# A Theory of Consciousness, Latency and VR



## Space Lynx (Apr 14, 2019)

My thinking is this:

As refresh rates go higher, we tend to get lower latency. Is that directly related to consciousness is my question? Think about this for a moment just don't have a knee jerk reaction to me please, they are just thoughts, I am not claiming anything to be true.

Now that we have 240hz 0.5ms monitors, and computer hardware seems to be still scaling even if Moore's Law is somewhat dead...  I remember reading about processors that use light, or maybe even this type of technology being scaled to CPU's in the future Indium Photons

My thinking is that the human brain gives us consciousness because we have no to little latency because of the light/neurons... (so like when under an MRI they can see certain parts of the brain light up, etc).

Now does this idea scale you think? Like current definitions of AI don't interest me, to me it is just a bunch of If statements, but if there is no self-awareness and no ability to have original thought, then it is not AI to me. However, I am optimistic AI can exist within even my harder definition of it. In the far far future, like where fiber optic light signals are not just for data, but are applied to CPU hardware, etc...

I am a bit lost what I am even trying to ask here... any help is welcome, but I really think I am on to something.  Latency seems to be directly related to consciousness, and also when we game at higher refresh rates we seem to become more immersed in the game... if this keeps scaling in the next 50 years, especially with VR and Augmented Reality... the immersion may become so addicting... inevitably so.  The really interesting thing to me is, AI and what it really does become self-aware, like what is consciousness?  What makes me want to even type this question to you on a message board? Would an AI ever have a question? Maybe in order to be an AI it needs to be able to ask questions it can't answer, is that consciousness/self-awareness?


----------



## kastriot (Apr 14, 2019)

You can have consciousness even if you are blind,deaf, mute all at once since your birth it doesn't matter at all, and about AI only time will tell when a self aware human made "brain" will be born.


----------



## Space Lynx (Apr 14, 2019)

kastriot said:


> You can have consciousness even if you are blind,deaf, mute all at once since your birth it doesn't matter at all, and about AI only time will tell when a self aware human made "brain" will be born.



Does consciousness require touch then? Or does it require at least one of the five senses?  or 6 senses if we want to include magnetic fields for navigation


----------



## blobster21 (Apr 14, 2019)

What does latency and self consciousness have to do with each other ?
How exactely consciousness is related to the latency within which your brain perceives the surrounding environment ?


----------



## Space Lynx (Apr 14, 2019)

blobster21 said:


> What does latency and self consciousness have to do with each other ?
> How exactely consciousness is related to the latency within which your brain perceives the surrounding environment ?




These are the questions I am trying to answer. 

Tell me this good sir, when you play a game like Witcher 3 on a playstation 4 at 60hz 1080p, do you feel the same amount of immersion, or less amount of immersion then when playing on a high end PC at 144hz ultra low motion blur?  Where you can no longer see sword blur, everything becomes fluid due to the reduced latency - you can in essence, imo, become more immersed with the high end computer, reduced latency, and ultra high refresh rates and/or ultra low motion blur technology.

Embodiment from the phenomena of immersion is one thing that interests me, but I am having trouble articulating it.

and the 5 senses, shaping our brains over millenia, 0 latency in the brain, this is key to survival any species, like when I see a snake from corner of my eye, my body jumps out of the way before I can even perceive the snake as a threat - 

Feel free to banter with me on this, I think there is something here, something about our self-aware state of being - in direct relation to the way our brains have 0 latency, and if AI ever wants to truly become AI, it will need to reach a 0 latency state - not being slowed down by copper, silicon, etc.


----------



## sneekypeet (Apr 14, 2019)

Removed the back and forth. Stay on topic and refrain from arguing.


----------



## the54thvoid (Apr 14, 2019)

You could philosophise about consciousness all day long. But, to me at least, it is simply the ability to conceive of oneself within your own reality. To be aware of your own thought process is to experience consciousness. Latency is an experience of delay. Some scientists suggest that the experience of deja vu is when the brain and the senses have a delay in processing or some form of dual cognition of a single event. If true, it would suggest latency is not relevant to consciousness. In fact, all physical systems, of which the brain is one, suffer from a latency - thought is not instantaneous. A thought is a neuro-chemical process and all chemical processes have timings. 

You say 0 latency but that is not possible. We ourselves are slowed by the very neural wiring and signal impulses that energy is required to create.


----------



## cucker tarlson (Apr 14, 2019)

I agree that low latency and high fps contribute to immersion significantly.when I play a fps game in ulmb mode and at 120 fps or higher it almost feels like reality.of course realistic game mechanics and movement have to be there in the first place for it to work.
but I think what the OP considers as the reason for consciousness is rather a condition for it to function properly.I don't think there's a reason to begin with,and if there is it's irrelevant.I don't have to question myself why I'm conscious to experience what I experience. It's not why,it's how,and it's probably many factors that have to contribute though what lynx suggests may be one of the most important ones.
I like your thinking,in that the question of what conditions have to be met for us to able to experience virtual reality as close to own consciousness as possible.Like I said,you don't have to worry about the reason for why we're conscious,you have to meet the same conditions that allow us to expeirence reality.


----------



## xkm1948 (Apr 14, 2019)

The neurons in your neural system requires a minimum amount input per second for your brain to persuade you it is real. There is also the max amount your brain can handle.

I suggest you start researching from either PubMed or Google Scholar. Start from review papers and then proccees to research articles


----------



## Space Lynx (Apr 14, 2019)

Thanks for the input and comments everyone, I am currently researching a lot of this. I informed my professor of this idea, and he recommended I read Merleau Ponty 'Phenomenology of Perception'.

Also, if anyone is curious about this idea being applied to modern philosophy, look up some videos on YouTube with Hubert Dreyfus, he is a sort of semi-expert on Merleau-Ponty and really articulates what I am trying to apply to this latency theory.

Disclaimer:  I am in process of finishing Master's and applying for PhD, as of 3 weeks ago this topic has received preliminary approval by the head of the program... so that is promising at least. I am still thinking though, just was curious what you guys thought. I make no claim this idea is even any good, but I feel like something really big is there, and that is something worth pursuing to me. Keep in mind philosophy topics have more flexibility than other majors, so I am well aware I won't be able to prove this thesis.


----------



## TheoneandonlyMrK (Apr 14, 2019)

lynx29 said:


> These are the questions I am trying to answer.
> 
> Tell me this good sir, when you play a game like Witcher 3 on a playstation 4 at 60hz 1080p, do you feel the same amount of immersion, or less amount of immersion then when playing on a high end PC at 144hz ultra low motion blur?  Where you can no longer see sword blur, everything becomes fluid due to the reduced latency - you can in essence, imo, become more immersed with the high end computer, reduced latency, and ultra high refresh rates and/or ultra low motion blur technology.
> 
> ...


