[From Dag Forssell (2017.05.16.10:30 PDT)]
Rick, I appreciate your post on Rube Goldberg. I note that the blog
attracted a huge number of comments. Are you in touch with Scott
Alexander?
I just got to the May 15 issue of The New Yorker and found this article.
It all makes sense to me in light of my understanding of PCT.
http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2017/05/15/seeing-with-your-tongue
Best, Dag
[From Rick Marken (2017.05.16.1350)]
Dag Forssell (2017.05.16.10:30 PDT)
DF: Rick, I appreciate your post on Rube Goldberg. I note that the blog
attracted a huge number of comments. Are you in touch with Scott
Alexander?
RM: No, but I did write a long comment to something at the blog but it turned out it was a reply to a conversation that way out of date. I don’t even know if I can find that reply again but the only reply it got was from someone who pointed out that I was replying to a comment that had been made several years ago. But that comment caught my attention (I don’t know how I got to it) because I was specifically mentioned in it. And I’m sure my fans on CSGNet will be happy to hear that the person who wrote the comment (or one of the comments in the thread, anyway) said I was a “crank”. I take it as a compliment since the same was said about Wegener regarding his theory of plate tectonics.Â
RM: But I think I could write a more detailed reply to Alexander’s review and see if he notices.
Â
DF: I just got to the May 15 issue of The New Yorker and found this article.
It all makes sense to me in light of my understanding of PCT.
http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2017/05/15/seeing-with-your-tongue
RM: Yes, I saw it but haven’t finished reading it. But it’s actually new only in the fact that they are now able to use microtechnology to do this. Back when I was in graduate school there was an attempt to give vision to the blind using a similar, more massive, technology: the optical array being photographed by a video camera was transformed into a large matrix of cylinders that was placed on the blind person’s back so that each cylinder would press on the skin of the back in proportion to the intensity of light at that point in the optical array – analogous to the miniature matrix of electrodes placed on the blind person’s tongue, each electrode producing an electrical stimulus proportional to the intensity of light at that point on the image. As I recall, the person wearing the matrix on their back could come to recognize objects, perceive their relative distance, and so on. from a PCT perspective, the person could perceive in the matrix of cylinder pressures the same “types” of perceptual variables that could be seen in the optical image.Â
RM: So this “seeing with the tongue” article seems very relevant to PCT in terms of showing that, per the PCT Model, higher level perceptions – perceptions of relationships, sequences, etc – are not dependent on the particular sensory modality that are the basis of these perceptions.Â
BestÂ
Rick
–
Richard S. MarkenÂ
"Perfection is achieved not when you have nothing more to add, but when you
have nothing left to take away.�
                --Antoine de Saint-Exupery