
You Share Everything with Your Friends, Even Brain Waves - montrose
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/04/16/science/friendship-brain-health.html
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otakucode
I've read a bit about this, and thought a great deal about it. I studied
philosophy alongside Computer Science in college and the functioning of the
brain has always fascinated me. But I am most definitely an amateur so take
what I have to say with a grain of salt.

I think they might be missing a component in their research. They are looking
at people with established friendships. And they are then assuming that people
gravitated to one another due to similarities, rather than the friendship
causing the similarity, and I think that might largely be incorrect. The brain
has 'mirror neurons' which lead us to 'mirror' the sensations we believe
others are having into our own minds. If we see someone get stabbed in the
hand, the neurons responsible for sensing pain in our own hands see some
activation, things like that. Given the central dogma of neuroscience,
'neurons that fire together, wire together', it would make sense that people
who spend a great deal of time with each other, and in similar environments,
would have their brains adapt to be similar.

Now here's where we can go off the deep end. So, the brain activity mirrored
into our own minds when dealing with our friends is approximate to some
degree, but this research suggests that it probably gets more accurate over
time. Eventually, we are duplicating the patterns from our friends minds and
they are duplicating the patterns of our own. To what degree might it be said,
then, that our selves are 'shared'? If our friend passes away and we consider
how they might have thought about something, our ability to model that
probably borders on their own ability had they been alive given a strong
enough friendship.

And obviously we have many friends. Around about 100 if Dunbar's Number is a
legitimate feature of our brains. So our brains are filled with these 100
overlapping intertwined networks of models of our friends... and is that it?
Is it meaningful to say that if we were able to 'scrub' our mind of those
influences that there would be anything left?

~~~
taneq
One of the concerns about strong AI is that, if an AI tried to understand a
human, it could end up simulating that human and literally making a virtual
copy of them which is complete enough to be considered a person. Build a smart
enough AI and from that point on you would never know if you were really you
or a simulation being run by the AI.

In the same way, I've always wondered to what degree my own internal models of
my friends and family are actually mini-versions of them. Ever wondered how
you know exactly what (eg.) your mother would say in a given situation?

~~~
carlmr
>to what degree my own internal models of my friends and family are actually
mini-versions of them

I'd say there's still a lot of inference in your models on what goes on in
them internally. They're extrapolated models from outward behavior. There are
some things you don't know about them which they don't show.

~~~
sametmax
Most people, including friends and family, interact at a very superficial
level most of the time.

Sometime even spouses discover incredible fact about their others special one
decades after the wedding.

So a good simulation could carry on the make believe for quite some time
undetected I think.

~~~
taneq
In 'Revelation Space' by Alastair Reynolds, they have the idea of a "beta
simulation" of a person, which is an AI agent based on external observations
of the person and their interactions. These could seem very similar to the
simulated person but weren't able to actually create any new responses, only
respond from appropriately chosen canned responses. They also had "alpha
simulations" which were whole-brain uploads and were basically the actual
person (at least until they all went mad...)

~~~
sametmax
It's funny that in most SF, they consider the brain the only things to copy to
be a person.

But given we have neurons in the heart and guts, that the chemicals we have it
our body and the digestive activity affect our behavior and that discover
everyday that a lot of "us" is actually made up of alien micro-organism taking
a role in almost every parts of our daily lifes, including hormones management
- a crucial piece of our reaction puzzles - I think it's far from realistic.

I can't wait to see the first people uploading their brain in a machine, only
to discover that:

\- A, it's just a copy, not them;

\- B, the copy is not nearly close to the original;

\- C, they feel that they are missing something but they can't express it
because the missing thing helped them defining it.

I swear, we geeks love to solve perfect problems with perfect solutions.

Like the joke of the physicist that can cure a chicken, but only if the
chicken is a perfect sphere in a frictionless vacuum.

