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RichardKennaway comments on Lifelogging: the recording device - Less Wrong Discussion

11 Post author: gwern 15 October 2010 01:04AM

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Comment author: RichardKennaway 15 October 2010 12:34:48PM *  4 points [-]

What is lifelogging for?

When is anyone, the lifelogger or anyone else, going to access the pile of data? I noticed this in the article that XiXiDu linked:

The first person I met doing this was Ted Nelson in the mid-1980s who recorded every conversation he had, no matter where or what importance. To my knowledge his archives have never been revisted, even by him.

And I remember reading a long article about Ted Nelson and Xanadu which said the same.

I'm not signed up for cryonics, so it appears from my inaction that I don't take alpha simulations vitally seriously, and beta simulations would come way behind. If some future people want to LARP what they know of my existence, good luck to them, but I can't see it as something I have any interest in. No, the only reason I could have would be a practical purpose here and now: a resource for me to access, a prosthetic memory.

So indexing and searching are fundamental, yet they seem curiously neglected or even defective in the examples in that article. Recording everything against the day that the tools arrive is, to my mind, backwards. When will that day come? What can I actually use lifelogging for already, here and now?

In practice, I do the opposite. I do not keep a journal. On occasions when I've had a specific reason to write one, I have always thrown it out (shredded) after the reason has passed. My diary is for future appointments, not past memories. I keep no financial documents except according to current need: when my shoebox of bank and credit card statements fills up, I shred the oldest half.

At work I keep all emails except for mailing list stuff -- partly for legal reasons (I work at the same university where ClimateGate happened, although in an unrelated department), and sometimes I really do need to search through the archive for something. At home, no email survives in the files more than a few years.

I have hundreds of old photographs gathering dust that I am minded to either scan and dump, or just dump. Obsolete audio cassettes that I could transfer to the computer and dump, or just dump. (How often do I play them? Never.) What would you do?

Comment author: Kaj_Sotala 15 October 2010 06:24:55PM *  7 points [-]

Some uses:

  • Recording lectures at university. Especially on math and compsci courses, where the lecturer is demonstrating long sequential chains of formal reasoning, missing even a single step may be enough that you won't be able to follow any of the rest. Having all the lectures recorded and re-viewable would be a great help, especially on the courses where there isn't a specific course book and therefore there's no single written source from which you could independently study.
  • Remembering and sharing funny stories. It frequently happens that someone tells an anecdote that I'd like to share, or does something funny which I'd like to be able to pass on. This would help remembering those, at least if the lifelogging device supports a "tag everything recorded during the last 45 seconds under 'funny' kind of feature".
  • Keeping a record of past conversations. I keep logs of all the IRC and IM conversations I have, as well as saving all of my e-mails. Most of what gets logged I don't return to, but every now and then I'll want to check on the details of what someone said and will do a search to find it. To be useful in a life-logging context, a relatively accurate voice recognition software ran automatically on the video would be useful.
  • Saving emotional moments and good memories. A while back, I ran across the recommendation that at the end of each day, you should write down three (say) good things that happened to you that day, or that made you feel good / happy. The next morning or whenever you're feeling down, review the list to feel good again. This has worked moderately well for me, but I often feel too lazy or forget to write things down at the end of the day. It would be much easier if I could tell my lifelogger to tag the most recent video under 'happy', and then automatically review the 10 (say) most recent things tagged 'happy' at the press of a button.
  • Reverse engineering emotional arguments and disagreements. Occasionally either I or somebody I'm interacting with might get upset, not because of any factual disagreement, but because someone said or did something pushing subconscious emotional buttons. Going through the conversation in my head afterwards, I'm often able to pinpoint the things that caused an emotional reaction, and bring the previously subconscious triggers into conscious awareness. Having an ability to review the argument when in a more objective frame of mind could help deconstruct the triggers further.
  • Fast-forward everything I did during the day, look at how much time I spent on various things, figure out if I could have been more effective somehow.

There are probably more, these are the ones I could come up with right now.

Comment author: RichardKennaway 15 October 2010 07:18:02PM 1 point [-]

Are you doing any of these right now, or are they hypothetical for when the technology gets there?

Comment author: Kaj_Sotala 16 October 2010 08:13:15AM 1 point [-]

Hypothetical unless you count the IRC and IM logs, which I already employ for many of these purposes. To be exact, I'm saving funny conversation snippets to a separate file, recording past conversations, and reverse-engineering arguments. I've also done a bit of the saving good moments bit, though less than I could.

