Let’s begin with my 95-year-old grand mother. Her reminiscence is unreliable, however she’s nonetheless lucid, churns out sarcasm like a pro, and performs a lightning-rapid sport of double solitaire.
Today I subsequently cease after she gained seven video games in a row, and, yes, I turned into attempting my best. She additionally hears the song continuously, and it’s now no longer the sort of song that drives us nuts whilst we can’t get a song out of our head.
She especially hears authentic song, and she or he will now and again attempt to hum or sing what she’s listening to. Not only that, but she says it’s coming from "the buddies downstairs," and it doesn’t hassle her, she says, due to the fact a number of it isn’t terrible and as it facilitates her fall asleep.
The reality that different human beings can’t listen to it doesn’t hassle her either. She surely smiles slyly and says, "Maybe you must get your listening to checked."
The reality that different human beings can’t listen to it doesn’t hassle her either. She surely smiles slyly and says, "Maybe you must get your listening to checked."
Am I concerned?
Well, only a bit — now no longer approximately the song, however approximately its source. As I informed my mother the opposite day, I could be extra cushy if the thoughtless buddies lived upstairs.
She laughed and said, "I see what you’re getting at, however, don’t worry. I’m now no longer going to hell." Was she making plans to barter the difficulty with a hand of double solitaire? Where is all this authentic song coming from? My mom has in no way composed a song, and she or he insists she could be incapable of doing so, "irrespective of how a good deal you paid me.
That’s mother-talk for case closed. In case you haven’t noticed, we're surrounded through mysteries like this. Some, in my view, are noticeably suspect, consisting of demonic ownership and conversation with spirits. Others are undeniably actual: dreams, daydreams, hallucinations, the déjà vu enjoy, and so on.
My group of workers these days got here up with a listing of fifty-eight such phenomena. You don’t need to appear some distance to locate them. Are we doomed to stay inside the darkest mysteries, or is there a manner to peel again the veil? What if spirits, dreams, and my mother’s song may want to all be accounted for through a fairly easy concept approximately how the mind works.
Transduction is all round us, even in natural processes. Our our bodies are absolutely encased through transducers.
She laughed and said, "I see what you’re getting at, however, don’t worry. I’m now no longer going to hell." Was she making plans to barter the difficulty with a hand of double solitaire? Where is all this authentic song coming from? My mom has in no way composed a song, and she or he insists she could be incapable of doing so, "irrespective of how a good deal you paid me.
That’s mother-talk for case closed. In case you haven’t noticed, we're surrounded through mysteries like this. Some, in my view, are noticeably suspect, consisting of demonic ownership and conversation with spirits. Others are undeniably actual: dreams, daydreams, hallucinations, the déjà vu enjoy, and so on.
My group of workers these days got here up with a listing of fifty-eight such phenomena. You don’t need to appear some distance to locate them. Are we doomed to stay inside the darkest mysteries, or is there a manner to peel again the veil? What if spirits, dreams, and my mother’s song may want to all be accounted for through a fairly easy concept approximately how the mind works.
Concept that would also be testable?
The concept, that is pretty easy on its face, is that the mind is a bidirectional transducer.
A few inches to the left of the computer pc on which I am now typing stands an enforcing Sennheiser microphone that I use especially whilst a person is interviewing me for a radio or TV display.
A thick black cable protrudes from the
A thick black cable protrudes from the
microphone and snakes its manner to a boxy analogue-to-virtual converter, which hyperlinks to my pc through a brilliant crimson USB cable. My pc hyperlinks wirelessly to a router with inside the subsequent room, and the router connects to AT&T, my net provider provider, thru a cellphone cable that runs from the router to a wall socket.
That cable results in dozens of different transition factors thru which crude representations of my voice byskip earlier than a few semblance of it's miles subsequently heard through a talk-display host in, say, London. If I’m speakme to a bunch of a BBC radio program, representations of his or her voice also are touring withinside the different path from his or her microphone thru dozens of transition factors till they subsequently spark off a tiny speaker in my ear bud, thru which I listen a semblance of his or her voice.
If we’re additionally the use of video to communicate, cameras are sending photos to screens, once more thru many transition factors, and once more in each directions.
If we’re additionally the use of video to communicate, cameras are sending photos to screens, once more thru many transition factors, and once more in each directions.
Representations of those photos and sounds is probably passing now no longer most effective thru a couple of transition factors however additionally thru lots of miles of copper or fiber optic cables, or are possibly being transmitted to satellites loads of miles above the earth after which re-transmitted to receivers at the ground.
Long ago, pathways like this will accommodate most effective one communique at a time, with communications jogging in most effective one path at a time, however now such pathways are bidirectional and are regularly shared concurrently through lots of various conversations.
