don't agree with that
stance,
> but that's because that isn't how I define free will.
>
> I thought the idea that someone else knows your decision significantly
> sooner than you do is a pretty strange idea.

Depends on what you mean by "know", but it's pretty common to predict other
people's decisions and reactions. The closer you are to a person and the
more you study him, the better you can predict his decisions, which means
his decision making process is complex, but understandable/predictable in
principle. But even that's small potatoes, people can actually *affect*
other's decisions and behaviour by giving them chemicals/drugs. Even before
trying to define "free will", which will be hopeless, we should define what
"I" is. Am I something completely isolated from my environment? If I drink
coffee or alcohol that will likely affect my decision making, do they become
part of me?

Post a reply to this message

somebody wrote:
> Depends on what you mean by "know", 

Being aware that you have made a decision is "know" here.

> but it's pretty common to predict other
> people's decisions and reactions. 

Yeah, but not when it's "pick a random number from 1 to 2."  This isn't 
really what most people would call a "decision."

> which will be hopeless, 

I disagree.

> we should define what "I" is. 

Yep. Interestingly, that's not that difficult either. :-)

-- 
Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
   Forget "focus follows mouse." When do
   I get "focus follows gaze"?

Post a reply to this message

"Darren New" <dne### [at] sanrrcom> wrote in message
news:4b5fbf4d$1@news.povray.org...
> somebody wrote:
> > Depends on what you mean by "know",

> Being aware that you have made a decision is "know" here.

I was more concerned about the degree of confidence, or maybe correlation.
One can claim that meteorologists know tomorrow's weather as well as he can
claim that they do not. Both can be correct depending on what one
understands from the term.

> > but it's pretty common to predict other
> > people's decisions and reactions.

> Yeah, but not when it's "pick a random number from 1 to 2."  This isn't
> really what most people would call a "decision."

Why? That's the least of human faculties. A coin can do better than me in
making a random picks. For whatever reason, if there were a RNG in our
brains, would that prove that we have free will? Would you say a computer
program controlling a robot that spits out random binary decisions (say,
based on a radioactive source and geiger counter) as to the next direction
to take, has free will?

If we define free will as ability to make non-predictable (or without 100%
certainty) decisions, any quantum system can be said to have free will. Then
the term becomes meaningless.

But therein lies the problem - how can we define it so it's meaningful if
both deterministic and probabilistic decisions are out?

Post a reply to this message

somebody wrote:
>> Being aware that you have made a decision is "know" here.
> 
> I was more concerned about the degree of confidence, or maybe correlation.

I'm pretty sure you're 100% certain that you know when you've made a 
decision which button to push. :-)

As for how often the MRI disagrees with the eventual button push, I don't 
know, but apparently not very often.

>>> but it's pretty common to predict other
>>> people's decisions and reactions.
> 
>> Yeah, but not when it's "pick a random number from 1 to 2."  This isn't
>> really what most people would call a "decision."
> 
> Why? That's the least of human faculties. 

Because there's no external information on which you could base your 
analysis.  If you tell me you can confidently predict whether your spouse 
will enjoy a particular christmas present, sure. If you tell me you can 
confidently win every hand of scissors-paper-stone with your spouse because 
you know that person so well, I'll ask to see proof.

> If we define free will as 

I haven't defined free will as anything.

> But therein lies the problem - how can we define it so it's meaningful if
> both deterministic and probabilistic decisions are out?

JOOST.  Jump Out Of The System.  It's usually useful in these circumstances.

Free will isn't about making decisions. It's about knowledge.

-- 
Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
   Forget "focus follows mouse." When do
   I get "focus follows gaze"?

Post a reply to this message

Darren New wrote:
> somebody wrote:
>> Depends on what you mean by "know", 
> 
> Being aware that you have made a decision is "know" here.
> 

Still undefined, because you are basing the meaning of "know" on self
observation of the conscious mind. Without a solid definition of self,
and an understanding of the separation of conscious and unconscious,
there is no meaning to "know".

I "know" that my cat will chase a piece of string across the floor if it
moves, does that mean I have recognized his decision before he has made it?

