Matt, What I find really interesting is that my eyes can do many things independently. For example, If I get up at night, close one eye, turn on a light, do something, turn the light back off, and open up my closed eye, I have preserved my dark adaption in the previously-closed eye.
This whole odyssey started out when I realized that one eye was seeing details, while my other eye was providing peripheral vision. The detail eye developed a couple of typical glaucoma blind spots in its peripheral field. So, I made some special glasses to reverse the situation - blocking peripheral vision in my peripheral vision eye, and blurring out my detail eye. In a couple of weeks of part-time wearing I had eliminated my blind spots. I then went a YEAR without taking any special measures and was retested - and there was no trace of the former blind spots. Further, the retina on my detail eye had lost some thickness (from disuse of its peripheral vision), but some of this was gained back. It seems unlikely that we actually focus images sharply on our retinas, as this way we would lose a LOT of details that happen to fall on arteries and other insensitive structural details. Instead, a slightly out-of-focus image could be inverse transformed to produce a MUCH better image. However, there are problems doing the inverse transform on blurred images, because they are sensitive to illumination, etc. However, the inverse transform of a thin-spiked Mercedes emblem is MUCH easier, and can be made insensitive to the lengths of the spikes. That we apparently develop these inverse transforms efficiently and without conscious intervention sure looks like a clue for AGI, because after all, the whole idea of "understanding" is to inversely transform what you see (and hear and sense) into a model that would produce such sensations. Automatically-developed inverse transforms could be at the heart and soul of much of what we do. Thoughts? Steve On Sat, Jun 27, 2015 at 4:28 PM, Matt Mahoney <[email protected]> wrote: > Interesting. I once saw a documentary where a man wore glasses that > turned everything upside down as an experiment. After a few weeks he > adapted to it and was able to drive a car and fly a plane. When he > took the glasses off, he once again saw everything upside down. > > > On Thu, Jun 25, 2015 at 2:05 PM, Steve Richfield > <[email protected]> wrote: > > Hi all, > > > > I recently had eye surgery to implant an IOL. Apparetly they overshot > > a bit with their laser and altered my eye so points of light look like > > little Mercedes emblems with three streaks leading out from each point > > - similar to the images produced by some astronomical telescopes. > > However, the central point is NOT much if any brighter than the rays. > > You might imagine this results in a VERY blurry image, but it doesn't. > > Apparently, my eye has quickly developed the inverse transform that > > actually USES this to improve images. This was really annoying for > > night driving (where there is too much variability to inversely > > transform), until I realized that I could use the streaks as a range > > finder for night-time driving. In this case, when a streak is about as > > long as the distance between tail lights, it means that the car in > > front of me is ~6 seconds ahead of me (at freeway speeds). This makes > > it easy to recognize when I am closing on the car in front of me, even > > when I am far away from it. > > > > It has only been a month since the surgery, and the streaks are > > getting thinner with time, so it is possible that I will lose my > > newfound rangefinder during the next couple of months. > > > > This has interesting implications for both neuroscience and AGI, > > because it sugggests a process where correlations between many inputs > > act to adjust their consideration so that taken together they act as a > > single input. I wonder how many such groups of inputs a neuron can > > have and still keep track of the correlations, etc? > > > > Thoughts? > > > > Steve > > > > > > ------------------------------------------- > > AGI > > Archives: https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/303/=now > > RSS Feed: > https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/rss/303/3701026-786a0853 > > Modify Your Subscription: https://www.listbox.com/member/?&; > > Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com > > > > -- > -- Matt Mahoney, [email protected] > > > ------------------------------------------- > AGI > Archives: https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/303/=now > RSS Feed: https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/rss/303/10443978-6f4c28ac > Modify Your Subscription: > https://www.listbox.com/member/?&; > Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com > -- Full employment can be had with the stoke of a pen. Simply institute a six hour workday. That will easily create enough new jobs to bring back full employment. ------------------------------------------- AGI Archives: https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/303/=now RSS Feed: https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/rss/303/21088071-f452e424 Modify Your Subscription: https://www.listbox.com/member/?member_id=21088071&id_secret=21088071-58d57657 Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com