But brains do actually have latency plus fuzzy logic ,fighter pilots have the least latency but it's not 0 and they can still only react or take in one thing at a time.
And Ai with 0 latency would be less likely to be correct since it can't have considered many variables.
Perhaps quantum Ai could get near.


----------



## FordGT90Concept (Apr 14, 2019)

lynx29 said:


> As refresh rates go higher, we tend to get lower latency.


Refresh rate is given as a fraction: Hz = per second.  Latencies are usually given in MS which is 1000 per second.  240 Hz = 1000 / 240 = 4.167 ms per frame.

In order for 240 Hz to not have duplicate frames, everything working to generate a frame has to be completed in less than that time.  One also needs to consider that LCD panels require time to display the image once it is received.



lynx29 said:


> My thinking is that the human brain gives us consciousness because we have no to little latency because of the light/neurons... (so like when under an MRI they can see certain parts of the brain light up, etc).


There's many different methods to image brain function and they all work differently (e.g. fMRI measures changes in blood flow, while EEG measure electrical activity):
https://psychcentral.com/lib/types-of-brain-imaging-techniques/

Light is really only understood by the eyes which convert the light into electrical impulses the brain interprets.  It's the neural synapses in the brain working the magic.  People with perfectly good eyes can become blind due to brain damage.




lynx29 said:


> Now does this idea scale you think? Like current definitions of AI don't interest me, to me it is just a bunch of If statements, but if there is no self-awareness and no ability to have original thought, then it is not AI to me. However, I am optimistic AI can exist within even my harder definition of it. In the far far future, like where fiber optic light signals are not just for data, but are applied to CPU hardware, etc...


I don't think photons have much use for computing because to manufacture such a processor on a scale that is competitive with current processors would be a daunting (if not impossible) task.  It wouldn't necessarily be more efficient than current processors either.

As for AI...the ironic thing is that that problem and solution is quite simple: computers up until recently have been designed to always make 1+1=2.  If they don't get that result, they were considered defective.  With AI, you just let physics play a greater role.  Sometimes 1+1= 2.1.  Sometimes 1+1 = 1.9.  Those little, unintentional variances are to a measurable degree consistent for the hardware they are tested on.  This is fundamentally how deep learning hardware works (it embraces those nuances instead of dismissing them as wrong).

Now if we're aiming to make a synthetic brain, that's much harder, because transistors lack elasticity that neurons have.  This is an area of active research.  There has been some successes but, as far as I know, this field is mostly under lock and key.  These are the types of AI that can become self-aware because they intellectually grow with trial and error (or training).




lynx29 said:


> I am a bit lost what I am even trying to ask here... any help is welcome, but I really think I am on to something.  Latency seems to be directly related to consciousness, and also when we game at higher refresh rates we seem to become more immersed in the game... if this keeps scaling in the next 50 years, especially with VR and Augmented Reality... the immersion may become so addicting... inevitably so.  The really interesting thing to me is, AI and what it really does become self-aware, like what is consciousness?  What makes me want to even type this question to you on a message board? Would an AI ever have a question? Maybe in order to be an AI it needs to be able to ask questions it can't answer, is that consciousness/self-awareness?


It's not consciousness nor immersion. It's simply more fluid: better mimicking reality so the brain has an easier time interpreting what the eyes are sending.

As for your last questions:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turing_test
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turing_completeness



lynx29 said:


> Does consciousness require touch then? Or does it require at least one of the five senses?  or 6 senses if we want to include magnetic fields for navigation


No, but consciousness requires stimuli -> response.  If there's no senses, there is no stimuli, so how can a response be tested?  That said, a dragonfly proves that a brain can do something based on stimulus without consciousness.  Their aim on prey is a reflexive system.

So what is consciousness?  I think it's directly associated with memory.  Take a drug like midazolam (Versed).  From the time it is administered to the time your body filters it out, you have no recollection of what happened in that period.  You were alert and responsive to stimuli under the influence of it (e.g. if someone asked you to raise your hand and you had no objections to doing so, you would, but not recall it) but you, yourself believe you were sleeping even though you physically were not.  Conscious, therefore, I think is a matter of perspective and context.  It's not a clear cut thing.



Broadly: I got as immersed in The Legend of Zelda at 29.97 fps on an NES as I do in a game like Space Engineers at 120 fps.  That's really going to come down to how easy your persistence of vision is to fool.  If you get motion sick, you're not going to get very immersed, for example.  There is a threshold though where any higher framerate isn't going to yield tangible benefits.  Casual tests between 120 -> 144 -> 240 Hz have repeatedly shown this.  There's some people out there that can reliably sense between 144 Hz and 240 Hz but they're few and far between.

Seriously: I'd like to see a double-blind, published study of Hz testing where the application is always guaranteed to produce exactly the number of frames the monitor is receiving.  A lot of people that may claim to be able to see a difference might actually just be picking up on a shift of the GPU framerate rather than that of the monitor.


----------



## hat (Apr 15, 2019)

I think Descartes has a simple answer for you. "I think, therefore I am", in other words, you could say an AI possesses its own conscience when it is capable of independent thought. I don't think latency has anything to do with it.


----------



## Space Lynx (Apr 15, 2019)

hat said:


> I think Descartes has a simple answer for you. "I think, therefore I am", in other words, you could say an AI possesses its own conscience when it is capable of independent thought. I don't think latency has anything to do with it.



Yes this indeed makes sense, but I still think latency is involved, if you read some Phenomenologists, you might have a better picture of where I am going with this, the problem with reading these philosophers is that they are very difficult, my professor is an expert on them, but I am struggling quite a bit in discussions with him on it.


----------



## xtreemchaos (Apr 15, 2019)

when AI reaches consciousness its not AI anymore its a  sentient being and all bets are off.


----------



## Space Lynx (Apr 15, 2019)

xtreemchaos said:


> when AI reaches consciousness its not AI anymore its a  sentient being and all bets are off.




this is not at all what I am trying to prove with my thesis though, I appreciate your input though. I am specifically trying to find a link between latency, increased immersion, and a self-aware state of being. I feel like even though I can only have one or two thoughts at a time... it is the latency of the neurons in my brain being so low that allows for this, animals also have no to little latency for automated tasks, but I am specifically wanting to focus on what part of our brain lights up when we have deep thoughts about the cosmos for example. 