>> but it's pretty common to predict other
>> people's decisions and reactions. 
> 
> Yeah, but not when it's "pick a random number from 1 to 2."  This isn't
> really what most people would call a "decision."
> 

Actually, that would be a fairly easy prediction if you know the person.
 Introverts are more likely to pick 1, extroverts would be more likely
to pick 2. You could easily get above 50%, maybe as high as 75% with
people you know well. With a few leading questions to set it up, you
could get even higher.

Post a reply to this message

Sabrina Kilian wrote:
> Still undefined, because you are basing the meaning of "know" on self
> observation of the conscious mind. 

Not at all. It's a subjective process.  The meaning is quite well defined. 
It's just not (yet) amenable to scientific verification.

However, if you follow the instructions of "push the button as soon as you 
decide which to push", chances are good you aren't aware of your choice six 
seconds before you push the button.

> Without a solid definition of self,
> and an understanding of the separation of conscious and unconscious,
> there is no meaning to "know".

I disagree.

> I "know" that my cat will chase a piece of string across the floor if it
> moves, does that mean I have recognized his decision before he has made it?

No. But you know things about your internal state. Here you're conflating 
"know" with "predict". The very fact that you put the word in quotes 
evidences that it isn't the usual meaning of the word.

Do you know what a word is? Do you know whether you're hungry right now? Do 
you know whether your left hand hurts?

> Actually, that would be a fairly easy prediction if you know the person.
>  Introverts are more likely to pick 1, extroverts would be more likely
> to pick 2. You could easily get above 50%, maybe as high as 75% with
> people you know well. With a few leading questions to set it up, you
> could get even higher.

I don't believe you. Certainly not if you repeat the experiment a few dozen 
times.

-- 
Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
   Forget "focus follows mouse." When do
   I get "focus follows gaze"?

Post a reply to this message

Darren New wrote:
> Sabrina Kilian wrote:
>> Still undefined, because you are basing the meaning of "know" on self
>> observation of the conscious mind. 
> 
> Not at all. It's a subjective process.  The meaning is quite well
> defined. It's just not (yet) amenable to scientific verification.
> 
> However, if you follow the instructions of "push the button as soon as
> you decide which to push", chances are good you aren't aware of your
> choice six seconds before you push the button.
> 

In that case, the observer does not know which button you will push
either, they are only predicting it. They know as soon as you actually
push the button. Accounting for the speed of light and distance between
them and you.

>> Actually, that would be a fairly easy prediction if you know the person.
>>  Introverts are more likely to pick 1, extroverts would be more likely
>> to pick 2. You could easily get above 50%, maybe as high as 75% with
>> people you know well. With a few leading questions to set it up, you
>> could get even higher.
> 
> I don't believe you. Certainly not if you repeat the experiment a few
> dozen times.
> 

Behavioral psychology. Granted, I am not going to be able to pull off
this stunt online. No facial clues, and no way to set up the
conversation ahead of time to see whether the respondent is planning to
go against their first reaction. But if humans really were random enough
to not be predictable, then human generated random numbers would not be
such a bad thing.

Post a reply to this message

Sabrina Kilian wrote:
>> However, if you follow the instructions of "push the button as soon as
>> you decide which to push", chances are good you aren't aware of your
>> choice six seconds before you push the button.
> 
> In that case, the observer does not know which button you will push
> either, they are only predicting it. 

But if they predict with 100% accuracy, I'd say they know it.

>>> Actually, that would be a fairly easy prediction if you know the person.
>>>  Introverts are more likely to pick 1, extroverts would be more likely
>>> to pick 2. You could easily get above 50%, maybe as high as 75% with
>>> people you know well. With a few leading questions to set it up, you
>>> could get even higher.
>> I don't believe you. Certainly not if you repeat the experiment a few
>> dozen times.
>>
> 
> Behavioral psychology. 

I still don't believe you. Shelton is funny for always picking Spock exactly 
because he's so predictable. If you could actually pick my number 75% of the 
time, I'd be shocked.

-- 
Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
   Forget "focus follows mouse." When do
   I get "focus follows gaze"?

Post a reply to this message

Sabrina Kilian wrote:
> In that case, the observer does not know which button you will push
> either, they are only predicting it. 

Or, to put it another way, they are aware of what choice you're going to 
make before you are aware of what choice you're going to make.

