David Eagleman: Welcome to Your Future Brain | Big Think

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[OkageNoLogan]

i have an issue with some of this... certain aspects of your information gathering systems are finely tuned to accept specific types of information so that your brain can make sense of it, and have some sort of meaning to you. your skin uses pressure and contact for some very personal and intimate reasons. i feel that by trying to input other data types through these specified systems there will be a very real problem of receiving mixed messages.

[Martial-Mat]

Very thought provoking video. One of the better ones recently, with implications that seem very likely to affect most of us in the future.

Expanding our range of perceptions at a cost, one could very easily imagine a future of wealthy "Awares" and poor "Unawares", where those that cannot afford it become seriously socially disadvantaged.

[OogieBoogieFan]

You should add subtitles, because I want to show this to my deaf parents!

[hoomane]

i think we already are able to unconsciously see these other spectrums. there are just toooo many times i'm singing a song, turn on the radio and the same song is playing!! :D

[badluckrabbit]

I want that vest!! I also want my eyes augmented, or even replaced ( I'm near sighted, and I have an astigmatism in my right eye, so I have terrible vision); then I'll be able to see the entire light spectrum, and even zoom in and out with the precision of a high quality camera. Now that I think about it, I also want electrical ports and jacks installed onto my skull and connected to my brain, so I can interface with electronics directly. The future's gonna be AWESOME!!

[masterlinkmatt]

They're related because he was talking about being blind/deaf to data and explained how we could use a vibrating vest to tap into these data streams.

[JUNKGEE]

How can one direct questions at the expert panel?

[bjornsan]

A note on the vision spectrum bit of the video: Some humans are able to se UV. It's not naturally occuring but have been reported as a side effect after some cataract (I think) operations where they remove the lens. The most famous case is Claude Monet who painted the same motif twice but looking with one eye on one painting and the other on the other one.

[drssh]

It doesn't seem he's suggesting to directly improve the brain, but rather finding innovative ways to adapt data around us to our brain's natural perception. Since the beginning of mankind we've been creating extensions to our human bodies.
You can see this in everything around you for instance if you're wearing glasses, a wrist watch (spatial perception of time), seeing & hearing through a computer, etc.

[TheAcadmic]

Also, I live in the UK and consider this my home now, but loads of us Australasians head to the UK for years at a time. I just did it longer then most.

[biggestmario]

Exactly, too much information can't lead to anything good. That's why the term noise exists, because there is information you don't want to have to process.

[Arahvhel]

Imagine if advertising companies we're even more able to send us datastreams of ads, but without us noticing it. Because let's face it, as of now, we don't play attention to all the datas that we receive.. But it's stored anyway in the brain.

So yeah, more data = more noise.
Silence is gold.

[Martial-Mat]

Yes, that's what I thought. But to apply it to radio waves, if you equate each to a colour in the visible spectrum, each of which carries unique information, then perhaps his analogy is more correct than not?

[Strontius]

Very interesting, reminds me of something I saw on reddit. There's this electrical engineer who has neodymium magnets embedded into his fingertips which allow him to "feel" magnetic fields. In the presence of a field the magnets vibrate trying to orient themselves to the shape of the field

[KLMNOQPiPan]

"Animals are smarter than people." Native proverb

[Martial-Mat]

I agree, it seems that we are already being more and more advertising, and ever less ways to turn it off, the last thing we need is immersive suits that pick up adverts from the airwaves and feed it to us continuously, even if we prefer to opt out of it.

[elvisitor]

As said on Swedish radio some week ago, a brain psychologist told us that they have a pill working something like that in the movie Limitless. It enhances the learning, makes the brain more "loose"(not quite the right word... I am from Sweden ;)) and therefore more able to learn. They found when testing the pills, that the subjects learned to play Wow faster. Try to google it for more information. It was very fascinating when he spoke about it.

[sheepblitzer]

so a "matrix of vibrations" can be interpreted as data in our minds. One vibrate sunny, two for cloudy

[SuperMrMuster]

Stock market data and weather data directly into the brain?!

Wow! That's insanely cool. Why stop there; the possibilities are endless.

[Nimzo]

The problem is that there's only so many streams we can discern through one sensation. Using the same cortical area for processing has to limit the number of patterns it can create for higher level perception areas. Either you lose fine discrimination for each stream or a significant amount of conscious training is needed to interpret what the incoming data should mean. There's prob more to it though