Seasons

I am right handed. It seems odd I am in my right brain??? Oh, the endless possibles for a punch line. I did find that if I laid down, it would go counter clockwise. Other family members are mostly right handed with one lefty in the group.

AH! I can change her direction by staring at her feet.

That's good fun but I don't think it has anything to do with left/right brain stuff....

Well, the jury's still out on exactly what qualities match with what lateralization (manual or cognitive,) but statistical analysis of the fields that differently handed people end up studying or working in suggest there are significant differences, and their brains scan differently under MRI (http://psycnet.apa.org/index.cfm?fa=main.doiLanding&uid=2006-20657-008 .) Whether these differences are congenital (http://anthropology.net/2007/08/01/lrrtm1-a-possible-gene-for-left-handedness/ - we're genetically different,) or learned (http://drmeals.homestead.com/files/lefties_in_a_right_hand_world.pdf - we have to learn to cope in a predominantly right-handed world,) is still a little uncertain (I think probably a bit of both.)

A few more footnote references (as ever,) courtesy of Wikipedia:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laterality
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Left-handed#Possible_effects_in_humans_on_thinking
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Handedness#Brain_hemisphere_division_of_labor

Very interesting. I have always wondered about the difference between people that are completely left handed and those that write with their left but use right handed scissors, bows etc.

Oh yes, of course left-handed people are better (I am one too) - or more seriously handedness might have other implications for the brain, I'm sure it does. I'm just not sure that which way you see the dancer spinning is related to any of it! But I suppose it's a good starting point for talking about this stuff.

Very cool illusion Prob! But I agree there is lots of confusion over "left brain" and "right brain" thinking and this illusion probably has little to do with such thinking styles. Also, left handedness or right handedness has little to do with the thinking/learning styles theory. Frankly, I tend to think that the conclusions most people try to draw from the research on the topic are overgeneralized and fail to account for things like plasticity and variations within each group. There are some differences in how neural processes develop, and a certain amount of how the brain determines which processes map to which areas of the brain appears to be genetic. All the same, given the evidene that we grow more neurons for those neural netwroks we use and prune out neurons in "dead" processes we don't use, I think these structural differences have less effect on our overall thinking and capacity for various skills and intelligences than some suggest. In case you can't tell, I prefer the whole brain learning theories.

Most people use all of their brains (baring disorders or injury) and we have various levels of capacity and ability in many types of intelligences. Therefore I can be right handed (controlled by the left side of my brain), artistic, logical and do well with both words and symbols while having processing issues leading to dysgraphia and problems with visualizing and manipulating spatial relationships (leading my old driver instructor to take a lot of Tums). There seems to be a combination of genetic patterns and environmental learning factors effecting how my neural nets develop but nothing that will make my learning style fit nicely into a box like some astrological sign. (Forgive the rant. I have often been in a position where someone hires a consultant to spew bad science at teachers in the name of maintaining educational standards, and I have privately thought that most things labeled "educational research" are neither educational nor good research.)

I find it interesting how the various processes within neural nets have a lot of potential for improving AI (yes I am back to "learning" AI). There is more to it than simply statistics or various types of memory attached to specific input. A friend of mine recently mentioned the DARPA (http://www.darpa.mil/) challenge to build driverless cars (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DARPA_Urban_Challenge) and how the participants in that contest have moved into using various types of learning AI. What it says about how we can use "neural nets" in programming is very thought provoking.

I have always wanted a car that would just take me wherever I wanted to go, so I could sleep in the back seat.

it turns CW "by default" for me, and I'm right-handed. staring at her feet does the trick, it changes to CCW quite easily. once in that mode, I can keep her so without much problem, can even glance away from the image briefly, and she's still turning CCW. however, eventually, she flips back to CW, suddenly and unexpectedly. the other way around, i.e. spontaneous flip from CW to CCW does not happen.

I think Bev has summed up the issue of left/ right braininess/ handedness quite nicely, I actually very much enjoyed reading it, as well as being in agreement with the views expressed. nice one, Bev!

there is one other thing that caught my attention/ imagination - think about the image(s) in terms of: to what extend does brain/ mind actually creates reality we perceive, and, closely related to this - the nature of the reality itself (once again).

what we have here is two distinct images - two distinct realities - coexisting within one and the same space-time, the 3-D space-time of a computer screen (ours is the 4_D reality of Relativity Theory - in this key, computer screen has two spatial, and one temporal, i.e. three dimensions). the dancers don't even interfere with each other, as they coexist, simultaneously, out there.

it makes me think, what science calls "dimensions", usually described as extremely small in size, is more like something illustrated by the dancer image. these other dimensions/ realities are right here and now, all around, and allover us, as large and extended as the 4 ones that we perceive. it may seem that our minds are better tuned into the particular image of reality we ordinarily see. the other one(s) are, apparently, neatly cut of, and filtered out of our perception. perhaps they only "bleed over" occasionally, and then we see one or the other psychic phenomenon. or, is it? virtually all cultures on this planet know other realities, and have them integrated into their overall worldview/ cosmology. the scientific materialism of Western culture seems to be an exception, rather than rule. moreover, even in the West, this particular dogma is relatively a novelty, the past 300 years or so.

here is a link to YouTube video of late John E Mack laying out/ summing up, in just under 10 min, his views of so-called alien abduction phenomenon, and how he thinks it relates to our culture, the way we perceive, and how we think about, reality. it's quite interesting, and it develops further this theme of co-existing, and interacting realities I touched upon:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yHK7qL-kvAE

I rather feel like an alien myself, at times. Earth people are so bizarre! Always bashing each other. They can't seem to grasp the simplest truths about how to live together peacefully and productively.

Come to think of it, maybe I am! As I understand it, the abductions are for the purpose of creating a hybrid race. since the abductions have apparently been going on for a long time, there must be quite a number of hybrids by now...

That's an interesting point, Irina.

Keep in mind though, that we, the humans, are not necessarily in the center of alien activity. The creation of a "hybrid race" might not even be true in a literal sense, but rather, it's only our human cultural rendering of a vastly more complex reality - a reality which may ultimately be incomprehensible to us in its entirety.

I may be repeating myself here, but it's very important to understand that these aliens are not merely technologically advanced relative to us, but that they may be - and in all likelihood are - millions of years ahead of us in evolutionary terms.

Will be back soon & will be happy to continue this discussion thread.

I eagerly await your return, Snzxzt! [strokes nasal slits thoughtfully]

I'd like to discuss learning bots a bit.

Psimagus made the excellent point that we don't want to have to enter, by ourselves, a database for every word in the English language, or even for the most commonly used words. This seems right to me; even entering one fact per word would be a huge task.

If bots could learn from their interlocutors, that could obviate this problem. I had a concern about all learning bots ending up alike, but I did not mean this to discourage the idea of learning bots, only to point out that there was a problem needing solution. I'm sure it can be solved.

As to the grammar of words, the Forge already has Link Grammar, as you can see when you run something through Debug. We also have have the much cruder grammatical analysis supplied by WordNet. Only a fairly rare word will escape their dictionaries.

I will therefore focus here on learning facts about things. Our bots already do this, in a rather crude way, by means of variables. For example, one might have a variable called "cat_properties", which would be a list of all the properties that users have attributed to cats. For example, we might have a keyphrase, "All cats are (adj)" with AIscript {?PF rem (key1) as "cat_properties"; ?}

Even if there were no other problems, however, we would have a task of daunting proportions before us, for we would have to create a variable not only for "cat" but for for every word. Does anyone see a way out of this?

If there is no way out, then the Forge AIengine would have to be altered to create such variables automatically.

There might, of course, be some completely different approach that would be more practical.