Do you agree that you can know whether you're hungry or not?
Do you agree that if I ask you to write down 100 random numbers from one to 
one hundred, you don't right now know what the 80'th number is going to be? 
And you will know after you write it down?

I don't understand how you can say "know" is meaningless.

-- 
Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
   Forget "focus follows mouse." When do
   I get "focus follows gaze"?

Post a reply to this message

Darren New wrote:
> Sabrina Kilian wrote:
>>> However, if you follow the instructions of "push the button as soon as
>>> you decide which to push", chances are good you aren't aware of your
>>> choice six seconds before you push the button.
>>
>> In that case, the observer does not know which button you will push
>> either, they are only predicting it. 
> 
> But if they predict with 100% accuracy, I'd say they know it.
> 

Have been trying to find a published report on this. I doubt it was 100%
but will keep looking till I find something. I only doubt it because
100% would have been a major jump that I think would have made a bigger
impact, or at least stuck in my brain for longer.

>>>> Actually, that would be a fairly easy prediction if you know the
>>>> person.
>>>>  Introverts are more likely to pick 1, extroverts would be more likely
>>>> to pick 2. You could easily get above 50%, maybe as high as 75% with
>>>> people you know well. With a few leading questions to set it up, you
>>>> could get even higher.
>>> I don't believe you. Certainly not if you repeat the experiment a few
>>> dozen times.
>>>
>>
>> Behavioral psychology. 
> 
> I still don't believe you. Shelton is funny for always picking Spock
> exactly because he's so predictable. If you could actually pick my
> number 75% of the time, I'd be shocked.
> 

Crossed meanings here, I think. I was talking about predicting the
choices, once per person, for a group. For an individual, picking
repeatedly, I dunno what the odds would be. People have a tendency to
favor one number over the other in choices like that, but if they know
what the experiment is they have the choice to try to throw it.

It works easier in large groups, picking from 1 to 10. Just predict that
everyone will pick the lucky number for that culture, and you will be
right more than 10% of the time, simply because more than 10% of people
will pick that number.

Shelton and Spock. . . I think I am missing something here.

Post a reply to this message

Sabrina Kilian wrote:
> Crossed meanings here, I think. 

I got your meaning. It just wasn't relevant to the experiment in the video. 
They didn't do that whole thing for one button push.

> Shelton and Spock. . . I think I am missing something here.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iapcKVn7DdY

Sheldon is in the blue t-shirt.

Also, whenever they play charades, the first question is "Are you Spock?" 
and he always goes "How do you guess?"

-- 
Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
   Forget "focus follows mouse." When do
   I get "focus follows gaze"?

Post a reply to this message

Darren New wrote:
> Sabrina Kilian wrote:
>> In that case, the observer does not know which button you will push
>> either, they are only predicting it. 
> 
> Or, to put it another way, they are aware of what choice you're going to
> make before you are aware of what choice you're going to make.
> 
> Do you agree that you can know whether you're hungry or not?
> Do you agree that if I ask you to write down 100 random numbers from one
> to one hundred, you don't right now know what the 80'th number is going
> to be? And you will know after you write it down?
> 
> I don't understand how you can say "know" is meaningless.
> 

As an individual, yes, knowing I am hungry or cold or in pain is simple.
As a scientist, understanding that separation of the first nerve impulse
and when it transforms into knowing, is interesting. We know the
measurable delay that it takes for pain or heat neurons to signal the
brain, and the delay the brain takes to trigger muscles to respond. We
know, scientifically, that that all happens before the individual knows
that they are in pain or on fire. So, at some point the body knows that
the stimulus exists, but the person does not yet know that they are in pain.

That is why I use know in quotes. There is a point where the stimulus
crosses from sub-conscious to conscious, if that is where you want to
define "knowing"[1]. However, there is also the sub-conscious feelings,
gut instincts, that we know we have but do not know the source of. Since
 this experiment shows that other thought processes start at this level,
should we discount them all as unknown until the entire thought gets to
the conscious level?

[1] quotes here to separate the words as the phrase being discussed.

Post a reply to this message

Sabrina Kilian wrote:
> As an individual, yes, knowing I am hungry or cold or in pain is simple.
> As a scientist, understanding that separation of the first nerve impulse
> and when it transforms into knowing, is interesting. 

All agreed, yes. That's why I said one has to be careful how to define free 
will before arguing about whether it exists or not.