~~~
circlefavshape
Yes! Pretty much all SF and AI woo ignores the fact that humans are
ecosystems, and not brains driving a machine

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rhn_mk1
In my impression, a larger share of friendships than ever are not made face to
face. In my experience, they can survive as long as any other.

My main question while reading the article was: does the same effect hold for
"remote" friendships? Are the same patterns visible? Or perhaps a different
set of shared properties appears?

The article only mentions that a description is different than a conversation:

> Dr. Ochsner offered his own story as evidence of the primacy of chemistry
> over mere biography. “My wife-to-be and I were both neuroscientists in the
> field, we were on dating websites, but we were never matched up,” he said.

> “Then we happened to meet as colleagues and in two minutes we knew we had
> the kind of chemistry that breeds a relationship.”

I wonder if "chemistry" travels across the net.

Then again, I know a couple of people that are just so different to be around
in meatspace than online.

~~~
CapsAdmin
> I wonder if "chemistry" travels across the net.

I guess it does to some extent but if you only have communication by text to
go by it can be tricky or very different.

I've met many of my online friends in real life and it's surprising how
different they seem from what my expectations are. There's still that
"chemistry" but initially there's a lot of new things about them that I never
considered before I have to process. It always changes how I see my online
friends after I meet them. It's never been a bad thing though. I feel it's the
same vice versa (real life to internet).

It feels a bit like 2 separate but oddly similar people I have to learn to
associate with 1 person.

------
12bytes
“The day science begins to study non-physical phenomena, it will make more
progress in one decade than in all the previous centuries of its existence.” ―
Nikola Tesla

~~~
scottie_m
I hate to break it to you, but brainwaves are very much a physical phenomenon.
What is the point of that quote in this context exactly?

~~~
tlarkworthy
Perception runs on hardware, but it's software. It's importance is non-
physical. Penrose[1] divided the realms of reality into 3: platonic-
mathmatical, physical reality and the mind. I think Tesla is also suggesting
scientific study of the mind is distinct from physics. I agree too. Perception
is bad representation of reality, but it shapes all of the human experience.

Edit: I miss attributed to Mandlebrot originally. Both like tessalation!

1 [https://astudentforever.wordpress.com/2015/03/13/roger-
penro...](https://astudentforever.wordpress.com/2015/03/13/roger-penroses-
three-worlds-and-three-deep-mysteries-theory/)

~~~
doomlaser
Except that the structure of neurons and their physical connections with each
other in the brain is very much physical, and we don't have the understanding
of those systems on a conceptual 'software' level yet, so observations such as
those made in this article are based purely on observation of the physical
phenomenon.

~~~
tlarkworthy
Except that the concept of friends is non-physical

~~~
doomlaser
This article compares the physical structure of the brains of friends.

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taylorlapeyre
Not sure if they needed to point out that the female scientist "wears large
horn-rimmed glasses and has the wholesome look of a young Sally Field" while
not mentioning the appearances of any of the male scientists in the article.

I figured The Times would be a little more aware of that kind of thing.

~~~
stochastic_monk
Oddly enough, the article is even by a female journalist.

~~~
Double_a_92
Ironically it's women who care most about such detail... Men usually care only
about the main topic, or if they reduce women to just looks that happens in a
separate context. Not intermixed like that.

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TipVFL
Interesting article, but I can't believe the writer said "pulchritude rating"
instead of attractiveness. I have a pretty large vocabulary and I'm pretty
well read, but I have never seen the word pulchritude before.

If you combined this research with the "smell dating" phenomenon, where you
match based on liking each other's body odor, you could probably do some
pretty amazing matchmaking for dating.

~~~
taneq
Ooh, that could be the next evolution of speed dating! Wire up a polygraph to
someone then just show them a stream of 1-2 second video clips of different
candidates. Shortlist the ones that literally make their heart skip a beat.

~~~
Double_a_92
Wouldn't it be more like showing them random youtube videos and matching the
people togheter that had a similar response?

