Fantasy of ESP
Just for fun I’d like to take a break from the hideous implications of the main thrust of my talks and talk about something I do not think exists nor does any harm I know of by its absence. I speak of mental telepathy. This comes under the heading of extra-sensory perception or ESP. Of course, it’s basically a contradiction in terms. While other forms of ESP may entail learning something over a great distance in space or time, the mental telepathy of which I shall speak I envision as occurring over a short distance and is immediate.
A recent advance in artificial intelligence, AI, is quite clever. You know that AI programs are not set in stone, but rather address lots and lots of data and seek patterns. The advance is to imbue such a program with “curiosity.” It assesses how well its current pattern is performing and whether that performance is improving. If the program is not learning and improving, it will back away from the approach and try something new. A snide voice in my head whispers, “That’s not curiosity; it’s boredom.” Still, I do take the point. And I do try to set things up so that you learn something here.
I have previously mentioned that there are clues that tend to send me elsewhere. A mention of chemtrails tends to nudge me away, even though I applaud people who oppose them now and in the future. Graphic presentations where I fail to see the appearance being captioned push me away; if it’s there, certainly you can show me exactly where it is in the picture. If I can’t see it, I don’t think I’m going to learn much. There was a program that seemed intriguing in which the interviewee was talking about conversing with an occupant from a flying saucer. Well that ought to be fun; maybe there’s something here I never considered. But then the words came, “Usually communicated with mental telepathy.” Oh dear. I find telepathy about ten times harder to believe than there might be actual crew and/or passengers in what looks like a craft but has no navigation lights. And goodness knows I am skeptical enough about that. I don’t mean to be critical of the production as I saw it. I refer only to my own reaction; it’s just the way I think and the way I think others think. So don’t hold it against me if, for the fun of it, I try to look at both sides of the “question” of mental telepathy, a “question” that quite likely is already settled in your own mind. As I said, this is for fun, meaning I am going to try to bring a thought to bear that you probably have not heard in this context.
An animal has a surface, and upon that surface there are areas that are more important, upon which selection is more likely to act, than others. For instance, the back of an animal tends to be rather uniform. Overall it balances protection against cost but no small area is of particular value. An exception is the human bottom, which has a rich vascular supply that lets us sit for long periods. Selection has been at work; evidently we have spent a lot of our time sitting. On the other hand, what the animal stands on is more critical. The feet of a human, the claws of a penguin, the paws of a dog and the hooves of a horse are all different solutions to the same problem, and all are capable of bearing the animal along a great distance. The champion distance runner is the human. A horse, admittedly with rider, can outrun an athletic human for something like a hundred miles, but eventually the human catches up. I wonder whether anybody has done that experiment with a Florida cracker horse. My money then would be on the horse. On the other hand, even the cracker horse would not be able to keep up scaling a rock wall face nor climbing a tree.
The other most valuable real estate on the surface of an animal is the top-front. Consider the dog:
https://www.google.com/search?q=dog&tbm=isch&source=iu&ictx=1&fir=uRwQu3JNq09xpM%253A%252CJKy7OnEFzqMhMM%252C_&usg=AFrqEzcLzadDOxowA8jTSnjr-ugXOKrocQ&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwjkzpiAsafdAhUGG6wKHVpwANkQ_h0wLXoECAcQEQ#imgdii=iXejnPE_Fy_N-M:&imgrc=rHT5kn7li-uh6M:
The pooch is optimized to pursue and attack. That’s not to say there is nothing else to a dog. A friend of mine once was walking with his dog on a leash and wife at side when a man snatched a purse from an elderly lady. My friend handed the leash to his wife and dashed in pursuit. The thief was approaching an alley, and while my friend was thinking going into that alley after him seemed like a poor plan, the dog stepped out of the alley and snarled. The snatcher froze and quietly handed over the purse. The dog had slipped its leash, had run the other way around the block and brought the event to a close. This was sophisticated pursuit.
But on first principles, it’s a matter of chase and bite. And the front of the dog has the eyes up at the top. Nose and ears are also valuable in pursuit, and the rest of the front of the dog is mostly jaws.
Compare a naval destroyer:
http://navsource.org/archives/05/interior.htm
The name of the destroyer reflects that the initial purpose was to destroy shipping. Of course, it turned out to be most versatile, reminding one of how many tasks dogs are put to other than their using their chase-bite skills. Looking at the machine, the cutwater would be the equivalent of dog front legs. Above that, the guns are the equivalent of jaws, and pretty much at the top is the bridge – the eyes.
Now consider a more modern destroyer.
https://www.google.com/imgres?imgurl=https://www.navy.mil/navydata/ships/destroyers/dd963-spruance.jpg&imgrefurl=https://www.navy.mil/navydata/nav_legacy.asp?id%3D145&h=600&w=800&tbnid=zIlqIDGO9ehjzM:&q=modern+destroyers+us+navy&tbnh=160&tbnw=213&usg=AFrqEzcp8RfsWE2FofxKLsTP08KMconBsw&vet=12ahUKEwjDrOnquKfdAhURRqwKHZPhDZMQ9QEwAHoECAYQBg..i&docid=pKqvczWpkqut2M&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwjDrOnquKfdAhURRqwKHZPhDZMQ9QEwAHoECAYQBg#h=600&imgdii=wj4QB9TBLacqXM:&tbnh=160&tbnw=213&vet=12ahUKEwjDrOnquKfdAhURRqwKHZPhDZMQ9QEwAHoECAYQBg..i&w=800
Now that seems odd. Considering the high value of the front of the ship, why would there be a flat, featureless surface? I have no privileged information, so please don’t think me acting careless with national security, but it has to be phased array radar. In other words, instead of swinging the whole radar dish, different elements of that flat surface are activated in sequence so as to accomplish much the same thing. Given that the radar of a fighter jet can resolve the compressor blades on an approaching jet seventy miles away, that thing on the destroyer should be able to count the fillings in the teeth of the captain of a ship below the horizon.
