

Robot That Makes People Feel a Ghostly Presence - fictivmade
http://www.wired.com/2014/11/robot-ghost/

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ColinWright
The story I posted yesterday has more detail, and references.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8568135](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8568135)

Here's the link to the actual article:

[http://phenomena.nationalgeographic.com/2014/11/06/its-
behin...](http://phenomena.nationalgeographic.com/2014/11/06/its-behind-you-
robot-creates-feeling-of-ghostly-presence/)

If you've read this Wired article first then the National Geographic article
will feel familiar, but there is more, it's more complete, and it has
references.

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petercooper
Not the same thing as this, but I remember seeing a documentary about a
scientist who kept feeling a "presence" in his lab, so he set out to work out
what was going on. It turned out it was something to do with air distribution
causing infrasound resonance. I haven't found the specific story but this one
is very similar:
[http://www.prosoundweb.com/article/print/a_ghost_story_low_f...](http://www.prosoundweb.com/article/print/a_ghost_story_low_frequency_illusions_created_by_standing_waves)

~~~
subir
Fascinating!

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GuiA
_> when the researchers passed a mild current through the electrodes,
stimulating a small region at the intersection of the temporal and parietal
lobes of her brain, she experienced what she described as a shadowy presence
lurking nearby, mimicking her own posture._

Those kind of things feel very existentialist to me. This shows that human
perception, sentience, and consciousness are deeply and essentially tied to
our biology, and that we're all a few micrograms of chemicals or electrical
impulses in the wrong part of our brain from complete schizophrenia.

This seems like a very strong argument against any kind of transhumanist
rhetoric, and that no matter how much our understanding of the universe and
manipulation of the physical word progress, the very concept of being human is
forever tied to our physical body.

~~~
nitrogen
_This seems like a very strong argument against any kind of transhumanist
rhetoric, and that no matter how much our understanding of the universe and
manipulation of the physical word progress, the very concept of being human is
forever tied to our physical body._

I would replace "physical body" with _physics_ here, and from that draw the
opposite conclusion. The fact that we are purely physical/electrical/chemical
in our existence suggests that some other physical/electrical/chemical system
could reproduce our existence if it behaved in the same way.

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po
I'm sure it's actually a spooky feeling people are getting but somehow this
wired article fails to convince me.

 _The researchers suggest that the subjects’ brains reconcile this mismatch by
creating the illusion of another presence that’s doing the poking. After all,
something is poking them in the back._

Yeah, It's a robot! Why is it that people feel like it's a person and not a
robot or a coat rack or whatever? That part seems odd to me. Is it not because
we tend to only be poked by people in our daily lives so given the stimulus,
we interpret it to be a person?

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hanoz
This reminds me of the book Phantoms in the Brain by one
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vilayanur_S._Ramachandran](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vilayanur_S._Ramachandran)
in which he describes a similar experiment. It's a great read by the way.
Anyway, as I recall, watching someone tap and stroke a model body part, say a
nose, in a non predictable pattern, whilst an unseen hand replicates the
touches exactly on your own nose, can result in an overwhelming sensation that
the model, though yards away from you, is actually your own nose. Always meant
to try it out, it sounds great fun.

I don't know if the Wired article or the experiment itself has glossed over
this first stage - before the delay is introduced - but perhaps if the first
step has already introduced the spooky feeling of your back being an arms
length in front of you (maybe to a milder degree than if it had looked like a
back), then when you start feeling your back (still in front of you) being
touched when you can clearly see noone is touching it, this could naturally
lead to a feeling of an invisible actor?

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jglauche
I'd be interested in developing this further. If you could have a whole
robotic hand that you could move, it could produce a much nicer way of body
contact. I'm thinking about this as a self-help device for people that are
suffering from depression or social anxiety, giving that person full control
about where and how to touch, but the illusion that another person does it for
them.

~~~
Void_
So a robotic girlfriend is the way to treat depression?

~~~
jglauche
No, but physical body contact in a non-sexual way helps (me) a lot.