I really need an MRI study that shows different parts of the brain lighting up under certain questions and probings, ---actually I don't need this, trying to explain myself a bit better is all.  cheers mate - fyi I am currently in Bristol, UK - not far from ya!


----------



## xtreemchaos (Apr 15, 2019)

just free thinking mate, ye your just down the road, whats the weather like in bristol ? cloudy and rain here in carmarthen, darn weather its my Nemesis.


----------



## Valantar (Apr 15, 2019)

I'd say you're on a bit of a side-track with relating this to VR and latency. Consciousness isn't something we can define clearly (though many have tried), but it definitely relates to the brain's ability to receive and respond to stimuli while also recording memories of said stimuli - though how, to what degree, in what form, and where the limits are is likely impossible to pinpoint (after all, a word like "consciousness" is nothing more than a simplification of the confluence of a myriad of interdependent and interrelated processes, all of which have variance). Humans are visually-oriented as vision is our dominant sense (though our sense of time is equally important, if harder to pinpoint and more vague), but that doesn't mean that vision or visual latency has any direct (causal or not) relation to consciousness. And while there's likely something like a lower limit to how quickly something needs to be able to process input to be deemed conscious, calling this "latency" is rather odd, as that term is inherently bound to an input-output type of process - and what, exactly, is the "output" of consciousness? Are we not conscious unless we are acting? Or is "thought" an output - and if so, how do you differentiate human thought from other electrobiological processes in non-conscious animal or insect brains? A more general term like "processing speed" seems more applicable. 

Related to this: the human brain has very significant latency - our processing of visual input is near-immediate, but other senses are significantly slower, and translating sensory data into action has significant lag. This seems to scale with brain size, as insects and other small-brained creatures are generally faster - but of course have less complex brains and are as such "dumber".

Also, your tangent into MRIs and photons seems like a conflation of humans shaping tools to work with and mimic human senses with light somehow being fundamental to how the world and/or consciousness works. There is after all nothing inherently visual about an MRI - the initial signals and readings go through highly complex translations before a visual output is formed. The only reason MRIs "make parts of the brain light up" is because we've made them translate certain types of signals into specific forms of output that is then "readable" by humans (given the right training, at least), and "lighting up" is a form that makes sense in a visually dominated sensory complex (especially when coupled with visually oriented representational technologies such as prints, monitors, and so on).

All in all: it's entirely possible to conceive of a form of consciousness that isn't dependent upon visual stimuli or visual processing, and as such linking any theory of consciousness to media and tools developed to mimic and/or stimulate the human sensorium would be fundamentally flawed. VR is convincing because it stimulates the dominant human senses in a convincing manner that mimics how we sense the world around us outside of VR. This has nothing to do with consciousness itself on a more general level, except the simple fact that the human sensorium is how our form of consciousness is used to perceiving the world. Linking this to human-made technology thus becomes tautological, as all you're really then saying is "technology developed to stimulate the human sensorium in a manner similar to how it normally perceives the world is more convincing to the human sensorium".

I think reading Merleau-Ponty and other phenomenologists is a good idea, but as you seem to want to focus on human-technology relations, looking into post-phenomenology would be a logical next step. One of the key takeaways from phenomenology that your initial idea seems to lack is that our thinking and perception of the world is inherently shaped by the sensory apparatus through which said world is perceived, and that different sensory configurations would thus necessarily influence thinking and perception differently.


----------



## Vayra86 (Apr 15, 2019)

lynx29 said:


> latency theory.



You think we are approaching low latency? Think again... Maybe you are familiar with this, take a few runs and you can see through the marketing bullshit of '0.5ms' which sort of is fundamental to your thought process here. Spoiler: human reaction time (our very own 'button to pixel lag') is averaged at about 200ms. On a focused, repetitive 'muscle memory' job, you might get a best-case of 50~100ms; ie fighter pilot material.

https://www.humanbenchmark.com/tests/reactiontime

Then, let's look at button to pixel lag... and not the advertised ms which is only a tiny part of the pipeline...









At 240hz/FPS you already suffer 4.16ms (no Vsync) you simply cannot avoid due to screen refresh. A 0.5ms panel only puts that 0.5ms number under 'Display response time'. So really, going from 4ms to 0.5ms is an extremely minor win if you consider the entire pipeline.






And thén, let's consider this article too - note the irony here: ancient operating systems had much lower latencies long before fast monitors were a thing  Best case scenario here is probably 30ms from 'CPU time/OS' at 240hz (note the haswell-e results)
https://danluu.com/input-lag/





Food for thought 

But in your premise I think you are confusing 'perception' and 'consciousness' on a fundamental level. I think @the54thvoid said it best.


----------



## Space Lynx (Apr 15, 2019)

@Vayra86 Thank you for all of that, it is indeed food for thought. This entire thesis might collapse honestly, but just fyi, it doesn't actually have to prove anything my professor said, it just has to explore but be able to play around with some questions, not necessarily answer them... this is a philosophy major after all, the writing is a bit different compared to most Master's Thesis's

I am not trying to exactly prove latency right now in our current state is the key to it all, I am trying to argue (I think, this is still a work in progress), that latency plays a key role in consciousness, and that perhaps, in the future, if we do get a light based processor, and fiber optics are the data to that photon light processor, it is possible that the reduced latency of say a future supercomputer (none right now or even 20 years from now, I understand this technology does not exist yet) could possibly become sentient, because a limiting factor is not only coding languages but the latency itself. What if in order to even have the thoughts to type this to you now, there is a pre-requisite of no to little latency within my brain... otherwise I would not be able to come up with said thoughts? Even if it was increased by a millisecond or two with alcohol, I would not be as effective, because my latency would be reduced.

crap... my brain is hurting. alright I am taking a break from this and stepping away for a few days, it is the only way I am going to figure out how to articulate myself.  apologies everyone.

perception and consciousness is at the core of what I am trying to understand as well Vayra.  if you read Merleu-Ponty Phenomenology of Perception, there is a lot of work done on this in his book, it is highly respected among a lot of contemporary philosophers. I still have to read 3/4 of it, not very far in, but I definitely think there is some interesting stuff here. my professor thanks so too, though he is wanting me to stay away from conciousness, and mostly focus on how technology is scaling year over year, and immersion within gaming is increasing - so I need to focus on that, stay small and just kind of branch from there, but keep my focus on immersion.

one of my key arguments though does make sense to me -  when I game Witcher 3 on console, or PC at 60hz, its fun sure, but not nearly as immersive as when I do it on say a high end 165hz 1440p monitor with a 1080 ti, etc.  Ponty talks a lot about color calibration, optimal distance for viewing something, etc. this applies to modern day as well, and I am trying to apply it to gaming technology, and will it keep scaling like it has been... I am not saying right now latency is good, I am saying it keeps getting better, and as it does so too will immersion increase.