> That is why I use know in quotes. There is a point where the stimulus
> crosses from sub-conscious to conscious, if that is where you want to
> define "knowing"[1]. 

Well, specifically, knowing you've made a particular choice. Clearly it's 
possible to react to things before you consciously know it. I just thought 
this was an interesting experiment in that I can know what your choice is 
far enough before you do that I can thwart your choice (say, by grabbing 
from your hand the button you were about to push).

I think an experiment where the person monitoring tells the person deciding 
what his decision is before he's aware of it could be very interesting. Will 
the person pick a different button? Will the person claim they weren't 
planning to pick either button yet? How late can you tell the person before 
they can no longer help but push the button they were thinking of?

> should we discount them all as unknown until the entire thought gets to
> the conscious level?

I think that knowing something at the gut level is generally colloquially 
considered not knowing it. You can hear people say "I knew something was 
wrong but I didn't know what" if they see an odd situation and (say) cross 
the street to avoid getting attacked. In this case, they really don't know 
*why* they crossed the street - they just know their brain noticed something 
that didn't perk all the way up to the self awareness, but rather manifested 
in the self-awareness as something unusual and fearful, say.

So yeah, I'd say the gut feeling is known, but not the details of why you 
are having that gut feeling. Clearly there is processing that happens in the 
nervous system that isn't reflected directly in the part of the brain 
modeling itself.

-- 
Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
   Forget "focus follows mouse." When do
   I get "focus follows gaze"?

Post a reply to this message

"Darren New" <dne### [at] sanrrcom> wrote in message
news:4b606472@news.povray.org...
> somebody wrote:

> >> Yeah, but not when it's "pick a random number from 1 to 2."  This isn't
> >> really what most people would call a "decision."

> > Why? That's the least of human faculties.

> Because there's no external information on which you could base your
> analysis.

Yes, if there's no outside information, there's no analysis to speak of
(although I am skeptical about truly achieving the premise, even in a
sensory deprivation tank or somesuch setup). Given no (outside) information,
we are simply talking about a RNG, or rather a PRNG as a state machine whose
final outcome third parties can predict before it is reached. IOW, this
experiment shows that humans have a lousy PRNG, which we already kind of
knew. I fail to see how it relates to free will one way or the other.

Post a reply to this message

somebody wrote:
> I fail to see how it relates to free will one way or the other.

Well, for one, it certainly puts a crimp in the "free will is our god-given 
ability for moral choices that only humans can do because we have souls" 
sort of definition.

-- 
Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
   Forget "focus follows mouse." When do
   I get "focus follows gaze"?

Post a reply to this message

On 1/27/2010 11:51 PM, Darren New wrote:
> So yeah, I'd say the gut feeling is known, but not the details of why
> you are having that gut feeling. Clearly there is processing that
> happens in the nervous system that isn't reflected directly in the part
> of the brain modeling itself.
>
Some studies seem to imply that even the stuff we "think" we know the 
cause of are post hoc, of course. That, in effect, we don't know the 
details of *any* choice, just our justifications for making them, after 
the fact. Those justification may be completely rational, in that they 
reflect what can be testably shown to reflect actual events in the 
world, or they can be completely irrational, in cases like mental 
illness. For the person experiencing them, hitting someone with a bat, 
because they *see* them attacking them for real is **identical** to the 
mentally unstable person hitting a vending machine with one, because 
they **imagine** that its about to attack them. The mechanism generating 
the excuse is operating fine, more or less, its the underlying processes 
that are **supposed** to identify threats, correctly determine what is 
going on, and filter out pure nonsense, which fail.

Or, to put it another way, we might, in a bit of day dreaming, think, 
"What if vending machines could attack people?" We know this is absurd, 
we know it doesn't happen, and we know its not happening to us 
specifically, but, if all the layers that *know* those things don't 
manage to place proper markers on the thought process, or filter it into 
the, "I am just thinking about this, not experiencing it", category... 
But, we are only aware of *how* a thought arises *because* these filters 
work in the first place, since our awareness is built from the data 
provided by them. If the data is wrong, the experience is wrong.

