Contrast this with trans-cranial magnetic stimulation and claims this can induce the feeling of religiosity in people: you may believe in god, because your ferromagnetic particles align to believe in god in the right magnetic field..
(not really.. but still. the thing about induced states of mind by TCMS is true)
This feels just north of conspiracy theory logic. It's proven that humans can just barely sense large-scale magnetic fields, so how about if they can also sense extremely finely detailed fields in a way that solves long-standing philosophical and medical problems? Here are some supporting coincidences that have any number of alternate explanations, but it would sure be cool if this whole tower of conjecture was true, right? If you've seen conspiracy-theory debunks, the resemblance is rather strong.
Hmm this leads me to recall a bunch of ancient pseudoscientific sounding beliefs and see whether or not they might be plausibly explained by this mechanism:
* Is it possible for humans to get a vague impression of other humans' thoughts via this mechanism? Not via body language, but "telepathy" (it'd obviously only work over very short ranges). If it is possible, maybe it is what some people supposedly feel as "auras"
* Some animals have a preference for sleeping direction in alignment with magnetic pole, are some sleeping directions "healthier" than others for humans?
That aside, I didn't follow the part about how this is an answer to the hard problem of consciousness. Why couldn't the brain achieve global summarization via another mechanism, and why does having this "global summarization" result in qualia?
> If it is possible, maybe it is what some people supposedly feel as "auras"
I've always held two complementary beliefs regarding auras and similar senses:
1. It's plausible that some humans can sense subtle information about things like emotional states or reactions in other humans using non standard sensing mechanisms (so maybe electric fields rather than sight, for example).
2. I'm very certain that for overwhelmingly most humans who claim they can see auras, it's one of: bullshit, fakery, self delusion, wishful thinking, charlatanism, a scam.
Yeah, synesthesia combined with being attuned to body language and emotions could account for lot. I even remember there was some anecdote of a famous physicist (Feynman?) who investigated this soviet mind reader and found that he was picking up on subtle bodily clues.
Well how far do these fields propagate and do you need to read them from different directions to make sense of them? Think you’d want to answer those questions first. The sensors from the study are very close and all around the head. Also demonstrate there is some phenomenon to explain in the first place.
I’ve long thought it would be unsurprising if we eventually found evidence of certain kinds of telepathy. It would just be too damn useful, and tuning up one exquisitely complex magneto-electro-chemical instrument in close proximity to another similar one seems like a good way to at least get resonance. Who knows?
Contrast this with trans-cranial magnetic stimulation and claims this can induce the feeling of religiosity in people: you may believe in god, because your ferromagnetic particles align to believe in god in the right magnetic field..
(not really.. but still. the thing about induced states of mind by TCMS is true)
If this were true wouldn’t fMRI machines cause either loss of consciousness or extreme hallucinations?
I believe in dead salmon, they do.
They cause hallucinations in dead salmon? I find that hard to believe.
https://www.scientificamerican.com/blog/scicurious-brain/ign...
Loss of consciousness seems equally unlikely.
True, though an easier mistake to make, I imagine.
This feels just north of conspiracy theory logic. It's proven that humans can just barely sense large-scale magnetic fields, so how about if they can also sense extremely finely detailed fields in a way that solves long-standing philosophical and medical problems? Here are some supporting coincidences that have any number of alternate explanations, but it would sure be cool if this whole tower of conjecture was true, right? If you've seen conspiracy-theory debunks, the resemblance is rather strong.
This reminds me of the study about dog poop being aligned to magnetic north/south.[0]
It seems a bit silly, but I suspect that more of our life may be effected by biomagnetism than we yet realize.
[0] https://link.springer.com/article/10.1186/1742-9994-10-80
>may be effected by biomagnetism
Bioelectricity too, which is just now starting to get properly researched (see Michael Levin's stuff).
This is cited
Hmm this leads me to recall a bunch of ancient pseudoscientific sounding beliefs and see whether or not they might be plausibly explained by this mechanism:
* Is it possible for humans to get a vague impression of other humans' thoughts via this mechanism? Not via body language, but "telepathy" (it'd obviously only work over very short ranges). If it is possible, maybe it is what some people supposedly feel as "auras"
* Some animals have a preference for sleeping direction in alignment with magnetic pole, are some sleeping directions "healthier" than others for humans?
That aside, I didn't follow the part about how this is an answer to the hard problem of consciousness. Why couldn't the brain achieve global summarization via another mechanism, and why does having this "global summarization" result in qualia?
> If it is possible, maybe it is what some people supposedly feel as "auras"
I've always held two complementary beliefs regarding auras and similar senses:
1. It's plausible that some humans can sense subtle information about things like emotional states or reactions in other humans using non standard sensing mechanisms (so maybe electric fields rather than sight, for example).
2. I'm very certain that for overwhelmingly most humans who claim they can see auras, it's one of: bullshit, fakery, self delusion, wishful thinking, charlatanism, a scam.
Yeah, synesthesia combined with being attuned to body language and emotions could account for lot. I even remember there was some anecdote of a famous physicist (Feynman?) who investigated this soviet mind reader and found that he was picking up on subtle bodily clues.
Well how far do these fields propagate and do you need to read them from different directions to make sense of them? Think you’d want to answer those questions first. The sensors from the study are very close and all around the head. Also demonstrate there is some phenomenon to explain in the first place.
I’ve long thought it would be unsurprising if we eventually found evidence of certain kinds of telepathy. It would just be too damn useful, and tuning up one exquisitely complex magneto-electro-chemical instrument in close proximity to another similar one seems like a good way to at least get resonance. Who knows?