----------



## xkm1948 (Apr 15, 2019)

Feels like you are having TPU folks developping your PhD chapters for you lol. Are we gonna get acknowledgements in your PhD quals?

Also r u neuroscience track?


----------



## Valantar (Apr 15, 2019)

lynx29 said:


> I am not trying to exactly prove latency right now in our current state is the key to it all, I am trying to argue (I think, this is still a work in progress), that latency plays a key role in consciousness, and that perhaps, in the future, if we do get a light based processor, and fiber optics are the data to that photon light processor, it is possible that the reduced latency of say a future supercomputer (none right now or even 20 years from now, I understand this technology does not exist yet) could possibly become sentient, because a limiting factor is not only coding languages but the latency itself. What if in order to even have the thoughts to type this to you now, there is a pre-requisite of no to little latency within my brain... otherwise I would not be able to come up with said thoughts? Even if it was increased by a millisecond or two with alcohol, I would not be as effective, because my latency would be reduced.


I promised myself I wouldn't spend more time on this right now, but this needs a response: the signaling in our brains is electrical, not photonic. This undermines the entire premise of the quoted paragraph, as this makes it obvious that there is nothing stopping electrical signalling from creating consciousness, ergo one could with some certainty say that there is nothing intrinsic in electrical signalling barring consciousness from happening. Sure, our brains have astronomically higher compute density than a supercomputer, and a smaller unit = shorter wiring = less latency, but electrical vs. photonic signalling is not the key here.

As for reducing the effects of alcohol on the brain to "added latency", well ... that's what we might call a gross oversimplification.

And, again: the goal of higher framerates and faster response times _is to better mimic how the human sensorium perceives the world_. Reversing this into a philosophy of consciousness is a very significant leap, which disregards the entirety of how all human technology is itself fundamentally designed to interact with and mimic/enhance/stimulate the human sensorium. To use a very clumsy analogy, what you're saying sounds to me like saying "Coffee is hot, therefore heat is what makes coffee" - a statement that while it sounds superficially true (most brewing methods do require heat), heat is not a necessity (cold-brew coffee is delicious), and there are quite a few other fundamental requirements left out of this statement (coffee grounds (which are themselves the product of a long and complex process of growing, harvesting, drying, roasting, grinding), water, a brewing vessel, a filter, time, a drinking vessel, etc.).

It might be that a certain degree of low "latency" (I'd call it high processing speed, but okay) is required for something we could identify as consciousness (though it's entirely possible to imagine a consciousness working on such a slow/long time scale that it wouldn't register as functioning whatsoever to a human perception of time), but you're framing it as if this is _the key_ to consciousness, which I feel quite comfortable stating that it isn't - as, as with most phenomena, there isn't likely to be _a _key, but rather a highly complex and interrelated set of requirements where each one has a significant degree of variance, where not all combinations might work, and where not all factors that help are necessary. Latency/processing speed sounds likely as one factor (as the ability to process input at speed is a rather useful survival trait, to put it mildly), but it doesn't trump all the other relevant factors - as I said in my last post, there are plenty of low-latency, non-conscious brains out there. Exploring this idea further is likely productive and useful, but your wording and the angle of your line of argumentation seems to have quite a few base assumptions that haven't been addressed properly, particularly you seem to express a view of technology as "neutral" or otherwise not fundamentally shaped by humans and thus by how humans perceive the world, which is a very serious flaw.


----------



## Space Lynx (Apr 15, 2019)

Valantar said:


> I promised myself I wouldn't spend more time on this right now, but this needs a response: the signaling in our brains is electrical, not photonic. This undermines the entire premise of the quoted paragraph, as this makes it obvious that there is nothing stopping electrical signalling from creating consciousness, ergo one could with some certainty say that there is nothing intrinsic in electrical signalling barring consciousness from happening. Sure, our brains have astronomically higher compute density than a supercomputer, and a smaller unit = shorter wiring = less latency, but electrical vs. photonic signalling is not the key here.
> 
> As for reducing the effects of alcohol on the brain to "added latency", well ... that's what we might call a gross oversimplification.
> 
> ...




Thank you for sharing this, I am learning a lot!  I am a bit confused though, because electricity is light in one of it's forms... when I see electricity it creates light, does it not? So the idea of light as the lowest latency is still accurate?



xkm1948 said:


> Feels like you are having TPU folks developping your PhD chapters for you lol. Are we gonna get acknowledgements in your PhD quals?
> 
> Also r u neuroscience track?



Yes, I will thank everyone here actually if I actually write this. My professor is only giving me a trial run on it though. Most likely it will all collapse and I will switch thesis topics, currently I am considering switching to Stoicism and how Stoicism can help people in rehabilitation. It would be much easier to write and understand.  

I already see this topic collapsing actually, so no worries at all XKM, and I was just trying to explore this idea, and share it with all of you to explore, I think something is there, even if I do fail at articulating it properly.


----------



## Valantar (Apr 15, 2019)

lynx29 said:


> Thank you for sharing this, I am learning a lot!  I am a bit confused though, because electricity is light in one of it's forms... when I see electricity it creates light, does it not? So the idea of light as the lowest latency is still accurate?


I'm not a physicist, so I'll leave in-depth explanations to someone who knows what they're talking about, but no, electricity and light are not the same, even if they are related forms of energy. Electricity and electromagnetism are not visible, even if visible light is a part of the electromagnetic spectrum. Put very simply: there's no light inside of our brains, and in fact the chief job of some sensory organs (such as our eyes) is in fact transforming light into electrical signals. There's no visible difference between a live electrical wire and one that's not connected to anything. Unless the wire is so small it heats up and starts glowing, that is, but then you have a light bulb (or a fire).

I think it's a shame if you abandon this project, though - there's definitely a need for more scholarship on human-technology relations, and the field of post-phenomenology has plenty of highly interesting unanswered questions


----------



## Space Lynx (Apr 15, 2019)

Valantar said:


> I'm not a physicist, so I'll leave in-depth explanations to someone who knows what they're talking about, but no, electricity and light are not the same, even if they are related forms of energy. Electricity and electromagnetism are not visible, even if visible light is a part of the electromagnetic spectrum. Put very simply: there's no light inside of our brains, and in fact the chief job of some sensory organs (such as our eyes) is in fact transforming light into electrical signals. There's no visible difference between a live electrical wire and one that's not connected to anything. Unless the wire is so small it heats up and starts glowing, that is, but then you have a light bulb (or a fire).
> 
> I think it's a shame if you abandon this project, though - there's definitely a need for more scholarship on human-technology relations, and the field of post-phenomenology has plenty of highly interesting unanswered questions




holy crap I never realised this... or well put two and two together. hmm this does change things, thank you for clarifying!