-- 
void main () {
   If Schrödingers_cat is alive or version > 98 {
     if version = "Vista" {
       call slow_by_half();
       call DRM_everything();
     }
     call functional_code();
   }
   else
     call crash_windows();
}

<A HREF='http://www.daz3d.com/index.php?refid=16130551'>Get 3D Models, 
3D Content, and 3D Software at DAZ3D!</A>

Post a reply to this message

"Darren New" <dne### [at] sanrrcom> wrote in message
news:4b61d7ce$1@news.povray.org...
> somebody wrote:
> > I fail to see how it relates to free will one way or the other.

> Well, for one, it certainly puts a crimp in the "free will is our
god-given
> ability for moral choices that only humans can do because we have souls"
> sort of definition.

I would not consider inconsequential random picks as moral decisions.

Post a reply to this message

Darren New <dne### [at] sanrrcom> wrote:
> Why it is important to define the term "free will" before arguing whether we 
> have it:

> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N6S9OidmNZM

> For the zinger, start five minutes in. :-) But it's worth watching the whole 
> thing. Creepy.

  It would have been nice if they had actually *demonstrated* that they
could predict the choices, rather than just *claim* they can. It would have
been much more impressive.

-- 
                                                          - Warp

Post a reply to this message

Warp wrote:
>   It would have been nice if they had actually *demonstrated* that they
> could predict the choices, rather than just *claim* they can. It would have
> been much more impressive.

True. It looked more like an entertainment/news show than anything 
scientific. I bet if you watched the show, they'd tell you the web site, 
where you could find enough stuff to look up the citation of the paper they 
probably published. Just not on youtube. :-)

-- 
Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
   Forget "focus follows mouse." When do
   I get "focus follows gaze"?

Post a reply to this message

Darren New <dne### [at] sanrrcom> wrote:
> Warp wrote:
> >   It would have been nice if they had actually *demonstrated* that they
> > could predict the choices, rather than just *claim* they can. It would have
> > been much more impressive.

> True. It looked more like an entertainment/news show than anything 
> scientific.

  Well, it would have been a lot more impressive as entertainment if the
guy monitoring in the other room would have predicted the choices of the
test subject 5 seconds prior to him making him.

-- 
                                                          - Warp

Post a reply to this message

Warp wrote:
>   Well, it would have been a lot more impressive as entertainment 

Agreed. I wonder if there was a technical or legal reason they couldn't take 
the cameras there.

And again, it might have just been how whoever posted it on youtube editted it.

-- 
Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
   Forget "focus follows mouse." When do
   I get "focus follows gaze"?

Post a reply to this message

Darren New wrote:
> Warp wrote:
>>   Well, it would have been a lot more impressive as entertainment 
> 
> Agreed. I wonder if there was a technical or legal reason they couldn't
> take the cameras there.
> 
> And again, it might have just been how whoever posted it on youtube
> editted it.
> 


Technical reason that the camera could not get closer. The Magnetom Trio
(name on the machine) is a 3 Tesla MRI. A digital camera, or anything
ferrous, would not stand a chance near that.

What I am suspicious about, now, is how fast an MRI can process the data
it gets and display it. With how the slices are built into a 3D image, I
am not sure that it could process and display the choice before the test
subject finishes pushing the button. Gah, now I may have to quiz some
radiologists.

Post a reply to this message

Sabrina Kilian wrote:
> Technical reason that the camera could not get closer. The Magnetom Trio
> (name on the machine) is a 3 Tesla MRI. A digital camera, or anything
> ferrous, would not stand a chance near that.

Well, the dude on the outside is looking at *something*.  I'm assuming 
there's some electronics-based display in the control room or something.

-- 
Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
   Forget "focus follows mouse." When do
   I get "focus follows gaze"?

Post a reply to this message

Darren New wrote:
> Sabrina Kilian wrote:
>> Technical reason that the camera could not get closer. The Magnetom Trio
>> (name on the machine) is a 3 Tesla MRI. A digital camera, or anything
>> ferrous, would not stand a chance near that.
> 
> Well, the dude on the outside is looking at *something*.  I'm assuming
> there's some electronics-based display in the control room or something.
> 

Having never been in one of those specific machines, I can't say for
sure. Most of the displays, however, don't do all of the fancy graphics
and colors as the machine is running. Secondly, to show all of the scan,
they would have to introduce a radiologist or rad-technician, as most
hospitals would not let a doctor of mathematics operate an MRI (he could
be trained as a tech, I suppose). Less snappy for TV. Also, those
multiple displays in the control area are not usually for showing the
MRI data. One or two would display the rather ancient UI, with large
numbers displaying how far the bed is from it's rest position and other
diagnostic data from the machine itself.

