"And when everyone's super....no-one will be."
Posted on 12/13/2011 10:08:12 AM PST by Yollopoliuhqui
ScienceDaily (Dec. 12, 2011) — New research published December 8 in the journal Science suggests it may be possible to use brain technology to learn to play a piano, reduce mental stress or hit a curve ball with little or no conscious effort. It's the kind of thing seen in Hollywood's "Matrix" franchise.
Experiments conducted at Boston University (BU) and ATR Computational Neuroscience Laboratories in Kyoto, Japan, recently demonstrated that through a person's visual cortex, researchers could use decoded functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to induce brain activity patterns to match a previously known target state and thereby improve performance on visual tasks.
(Excerpt) Read more at sciencedaily.com ...
Bump!!
Awesome & amazing!! Bring it on.
This would be the scary bit to me. How easy it would be to insert hidden messages that "condition" the viewer who is totally unaware the message is there... hello, dystopian future.
But if everybody can be programmed to be a piano virtuoso or a home-run hitting major leaguer, what’s the point? When excellent becomes average, it loses its luster.
"And when everyone's super....no-one will be."
Next semester I start my 5th language. Hope they get this machine programmed up by then, because doing it the old fashioned way is getting to be a lot of work.
Does tinfoil block these signals?
I'd imagine that natural talent/aptitude and additional training will still produce enough variation. The "average person" baseline may be much, much higher making the gap between an "average Joe" and a virtuoso considerably less, but the difference is still real.
Plus, no matter how well you can teach people the technique of playing the piano, for example, artistry is another matter entirely.
“Artistry” is just mechanics. It looks like it would be possible to program not just the techniques but the thought patterns that give rise to them as well. So not only could the average guy paint the Mona Lisa, he could be programmed to paint it exactly the way Da Vinci did.
But the person who goes beyond the programming and creates something different is still an artist. Under the presumption that the programming can only copy that which has been done, the universe of that which has not yet been done is still open to the “virtuoso”.
A copy is only a copy; the original is still where true art lies.
Not to get too existential about it but if a “copy” is identical in not only technique but also motivation, is it truly a copy?
I understand what you’re saying though. Unfortunately, this development immediately devalues the original by enabling a host of identical epigones.
Mark
Gotta disagree with that. Ever listen to Miles Davis, or John Coltrane, or Billie Holiday, or...?
There's a lot more than "just mechanics" involved.
No. We’d like to think there’s that ineffable “something” that makes art art. But the fact is, anyone who can do the same things can make the same sounds or the same patterns or the same shapes. The inspiration may be different, but the execution — at least according to this article — could be identical. It’s arguable that even the inspiration could be duplicated.
We’ll just have to agree to disagree.
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