----------



## mtcn77 (Apr 15, 2019)

Well, this has nothing to do with consciousness as much as about proprioception. Your brain readily accepts alternative proprioceptive channels since it is a predicted stimulus. The issue is, digital is slow and you can easily fall out of the the ego-syntonic signal threshold period. We need analog computations, that's all.


----------



## FordGT90Concept (Apr 15, 2019)

lynx29 said:


> ...that latency plays a key role in consciousness...


But it doesn't.  Latency is simply response time.  Have you ever been inebriated where you feel like your brain is running half as fast as it should?  Benadryl does that to me.  Conscious processes are just slowed but they still complete.



lynx29 said:


> ...in the future, if we do get a light based processor, and fiber optics are the data to that photon light processor, it is possible that the reduced latency of say a future supercomputer (none right now or even 20 years from now, I understand this technology does not exist yet) could possibly become sentient, because a limiting factor is not only coding languages but the latency itself.


Silicon processors are already faster than organic at math.  Making them faster does just that: makes them faster.  This has no impact on "sentients" because just like an inebriated human brain, hardware capable of sentience will be sentience...just processing faster or slow.

Let me give you some pseudo code...

Typical processor today:

```
if (true) do this else do that
```
Example: if (robot fell off table) send panic message else do task

Deep learning:

```
if (similar to true) do this else do that
```
Example: if (I've been trained to interpret this object as a tree) it's a tree else go deeper

Sentient:

```
if (something new) write new code to understand it
```
Example: if (ab=c and I always know a) inject code to process query as b=c/a else do something else

Let me loop back to the robot that fell off a table.  A sentient robot would act like an insect moving it's motorized bits around trying to upright itself.  In this process it would discover some motions that affect its goal and note it.  It would eventually focus on those motions to right itself noting that if it moves slowly in this specific way, it raises higher than it would otherwise.  Then failing that, it notices that position its grabber in a wide stance stabilizes itself so it can lift even higher.  A little more practice and updating its code to not repeat previous mistakes and it will lift itself back up using its arm.  Because none of this code existed originally but it's ability to test and learn was present, this code it is now using can be referenced again in the future.  It has learned how to right itself.  Now imagine a human pushes it over again...it gets right up using that self-learned code instead of struggling.

Deep learning AIs do this but they're being trained by a trainer.  As far as I know, there's no sentient AI that is a trainer (makes situational decisions/objectives) and trainee (improves itself to address these things).


The first is _fundamentally_ different in operation than the last.



Valantar said:


> I'm not a physicist, so I'll leave in-depth explanations to someone who knows what they're talking about, but no, electricity and light are not the same, even if they are related forms of energy. Electricity and electromagnetism are not visible, even if visible light is a part of the electromagnetic spectrum. Put very simply: there's no light inside of our brains, and in fact the chief job of some sensory organs (such as our eyes) is in fact transforming light into electrical signals. There's no visible difference between a live electrical wire and one that's not connected to anything. Unless the wire is so small it heats up and starts glowing, that is, but then you have a light bulb (or a fire).
> 
> I think it's a shame if you abandon this project, though - there's definitely a need for more scholarship on human-technology relations, and the field of post-phenomenology has plenty of highly interesting unanswered questions


Yes, lightning is only visible because it super heats the molecules in the air its passing through.  You're seeing the affect of that super heating, not the actual electricity (flow of electrons).

Consider this: lightning can't exist in a vacuum because there's no path for the electrons to take.


----------



## Vayra86 (Apr 15, 2019)

lynx29 said:


> @Vayra86 Thank you for all of that, it is indeed food for thought. This entire thesis might collapse honestly, but just fyi, it doesn't actually have to prove anything my professor said, it just has to explore but be able to play around with some questions, not necessarily answer them... this is a philosophy major after all, the writing is a bit different compared to most Master's Thesis's
> 
> I am not trying to exactly prove latency right now in our current state is the key to it all, I am trying to argue (I think, this is still a work in progress), that latency plays a key role in consciousness, and that perhaps, in the future, if we do get a light based processor, and fiber optics are the data to that photon light processor, it is possible that the reduced latency of say a future supercomputer (none right now or even 20 years from now, I understand this technology does not exist yet) could possibly become sentient, because a limiting factor is not only coding languages but the latency itself. What if in order to even have the thoughts to type this to you now, there is a pre-requisite of no to little latency within my brain... otherwise I would not be able to come up with said thoughts? Even if it was increased by a millisecond or two with alcohol, I would not be as effective, because my latency would be reduced.
> 
> ...



I think immersion is not tied to scaling in technology at all.

For that I only need to think about being younger and how I experienced games. It was more immersive than it is today while we played at much lower quality; latency was never a factor here. Age is key factor in immersion into anything, and our lifestyle as well. Why - because the older we get, the more our brain is filled with things to do and things to reference to. With less reference and less on our mind, immersion is easy because its easier 'to believe in it'.

I think the conclusion with VR is that its a _tool to help immersion. _And it may or may not work for each individual at each stage in life. Some people get motion sickness, I can guarantee you that despite low latency that won't help immersion one bit...


----------



## Space Lynx (Apr 15, 2019)

Vayra86 said:


> I think immersion is not tied to scaling in technology at all.
> 
> For that I only need to think about being younger and how I experienced games. It was more immersive than it is today while we played at much lower quality; latency was never a factor here. Age is key factor in immersion into anything, and our lifestyle as well. Why - because the older we get, the more our brain is filled with things to do and things to reference to. With less reference and less on our mind, immersion is easy because its easier 'to believe in it'.
> 
> I think the conclusion with VR is that its a _tool to help immersion. _And it may or may not work for each individual at each stage in life. Some people get motion sickness, I can guarantee you that despite low latency that won't help immersion one bit...




this is true and sort of destroys my entire thesis you are right. I actually was remembering my playstation 2 days and how immersed I was... heh. 

feel free to consider thread dead... looks like I am changing my thesis topic to stoicism instead.  I figured this was a dead end but needed help exploring it, thanks everyone.


