
Scientists demonstrate Matrix-like learning with no conscious effort - rickyconnolly
http://www.nsf.gov/news/news_summ.jsp?cntn_id=122523&org=NSF&preview=false
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dewarrn1
This submission's title is misleading, and the original work could be better
summarized as "improving at one task while doing another". The authors first
determined a pattern of brain activation (indexed by blood flow) associated
with the presentation of a target (visual) stimulus for a given subject. Then,
they gave subjects real-time feedback about their brain activation while they
performed a superficially different task. The trick is that the feedback on
the second, different task was based on a subject's ability to cause the same
pattern of brain activation (again, indexed by blood flow) that the
experimenters first observed when the target stimulus was presented in the
earlier session. Finally, subjects were tested on their ability to identify
the target stimulus and others like it, and they showed a statistically
reliable improvement for the (unknowingly) trained target, but not for other,
similar items. It's fascinating, but suggesting that this is anything like
what's been depicted in science fiction movies (yes, like The Matrix) is
silly.

~~~
bermanoid
_It's fascinating, but suggesting that this is anything like what's been
depicted in science fiction movies (yes, like The Matrix) is silly._

It's certainly a big leap beyond what's actually been demonstrated here. But
it is a _very_ interesting first step along that path, and if something like
Matrix-style learning was ever going to be possible, I'd imagine this would be
the most fruitful approach to follow.

Just to be clear: what's going on here is essentially that they've set up an
apparatus to display an error function that measures the difference between
the target and actual brain states in a person, and asked the person to
minimize that error. The idea would be that by trying to match brain states
you could shortcut the learning process that lead to that brain state, and
instead skip directly to the result. Pretty standard optimization problem,
except that it involves the brain.

The difficulties come in two parts:

1) Is it possible to efficiently "navigate" your own brain state based on
feedback towards a target based on an error function, and do so well enough to
jump out of crappy local maxima? More generally, is it possible to reliably
navigate to a target brain state quickly enough so that it's more efficient
than actually going through the learning process that the target state was
arrived at from?

2) Can we even measure "brain state" accurately enough so that successful
completion of 1) would be useful at all?

1) is a biological question, 2) is technical. This particular research doesn't
offer much on either front, sadly, because the task they picked was so simple
that it would clearly have been better achieved by direct learning (they spent
several days training people on the "error function", and I can't imagine it
took that long to recognize an orientation of an image for the training
group...).

I'd be very skeptical about how useful low resolution views of brain activity
will be when it comes to higher level understanding rather than simple visual
recognition tasks. And I'd also be skeptical about whether we'd still be able
to effectively navigate our brains through the fitness landscapes if we ever
did achieve resolution good enough to help with more difficult tasks.

But I don't think it's a wash. It's pretty likely that even low-res views of
brain activity for certain tasks can be helpful - if you could match your
brain activity even at a rough scale to the way Richard Feynman's looked when
he was thinking about physics, it would probably put you in a better state of
mind to do physics than you might have been otherwise, and that could still be
useful, even if it couldn't directly transfer his knowledge about QED to your
brain.

If we ever get to a point where scanners are much better, I imagine there will
be quite the industry in picking out which low-res reductions of high-res
brain activity are the best to use as training targets...

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tst
Here's the full report at Science:
<http://www.sciencemag.org/content/334/6061/1413.full>

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salimmadjd
Brainwashing now has a science behind it.

Interesting, but could be bad:

1 - larger divide between those who can afford a service like this and those
who can't

2 - governments and other entities can use it to brainwash people to create
highly ideological and loyal agents/staff.

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samhart
I don't really understand why this is so significant or perhaps I don't
understand the experiment. You are fed some training set and a certain brain
activity pattern is identified as the "target." Then you show a whole bunch of
other stimuli and try to teach the brain to display the target activity
pattern for a different stimulus by having this proxy indicator that tells you
how close you are (green disk).

Don't we do this all the time? If I'm teaching a child the letters of the
alphabet then I would show an example, have them try to guess it and then give
them some indication of how close they are (yes you got it, you are
pronouncing it weird, no that's the wrong letter). The only difference here is
that you are using proxy whereby you identify a target brain activity pattern
first. It seems pretty much impossible, however, to get a target for an
individual without first seeing what the target is. Certainly everyone's
"target" for the same problem must look quite different.

I suppose this could be pretty useful for brain-computer interfaces but I
don't know if I'd go as far as saying this is matrix-like learning.

~~~
icandoitbetter
Why do we need computers? We already have the abacus.

~~~
sliverstorm
Well, my abacus doesn't seem to support Flash.

~~~
hasenj
Who needs flash when you have abacus?

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sublimepua
This looks either very amazing, or complete BS. I want examples. How did their
experiments work? I don't care what it is that I'm learning, I wanna see a
demo. Is there something I can buy/fund/donate to? Shut up and take my money.

~~~
zinkem
>I don't care what it is that I'm learning

What if it's obedience? :)

~~~
sukuriant
As with all technologies, there is use and there is misuse. These sort of
fears are why I don't work for the government, but it doesn't stop things from
being discovered. Indeed, discovery isn't evil, only what these discoveries
and advancements may be used for.

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itmag
Might as well take the chance to go slightly off-topic: anyone here a skill
acquisition nerd? What methods do you utilize to gain more "I know Kung Fu"
moments in life? :)

~~~
calibraxis
I'm kind of an interested dabbler in such brain hacking... one principle I try
to follow is to use multiple parts of (that conglomerate called) my mind to
learn things. So for example, take programming techniques. Using data-directed
programming techniques lets me use the visual parts of my mind more
directly... so in Lisp or Javascript, you'd make a pretty datastructure which
you'd code plumbing to interpret. Same with drawing pictures to help
visualize, such as graphs. (The old _Data and Reality_ mentions we frequently
use graphs in representing concepts on the computer, as opposed to in data
processing.)

And using a REPL is very interactive, and uses my kinesthetic parts. (Some
emacs chords may have that effect too, like paredit's alt-shift-(, which
surrounds the next form in a parenthesis bubble.)

Alan Kay mentions the study of like 50 mathematicians, how they thought.
Surprisingly few thought in terms of symbols. Most were primarily visual
thinkers. Some were also kinesthetic. (To lend credibility, people always
mention Einstein was in this last kinesthetic group.)

Another is critical learning. So you try to question why something Is The Way
It Is, why someone believes what they believe... (Being confused is a very
good sign; explore the confusion. Confusion over very simple things led to
revolutions in our knowledge.) This takes you from the role of passive learner
to co-creator. (Of course, time is limited, and taking this to its logical
extreme would mean you'd do multiple ten-year research projects... Might be
great for humanity's knowledge, but few of us have this luxury.)

~~~
itmag
_Most were primarily visual thinkers. Some were also kinesthetic._

Speaking of visual-kinesthetic thinkers, this is kinda interesting:
[http://www.nlplive.com/nlp/tim-ferriss-mind-hack-by-mr-
twent...](http://www.nlplive.com/nlp/tim-ferriss-mind-hack-by-mr-twenty-
twenty/)

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jarin
I can't wait until advertisers and SuperPACs get a hold of this.

~~~
bostonvaulter2
Won't do them any good until they have remote fMRI scanners. Which would be
positively scary.