But of course, you’d really like to have the array higher, so here is the Zumwalt, our latest and best:
https://www.google.com/search?q=zumwalt-class+destroyers&tbm=isch&source=iu&ictx=1&fir=ONWMBRoHoKwPeM%253A%252Cn3LRfx0P-dCr0M%252C_&usg=AFrqEze9acNnUEpk3h2z9a2idsAMTMJX2Q&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwi2m9WPu6fdAhULOawKHaEBCNcQ_h0wIXoECAgQDQ#imgrc=ONWMBRoHoKwPeM:
The array is above the bridge. Radar is more important in critical situations than is vision. I rest my case; the top front is a highly valuable place on the anatomy.
So here is a person:
Now that seems odd. The eyes are not at the top. They are half way up. That begs for explanation. It’s not that the high forehead is needed to accommodate a massive brain. The Neanderthal had a brain bigger than mine without lifting the top of the skull; the skull extended backwards.
Before I go over the deep end and play footsie with total madness, let me offer a couple of more reasonable choices. First, consider the possibility is that the high conspicuous forehead might have been as protection against the most dangerous thing is most environments: an attack from another person. It screams, “Have a care. I, too, am a person. We are better off cooperating than fighting.”
If you don’t like that one, reflect on that comfortable tush. We’ve spent a lot of time sitting. To what end? Well we were probably working stone or wood, bone or textile. If the keyboard could look up at me it would see the eyes at what would seem to be the top of the head, where they belong.
Now for the fun.
No, I’m sorry. There’s another digression. Reptiles have a bit of a bad reputation. The reptile brain is able to oversee hunting, napping in the sun, fighting and mating. The implication is that these are its only powers. So we lord it over them, because we have “higher functions,” things like empathy. Well there is a story I am sure is true: a man was playing host to a friend, who had brought his young daughter, the little girl’s friend and the man’s friend’s wife. They had settled down by the swimming pool, and the little girls started having fun jumping off the low diving board. They enjoyed it for a good bit of time, and then the man’s pet iguana got into the act. The big lizard walked over, climbed onto the diving board, walked to the end and then jumped off, something it had never done before. The man’s friend shouted, “He’s coming after you!” This was not true, but the girls panicked and scrambled out. The lizard swam the other direction, pulled itself out and settled in a corner. Neither girls nor iguana jumped again. The man’s friends’ moment of petty meanness ruined the fun for everybody. It’s a rather sad story, but the point is that for my money, the lizard showed more empathy, more concern for the feelings of others, than did the man’s friend. So don’t tell me a lizard is not capable on a social interaction that we rate among our most prized.
Sure, at the base of a human brain there is anatomy that closely models the brain of a reptile; what we have is an overdeveloped cerebrum. The cerebrum permits the reptile brain to function in some ways better. For instance, confronting a snake, a dog is the master. With its extra brain, it is able to move faster and more accurately in a showdown. Yet I have heard someone say in all seriousness, “Your reptile brain is not useless. When a child runs in front of your car, it is the reptile brain that instantly slams the brakes.” Nay, say I. The reptile had the upper brain evaluate possible dangers and cue up appropriate responses. The higher brain does not replace the reptile brain, it serves the reptile brain.
How big do you suppose the brain of an eagle is? The size of the last joint on your thumb … a finger …? The amount of brain you assign to vision is far bigger. But the eagle sees better than you. The “higher centers” of the brain are grossly redundant, far bigger than they have any need to be.
The neurons in your brain, waking and sleeping, are constantly crackling away in a complex network. If they synchronize and all start firing in unison, the result is a convulsion, and condition that serves no good purpose. But there is a degree of local mass organization. Electrodes on the scalp will pick up “brain waves,” the summation of the firing of numerous neurons, none of which would be detectable in isolation by such crude equipment.
But suppose, just suppose you did a bit of an experiment. Get a couple of young people aged 10 to 15 (when brain activity is about maximum and the skull is still pretty thin), who are very close to each other, who have lots of mutual empathy. Have their parents present throughout the study so the children are not distracted by anxiety. Put a couple of them facing each other through a cloth screen. Let them try to signal each other about what cards they are looking at in a deck.
If indeed the brain waves can synchronize enough to send a signal, probably undetectable by the EEG we mentioned, and if the same process can receive a signal – it’s a rule of antenna design that anything that can send a signal can receive a signal – they just might be able to produce the long-imagined ability to communicate by mind alone. In other words, the noble and ancient reptile brain might be able to coopt the fluffy higher centers and turn them to the purpose for which they were actually selected.
There, I’ve said it. Color me stark raving mad if you like. Don’t let your wholesome skepticism on this topic contaminate your wholesome need to understand what I have said about kinship and fertility, please.
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