----------



## SoNic67 (Apr 15, 2019)

Latency is inherent to humans and all animals. The electric signals in nerves are propagating via chemical reactions and those take a little bit to take place. Hence the latency.

You are seeing a continuous movement on your monitor jus because of that latency in your eye receptors. Once light gets removed, it takes a few ms for the chemicals to discharge, so you have that image retention.
If you would not have that, a CRT tube would look like a bright dot moving randomly on surface, an LCD screen would be a bunch of flashes with no cohesion in between...
You remember what happened in the last second just because chemicals are still lingering around the neurons that fired electric signals before.

Now, how that gets interpreted by the higher level ego... it's a different story.


----------



## Vayra86 (Apr 15, 2019)

lynx29 said:


> this is true and sort of destroys my entire thesis you are right. I actually was remembering my playstation 2 days and how immersed I was... heh.
> 
> feel free to consider thread dead... looks like I am changing my thesis topic to stoicism instead.  I figured this was a dead end but needed help exploring it, thanks everyone.



Thanks for sharing your idea, its nice to think about such things.

Perhaps a nice thesis to chase after in the future is the 'influence of VR on our perception of reality. How do we make the distinction, etc. It kinda turns it around and makes not the technology but the human a center piece. In the end its all about our interaction and learning process with technology that determines what it means to us. Has great potential, it also touches on the overall influence of digital media on our lives, you can go on for days branching that out  Its also interesting because its a process that is very much ongoing today, nobody has the definite answer yet.


----------



## mtcn77 (Apr 15, 2019)

SoNic67 said:


> Latency is inherent to humans and all animals. The electric signals in nerves are propagating via chemical reactions and those take a little bit to take place. Hence the latency.
> 
> You are seeing a continuous movement on your monitor jus because of that latency in your eye receptors. Once light gets removed, it takes a few ms for the chemicals to discharge, so you have that image retention.
> If you would not have that, a CRT tube would look like a bright dot moving randomly on surface, an LCD screen would be a bunch of flashes with no cohesion in between...
> ...


This is as wrong as can be. Not the nerve signals, but second messengers deplete first as a backup safe against excitatory overstimulation. There are multiple levels of signal downregulation. It does not take milliseconds to discharge, but to recharge. Discharge is instantaneous. Negative feedback plays dominant in all volitional stimuli. Someone has been slacking in physiology lectures.


----------



## SoNic67 (Apr 16, 2019)

mtcn77 said:


> Discharge is instantaneous.


First one yes, like when you open your eye. How about the next one? There is a pause between two stimuli regardless what you think is first - egg or chicken. When an object moves, you can't un-see the last position, so the brain doesn't really know what are you seeing. Makes assumptions, of course, but that's not always right.
If the vision as a process was always instantaneous we would not have visual retention.


----------



## MrGenius (Apr 16, 2019)

theoneandonlymrk said:


> ...fighter pilots have the least latency...


Professional(NHRA) drag racers. Low latency(fast reaction time) is how they make their living.


----------



## mtcn77 (Apr 16, 2019)

SoNic67 said:


> First one yes, like when you open your eye. How about the next one? There is a pause between two stimuli regardless what you think is first - egg or chicken. When an object moves, you can't un-see the last position, so the brain doesn't really know what are you seeing. Makes assumptions, of course, but that's not always right.
> If the vision as a process was always instantaneous we would not have visual retention.


That has to do with optical nerve compression latency which, if I recall correctly, is 0.5 seconds. Totally physiological, imo. Afterimage retention is very quick in comparison 0.5 milliseconds, so as a surprise to me as well, I think rhodopsin secondary transmission being quicker than neuronal transmission could mean two different interpretations;

Either ganglionic cells are suppressed from rapid depolarisation; A) could be due to inhibitory neurons, or B) the more probable explanation for me that they have a low pass filter function by downsampling a wide domain rather than a local cluster and it takes up some time until light triggers all spatial domains simultaneously,
Or, the simple explanation being depolarization latency.


----------



## moproblems99 (Apr 16, 2019)

Vayra86 said:


> Perhaps a nice thesis to chase after in the future is



What if West World was real?


----------



## FordGT90Concept (Apr 16, 2019)

MrGenius said:


> Professional(NHRA) drag racers. Low latency(fast reaction time) is how they make their living.


The Christmas tree is designed to minimize reaction time.


----------



## MrGenius (Apr 16, 2019)

FordGT90Concept said:


> The Christmas tree is designed to minimize reaction time.


I guess you could say that. I'm not sure that it's true though. I would argue that it isn't. It still boils down to reacting at a very precise instant. Knowing that instant is coming soon doesn't really make it much(if any) easier. At any rate...all other things being equal, he/she with the fastest reaction time wins the drag race. Or, if their reaction times are also equal, there's a tie. End of story.


----------



## FordGT90Concept (Apr 16, 2019)

The intervals the Christmas tree operates at are constant and the Wikipedia link I gave explains them.  When you see a specific light flash and you can train muscle memory to respond the exact amount of time later, you can holeshot with a millisecond of green and do it reliably (just requires a fantastic grip on the passage of time).  People are much, much slower when reacting to something that isn't a certainty (e.g. random timed color change) and even slower when they need to evaluating before reacting (e.g. random timed color change only when it is red).

And no, there's a crapload of variables going into who wins all the way down to tire temperature and track temperature.  One can win or lose simply because their side of the track was in shadow most of the day while the other side wasn't.  They switch sides for a reason.  Even then, you're talking about machines.  If all else is equal, one engine producing a little less power because fuel-air mixture isn't right because someone farted will mean a change in outcomes.  Hell, even some spilled oil on the last engine rebuild can cause power to drop. So many variables...

The ironic thing is that there's very little the driver can actually control: that's holeshot, steering, shifts, and how much they cooked the tires.  A missed holeshot or shift can translate to losing.  A steering mistake can translate into a crash.  Tires too cooked and they can burst; tires not cooked enough and they'll burn out instead of propelling the vehicle forward.


----------



## Vayra86 (Apr 16, 2019)

MrGenius said:


> I guess you could say that. I'm not sure that it's true though. I would argue that it isn't. It still boils down to reacting at a very precise instant. Knowing that instant is coming soon doesn't really make it much(if any) easier. At any rate...all other things being equal, he/she with the fastest reaction time wins the drag race. Or, if their reaction times are also equal, there's a tie. End of story.



Not at all, this is designed so you can train on it, the timing is fixed so its a tool that takes away the element of surprise and, thus, the latency is reduced. Knowing what's coming makes it easier to respond faster, you can prepare your response beforehand.