Remarkably, whilst the whole thing is operating smoothly, my communique with the London host is as seamless as it might be if we have been withinside the equal room.
Even though i'm 5,500 miles away in San Diego, I can’t come across any time gaps among my ramblings and the host’s reply. Those gaps exist, however they’re so brief that neither I nor the host can understand them.
Even though i'm 5,500 miles away in San Diego, I can’t come across any time gaps among my ramblings and the host’s reply. Those gaps exist, however they’re so brief that neither I nor the host can understand them.
What’s occurring here?Is my voice sincerely touring 5,500 miles?
Definitely now no longer. If you have been the owner of a nineteenth century mansion, you would possibly were capable of shout right into a speakme tube that snaked its manner thru your house and carried your voice all of the manner to the servants quarters.
In that case, the sound of your voice turned into actually carried to its vacation spot through the air withinside the tube. But after I talk into my microphone, the sample of sound waves produced through my voice — a special, non-random sample of air stress waves — is being transformed through the microphone right into a comparable sample of electrical interest. The higher the microphone, the extra as it should be it duplicates the authentic sample, and the extra I sound like me at the opposite end.
In that case, the sound of your voice turned into actually carried to its vacation spot through the air withinside the tube. But after I talk into my microphone, the sample of sound waves produced through my voice — a special, non-random sample of air stress waves — is being transformed through the microphone right into a comparable sample of electrical interest. The higher the microphone, the extra as it should be it duplicates the authentic sample, and the extra I sound like me at the opposite end.
The conversion process
The transferring of a meaningful, non-random sample of interest — from one medium (say, the air in the front of the microphone) to any other medium (say, the cord in the back of a microphone) is known as transduction.
Transduction is all round us, even in natural processes. Our our bodies are absolutely encased through transducers.
Our experience organs — eyes, ears, nose, tongue, and skin —transduce special houses of electromagnetic radiation, air stress waves, airborne chemicals, liquid-borne chemicals, textures, stress, and temperature into special styles of electrical and chemical interest withinside the mind. Organic compounds may even be used nowadays to create new varieties of transducers, consisting of OECTs: natural electrochemical transistors.
Evolution didn’t simply create tens of thousands and thousands of latest species of organisms, it additionally created tens of thousands and thousands of latest kinds of transducers, and engineers at the moment are the use of each natural and inorganic substances to create lots extra.
Evolution didn’t simply create tens of thousands and thousands of latest species of organisms, it additionally created tens of thousands and thousands of latest kinds of transducers, and engineers at the moment are the use of each natural and inorganic substances to create lots extra.
Transduction is all round us — types of transduction which have developed over eons and new types of transduction that human beings are inventing proper now.
The Ultimate Transducer
What if evolution, at a few factor, produced a unique sort of transducer that would shift indicators from the bodily?
As we comprehend it to a completely extraordinary sort of international. Nearly all religions train that immaterial nation-states exist that go beyond the truth we recognize. For Christians and Muslims, the ones nation-states are Heaven and Hell.
One of the most effective and clearest statements of the sort of idea comes from historical Greek mythology: As lengthy because the deceased had the specified toll in hand — well, sincerely in mouth — she or he could be transported through the ferryman Charon throughout the river Styx to Hades, the land of the dead — pretty actually, to the Other Side. (I’ll name it the OS from this factor on.)
One of the most effective and clearest statements of the sort of idea comes from historical Greek mythology: As lengthy because the deceased had the specified toll in hand — well, sincerely in mouth — she or he could be transported through the ferryman Charon throughout the river Styx to Hades, the land of the dead — pretty actually, to the Other Side. (I’ll name it the OS from this factor on.)
Unfortunately, now no longer absolutely each person turned into eligible to make the crossing. If nobody idea to bury you or to place that coin for your mouth, you have been doomed to roam this facet of the river as a ghost.
The concept of a realm transcending the only we enjoy at once has taken on many bureaucracy over the centuries. George Griffith, England’s maximum distinguished and prolific technological know-how fiction author of the overdue 1800s, posted a prescient novel approximately this realm in 1906.
The concept of a realm transcending the only we enjoy at once has taken on many bureaucracy over the centuries. George Griffith, England’s maximum distinguished and prolific technological know-how fiction author of the overdue 1800s, posted a prescient novel approximately this realm in 1906.
The Mummy and Miss Nitocris: A Phantasy of the Fourth Dimension. The book’s protagonist, professor Franklin Marmion, is a prominent mathematician and physicist who anticipates discoveries and ideas that actual quantum physicists could finally recommend many years later.
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