I don't have any MRI technicians I can email about how fast the displays
in the control room are updated. I know that for sonograms, the display
is generally just for sighting, even the false color is just a quick
render to aid the technician in getting the image they want. The print,
film, file, whatever, version is what is used for diagnosis.

Next time I get near an fMRI, I will pester the techs about how fast
they can shift what is on the control display, and whether it can keep
up with the scanner in real-time.

Post a reply to this message

On 6-2-2010 18:56, Sabrina Kilian wrote:
> Darren New wrote:
>> Sabrina Kilian wrote:
>>> Technical reason that the camera could not get closer. The Magnetom Trio
>>> (name on the machine) is a 3 Tesla MRI. A digital camera, or anything
>>> ferrous, would not stand a chance near that.
>> Well, the dude on the outside is looking at *something*.  I'm assuming
>> there's some electronics-based display in the control room or something.
>>
> 
> Having never been in one of those specific machines, I can't say for
> sure. Most of the displays, however, don't do all of the fancy graphics
> and colors as the machine is running. Secondly, to show all of the scan,
> they would have to introduce a radiologist or rad-technician, as most
> hospitals would not let a doctor of mathematics operate an MRI (he could
> be trained as a tech, I suppose). Less snappy for TV. Also, those
> multiple displays in the control area are not usually for showing the
> MRI data. One or two would display the rather ancient UI, with large
> numbers displaying how far the bed is from it's rest position and other
> diagnostic data from the machine itself.
> 
> I don't have any MRI technicians I can email about how fast the displays
> in the control room are updated. I know that for sonograms, the display
> is generally just for sighting, even the false color is just a quick
> render to aid the technician in getting the image they want. The print,
> film, file, whatever, version is what is used for diagnosis.
> 
> Next time I get near an fMRI, I will pester the techs about how fast
> they can shift what is on the control display, and whether it can keep
> up with the scanner in real-time.

The image is generally shown in the screen before the next image is 
taken. Unless a sequence is taken at once. It can be analyzed in full 
detail 'immediately' in 2D on-line. 'Immediately' is generally a 
significant number of seconds. 3D reconstruction is off-line but faster 
than it would take POV to render.

However, that is not the point here. They take good resolution slices of 
the whole brain for research purposes. If they really wanted to a 
predictor they would use a much faster protocol to get only the data in 
the area that they now know is relevant. A dedicated prediction machine 
would take less than a second to analyse that small part of the brain.

Post a reply to this message

andrel wrote:
> 3D reconstruction is off-line but faster 
> than it would take POV to render.

Oh, snap!

> However, that is not the point here. They take good resolution slices of 
> the whole brain for research purposes. If they really wanted to a 
> predictor they would use a much faster protocol to get only the data in 
> the area that they now know is relevant. A dedicated prediction machine 
> would take less than a second to analyse that small part of the brain.

Plus, you can record when you took the image and see the prediction happened 
before the button push, so at that point it's not a matter of how the brain 
works but a matter of how the machine works. Whether you can say "I can 
predict" vs "I could predict if I spent another million on this machine" 
doesn't change the fact that there's sufficient information there to make a 
prediction.

-- 
Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
   Forget "focus follows mouse." When do
   I get "focus follows gaze"?

Post a reply to this message

On Sat, 06 Feb 2010 04:25:51 -0500, Sabrina Kilian wrote:

> What I am suspicious about, now, is how fast an MRI can process the data
> it gets and display it. With how the slices are built into a 3D image, I
> am not sure that it could process and display the choice before the test
> subject finishes pushing the button

I was thinking something similar - that the "6 seconds" measured was more 
a recording of the brain chemistry changes and that was compared to the 
timing of the button presses.  The presenter, it seems, might have 
exaggerated the claim about the guy watching the machine knowing 6 
seconds earlier what was being pressed.  It's more likely that it was an 
absolute time comparison that was analyzed after the experiment.

Jim

Post a reply to this message