Something similar happens in pro-gaming where the maps of a shooter are memorized so well, players can train muscle memory for each little section, knowing what's behind the corner helps a lot in selecting the appropriate response beforehand, minimizing the number of possibilities to choose from. This also applies to things like bullet spread/patterns that are fixed in a game. Speedrunning also uses many of these tricks to eliminate the surprise elements and 'look superhuman'.


----------



## Space Lynx (Apr 20, 2019)

Just fyi I have officially switched thesis topics to stoicism, but thanks everyone for your help here.


----------



## mtcn77 (Apr 20, 2019)

lynx29 said:


> Just fyi I have officially switched thesis topics to stoicism, but thanks everyone for your help here.


Stoicism is great. Waste no concern for trivialities.


----------



## John Naylor (Apr 20, 2019)

I gave up on philosophy when I got married .... found out everything I learned in my elective philosophy classes was wrong.   Besides car's in the shop, and I'm stuck home with nothing else to do 

See, we discussed the time honored question of "If a tree falls in the forest and no one hears it, did it make a sound ?  I learned there are two right answers .... To the scientist, of course it made a sound, just because no human was present, the laws of physics and sound propgation are not suspended.     To the humanist, nothing matters if it is not experienced by a human being, from this point of view everything that happens in the universe is irrelevant because the humanist defines a sound as "something heard by a human".

Then I got married and was re-educated ... I was told to look at it this way:  "If a man speaks in the forest and no woman hears him, is he still wrong ?"  There is only 1 acceptable answer to this question and no arguments to the contrary will be heard.      And the correct answer is not 'yes'.  Apparently, yes is to vague ... one must answer "of course" or "absolutely" or bad things will happen.

With that out of the way ... I will address the technical part of the question ... "Now that we have 240hz 0.5ms monitors ..."  Do we ?   I know monitor manufacturers love to claim impressive numbers but these numbers almost never are confirmed in testing.   This phenomenon is not explained by faulty test equipment, typos or other human errrors, it is a matter of translation.   Most people speak using dictionary or accepted definitions (Washing DC excepted) ... people in marketing don't lie ... they just change the definition.  Examples:

a)  Computing is a base 2 thing ... when we buy a pair of 4 GB memory sticks, we expect each to contain 2^ 12 bytes of 4096 MBs.  I the late 1990s, the marketing folks at a Hard Drive manufacturer had a meeting, I expect alcohol was involved, and decided that it was a good idea to redefine a GB as 1,000 MBs instead of 1024 MBs...and so on up and down.  So now when we buy a 2000 GB drive, we only actually get 93% of that as storage.   When it 1st happened the competition was a bit stirred up but after ranting for a while, they figured the difference between base 2 and base 10 was too difficult to explain to consumers and jumped on the cheater bandwagon.     Not quite sure why RAM guys didn't follow suit.

b)  Fans, pumps and pretty much anything that moves air or liquids in the internet age are also now advertised with redefined specs.   A PC fan might be advertised at say

Cougar Vortex Fan
Max Airflow = 70.5CFM
Static Pressure = 2.2 mm H20

Gentle Typhoon
Max Airflow = 58CFM
Static Pressure = 2.03mm H20

In "marketing speak", that means that the fans  will deliver 70.5 / 58 cfm at 0.0 mm Static Pressure and 0.0 cfm at 2.2 / 2.03 SP ... not quite what most folks expect.   Which fan would you buy  based upon thos especs ? ... the Cougar right ?   More cfm and more SP, no ?   ,,,, yes, the answer is no.

https://martinsliquidlab.wordpress....w-specs-are-poor-measures-of-fan-performance/

The Cougar actually delivers 32 cfm (46% of advertised) of flow and 0.40 inches of H2O (48%) of advertised
The Typh0on actually delivers 38 cfm (66% of advertised) of flow and 0.48 inches of H2O (60%) of advertised

And the Typhoon is actually the one that delivers more performance in the real world.  

Look at the following:

http://www.tftcentral.co.uk/reviews/lg_27gk750f.htm

Advertised Response Time = 2.0 ms
Measured Average Response Time = 4.7 ms

 Those numbers are oft bettered by 120 / 144 / 165 Hz monitors.

So if we are going to talk about consciousness and what we perceive ... 1st we have to agree on the definitions and what we are told and what is real are two different things.


----------



## FordGT90Concept (Apr 20, 2019)

John Naylor said:


> a)  Computing is a base 2 thing ... when we buy a pair of 4 GB memory sticks, we expect each to contain 2^ 12 bytes of 4096 MBs.  I the late 1990s, the marketing folks at a Hard Drive manufacturer had a meeting, I expect alcohol was involved, and decided that it was a good idea to redefine a GB as 1,000 MBs instead of 1024 MBs...and so on up and down.  So now when we buy a 2000 GB drive, we only actually get 93% of that as storage.   When it 1st happened the competition was a bit stirred up but after ranting for a while, they figured the difference between base 2 and base 10 was too difficult to explain to consumers and jumped on the cheater bandwagon.     Not quite sure why RAM guys didn't follow suit.


No....G = giga- = SI standard = 10^9 = 1,000,000,000...that is 100% of the time true.  Any time where the symbol doesn't represent exactly that, it's mislabeled.  Now look at what you just said.  Who really lied?  Memory manufacturers because they always neglected to mention their math was base 2, not base 10 (which SI standard explicitly is).

IEC later introduced the binary prefixes to compliment and differentiate base 2 versus base 10 systems.  Sadly, Microsoft and JEDEC hasn't adapted it so they continue to lie to the public about the math they are using.

FYI, your math sucks in that first sentence:
4 GiB = 4 * 2^30 = 4,294,967,296 bytes
4 GB = 4 * 10^9 = 4,000,000,000 bytes

Gi- literally means 2^30
G- literally means 10^9

I checked a hard drive that was around 2 decades old (think it was manufactured in 1997) and it used base 10 math.  I don't think a hard drive exists that ever used base 2 math.


As for fans and monitors, there's no standard for measuring performance so every manufacturer uses its own.


----------



## mtcn77 (May 11, 2019)

I would like to eavesdrop on how the OP is doing. Stoicism is literally the Western take on Eastern Philosophy. You can tie it to all Eastern Religions, Muslimism included. The rite is literally the same one Roman Emperor Marcus Aurelius pens in meditations except it is used for good fortune, not solace.


----------



## Space Lynx (May 12, 2019)

mtcn77 said:


> I would like to eavesdrop on how the OP is doing. Stoicism is literally the Western take on Eastern Philosophy. You can tie it to all Eastern Religions, Muslimism included. The rite is literally the same one Roman Emperor Marcus Aurelius pens in meditations except it is used for good fortune, not solace.



