How to find lost things!

In my endless rambles across the web I came across this cute little reference from a "findologist" calling himself Professor Solomon (well it seems he was featured on Good Morning America...!??!).
Funnily enough what he writes is in accord with my personal findings. Although I must confess to some digressions:
First - as a rule of thumb if I don't find something after three minutes of thought I turn to my wife!!! If you follow that rule (which I am sure many people are familiar with) it will lead to success 8 out of 10 times. Its a gender thing, women are just better at multitasking and usually more thorough - so they perform better at this kind of hyper threaded thought process that also requires meticulous execution.
Another technique that I use is Reverse Stream of Consciousness where I sort of meditate and try to reverse my actions and/or sayings in time. In doing that I usually am aided by both visualization (i.e. - close my eyes and see it) and strong use of exact phrase or word contexts (e.g. - I ask the person who is was talking to to repeat the exact phrase they said to me and that usually evokes similar memories or thoughts)


MC

VR, vision and sense of self

A couple of days ago I received a post from a team mate (its in Hebrew so I wo'nt bother with it). It basically talks about two separate experiments that were carried out in Europe and deal with recreating rigorously "out of body" experiences for tested subjects by using sensory inputs from video cameras to their eyes in which they see themselves. These were both part of the latest Science issue but the two originals can be found at the UCL Neurology institute and the Ecole Polytechnique Federale de Laussane. ostensibly what both researchers demonstrated was that projecting people with images of themselves from the back in real time, while conflicting physical sensory inputs (touch) to their bodies, created a perception of being outside ones own body.
As an anecdotal side note - about 10 years ago while at a government research facility and dealing with stereo vision I had pondered seriously on the implications of manipulating the points of view of our eyes and what effect that might have on our perception. My concept was somewhat different and basically talked about using the same video camera feed but with one "eye" set to normal and the other changing perspectives. I hypothesized that as long as the two images were towards the front of the subject (such that when she moves to her "real" front both eyes get closer to the far wall) she will retain her sense of balance and self. I expected that once this relation was broken (say one camera was 90 degrees to the other, or pointed backwards) our consciousness would break down and our sense of self localization could suffer. Unfortunately this was not part of the agenda at the time and I never returned to it. I wonder if some of the neuroscientists looking into this field could take on this experiment...
At any rate out of body experiences connect directly to the issue of self and the connection of our physical and mental existence as a unified pair. This has been something revisited by many philosophers theologists, cognitive scientists and even physicists over the years and seems to be a critical hub of both social science, brain and neurology, physics and artificial intelligence and a hotly debated issue these days.

MC

Zoe's Ahh moment!

Last night the funniest thing happened - I came home around 18:30 so I could see Zoe before she goes to sleep. As usual I take off my "work" cloths and prepare to slip into something more comfortable. Zoe comes over to me with my just taken off shoes and says "Daddy, LALA" (which are shoes in her lingo). So I smile and say " yes these are my shoes, maybe you want to put them in my room?" and she shrugs me off...

Later she comes over with my just taken off socks (!@!@) "daddy - BAYIM" (again similar to socks in Hebrew) and I reply "yeah - why don't you put them in the laundry" shrugs me off again....

THEN I tell her "you know these are my pretty shoes - now daddy wants to put on his slippers" - what does she do?....

She replies "Ahh" and then proceeds on her own to take my shoes to the bedroom, take the socks to the laundry room and comes back with my Crocs (which are my slippers)

MC

Book report - 10 years late

Ok - i am ashamed... I have only just recently read Snow Crash by Neal Stephenson. I came across it at a conference i went to in NYC (VW2007 ) It really is a great book. I am not a hard core SF reader but this one was indeed a good read: fast paced and full of mindful action that pushes the reader into thought about how technology and human culture interact. The amazing part is that it was written between 88-94 or so before the big internet boom - yet its' depiction of future events is quite insightful still.
one interesting aspect was his talk about the possibility of a hard coded "machine language" in humans (i wont spoil further) at any rate researching the matter further i cam across some interesting concepts: Bicameralism seems to be the original theory that uses this line of reasoning to try and explain the origins of Consciousness. Although there are quite a few missing parts in this theory and many opposers i still think it is quite mind provoking. I wonder how it might tie in with Hoffshtader's ( the seminal work GEB and others) into the mathematical origins of consciousness and other similar works. There seems to be some obvious connection between complexity (be it societal or internally within our brain) and self awareness. This also resonates with a book i read quite a while ago (meaning i forgot most of...) Schrödinger's What is Life?. Am trying to look into this subject more deeply. Will report if i find anythng of interest.

MC