Doing good, I did end up doing my thesis on Stoicism.

If you are interested, I recommend you read a new book out last month called "How To Think Like A Roman Emperor" by Donald Robertson.  It is quite good. Also, "The Inner Citadel" by Pierre Hadot, and "Therapy of Desire" by Nussbaum.  Those are my 3 main texts I am using for my thesis, outside of the few primary sources.

Stoicism influenced Christianity a lot as well, keep in mind Stoicism started 100-300 B.C. range and it was a vast influence including many Emperors taking on stoic philosophers as advisers, Muslim/Muhammad was not until A.D. 600 if I am not mistaken.


----------



## mtcn77 (May 12, 2019)

lynx29 said:


> Doing good, I did end up doing my thesis on Stoicism.
> 
> If you are interested, I recommend you read a new book out last month called "How To Think Like A Roman Emperor" by Donald Robertson.  It is quite good. Also, "The Inner Citadel" by Pierre Hadot, and "Therapy of Desire" by Nussbaum.  Those are my 3 main texts I am using for my thesis, outside of the few primary sources.


Might do when I have the leisure.


lynx29 said:


> Stoicism influenced Christianity a lot as well, keep in mind Stoicism started 100-300 B.C. range and it was a vast influence including many Emperors taking on stoic philosophers as advisers, Muslim/Muhammad was not until A.D. 600 if I am not mistaken.


Yes, but I'm after the spiritual lineage of succession. I think, "Turning the other cheek" is not the stoic way, stoics does not permit a third active party altogether, just merely an obstacle to one's own enlightenment. Muslimism revolves around that self-consciousness a lot. It is a solitary religion that marginalises externalities, quite the polar opposite towards accepting fate.


----------



## Space Lynx (May 13, 2019)

mtcn77 said:


> Might do when I have the leisure.
> 
> Yes, but I'm after the spiritual lineage of succession. I think, "Turning the other cheek" is not the stoic way, stoics does not permit a third active party altogether, just merely an obstacle to one's own enlightenment. Muslimism revolves around that self-consciousness a lot. It is a solitary religion that marginalises externalities, quite the polar opposite towards accepting fate.



This is your opinion of stoicism, just as my view of stoicism is my opinion. We only have 3% or so stoic primary texts remaining to draw upon... so no one can really be 100% sure what stoicism was, but we can make educated guesses.  Stoics were very much in being in control of your anger and not letting emotions play a role in your decision making, one could argue that is what "turning the other cheek means" as well.


----------



## Mitchie23 (Jun 9, 2019)

Latency is the reaction time for any stimuli. If you touch the hot stove with your finger, it will instantly moves away quickly before *you *even feel the pain. *You* don't have to think about it because the response is a reflex that does not involve the brain. A reflex is a rapid, unlearned, involuntary (automatic) response to a stimulus (change in the environment). Consciousness has nothing to do with it, but it's a zero latency. Animals are hardwired this way to protect themselves unconsciously. because if they do so with consciousness, the tendency is to panic. LOL


----------



## Space Lynx (Jun 9, 2019)

Mitchie23 said:


> Latency is the reaction time for any stimuli. If you touch the hot stove with your finger, it will instantly moves away quickly before *you *even feel the pain. *You* don't have to think about it because the response is a reflex that does not involve the brain. A reflex is a rapid, unlearned, involuntary (automatic) response to a stimulus (change in the environment). Consciousness has nothing to do with it, but it's a zero latency. Animals are hardwired this way to protect themselves unconsciously. because if they do so with consciousness, the tendency is to panic. LOL



I agree with you mostly, and understand your thought process. However, there still might be something related to consciousness and latency when it comes to self-awareness, you are limiting your way of thinking because you think x must equal y, because that's just how it works. I understand that. However, there are so many variables and unknowns at play here, imo.  That is your opinion and this is mine.


----------



## Mitchie23 (Jun 9, 2019)

lynx29 said:


> I agree with you mostly, and understand your thought process. However, there still might be something related to consciousness and latency when it comes to self-awareness, you are limiting your way of thinking because you think x must equal y, because that's just how it works. I understand that. However, there are so many variables and unknowns at play here, imo.  That is your opinion and this is mine.



I see. Well, good luck with your search for the correlation of the three. Philosophy has always been an enjoyable discipline to study.


----------



## FordGT90Concept (Jun 9, 2019)

Mitchie23 said:


> *You* don't have to think about it because the response is a reflex that does not involve the brain. A reflex is a rapid, unlearned, involuntary (automatic) response to a stimulus (change in the environment).


For clarity, reflexes are processed by the spinal cord.  The brain still receives the sensory information so you instantly know why a reflex was triggered.  Material on the subject: https://sinoemedicalassociation.org/AP/reflexesbrain.pdf



Mitchie23 said:


> Consciousness has nothing to do with it, but it's a zero latency.


On the former: correct. A reflex can be triggered when an individual is unconscious.
On the latter: incorrect.  There's always latency in everything, even in the detonation of a fission bomb.  Sure, the reaction occurs in the space of a nanosecond but that's still latency.  It takes time for neurons to transmit a signal to the spinal cord and for a signal to be sent back to the muscles and then time for the muscles themselves to contract.



Mitchie23 said:


> Animals are hardwired this way to protect themselves unconsciously. because if they do so with consciousness, the tendency is to panic. LOL


I startled a plains weasel the other day.  The reflex was "squeak" and backing up.   Realizing it was trapped in a pipe after a few seconds, it stared at me for a second then made the conscious decision to run past me, and it did.  All mammals have reflexive and conscious systems.

If you want an example of an awesome reflex, look no further than the dragonfly:


----------



## Mitchie23 (Jun 9, 2019)

FordGT90Concept said:


> For clarity, reflexes are processed by the spinal cord.  The brain still receives the sensory information so you instantly know why a reflex was triggered.  Material on the subject: https://sinoemedicalassociation.org/AP/reflexesbrain.pdf
> 
> 
> 
> ...



*My 2 cents: 
Reflexes do* not require involvement of the *brain*, although in some cases the *brain can* prevent *reflex* action. most sensory neurons do not pass directly into the brain, but synapse in the spinal cord. This allows for faster reflex actions to occur by activating spinal motor neurons without the delay of routing signals through the brain.

Regarding Latency, Yes I agree you with this, maybe I just exaggerated it. But yeah, there's latency in there.

Thanks for sharing this video! I am always fascinated by science


----------