Comment author: Vladimir_M 15 October 2010 07:12:20PM *  1 point [-]

Are people in practice really so tolerant of those who want to record them constantly? Unless I'm absolutely forced to be in the same room with someone who does it (or, of course, if I specifically want something to be filmed), I would insist that one of us must leave, no matter what. I wouldn't even trust them that the damn thing is turned off when they say it is. (And if done secretly, I would consider it a voyeuristic offense against my person, effectively an act of war.)

I see taping lectures and other public events as an entirely normal thing. However, the idea that someone would want, or even tolerate, to be taped during private emotional moments and in situations where funny stories are told and passionate arguments made honestly baffles me. (With a few traditional exceptions like taping family events for sentimental purposes etc.)

Comment author: XiXiDu 16 October 2010 11:20:37AM *  5 points [-]

You do it too, you record everything with your brain. Sure, right now it is hard to read-out and memories are still vague. But the time will come when we'll be able to download memories. And that memories are vague and sometimes counterfactual will be even worse because people will believe them based on the persons credence. Further you are effectively speaking out against transhumanism with this stand. You are going to hate all people with advanced memory enhancements? You are going to hate all people which possess brain implants?

Anyway, what are you going to do the day when reading-out memories will be easy?

Identifying natural images from human brain activity

A challenging goal in neuroscience is to be able to read out, or decode, mental content from brain activity. Recent functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) studies have decoded orientation position and object category from activity in visual cortex. However, these studies typically used relatively simple stimuli (for example, gratings) or images drawn from fixed categories (for example, faces, houses), and decoding was based on previous measurements of brain activity evoked by those same stimuli or categories. To overcome these limitations, here we develop a decoding method based on quantitative receptive-field models that characterize the relationship between visual stimuli and fMRI activity in early visual areas. These models describe the tuning of individual voxels for space, orientation and spatial frequency, and are estimated directly from responses evoked by natural images. We show that these receptive-field models make it possible to identify, from a large set of completely novel natural images, which specific image was seen by an observer. Identification is not a mere consequence of the retinotopic organization of visual areas; simpler receptive-field models that describe only spatial tuning yield much poorer identification performance. Our results suggest that it may soon be possible to reconstruct a picture of a person's visual experience from measurements of brain activity alone.

Comment author: gwern 15 October 2010 07:30:21PM 2 points [-]

However, the idea that someone would want, or even tolerate, to be taped during private emotional moments and in situations where funny stories are told and passionate arguments made honestly baffles me. (With a few traditional exceptions like taping family events for sentimental purposes etc.)

Status quo bias?

Comment author: Vladimir_M 15 October 2010 07:54:57PM *  3 points [-]

No. Merely the desire not to be forced to obsessively ponder my every word and act, for fear that it might be published on the internet tomorrow, or otherwise shown to some relevant authority figure who would be judgmental about it. I also want various mishaps and unpleasant events that happen to everyone from time to time to be resolved, overcome, and forgotten, not to be permanently recorded like sleeping demons.

Not everyone will find your funny stories funny, your honest opinions respectable, and your demeanor in various relaxed situations likable. (Or mine at least, and those of practically anyone I enjoy socializing with.) People are pretty damn judgmental, and unless your life is a complete bore and your opinions a paragon of exemplary conventionality, you will likely have some moments in your private life that you don't want at least some people to see. Also, some things in life should be complete and absolute bygones for the good of everyone involved.

Comment author: Kaj_Sotala 16 October 2010 08:17:51AM *  1 point [-]

A lot of people would probably dislike the idea of being recorded (which I think ought to be respected), though I suspect folks would get used to it. People already save emotional e-mails and logs of very private instant message conversations without others objecting, though obviously those have more deniability value. It's much easier to write an e-mail and claim somebody else wrote it, than it is to forge an audiovisual recording of them saying something.

In general, my attitude towards people saving logs or e-mails is that if I trust them enough to tell them whatever it is that I'm telling them, then I also trust them not to make the recordings public in a way I'd disapprove of. My attitude towards somebody lifelogging me would likely be similar.

Comment author: gwern 29 October 2010 04:37:25PM *  1 point [-]

"Why would anyone want to do this?

I can think of several reasons. Initially, it'll be edge cases. Police officers on duty: it'd be great to record everything they see, as evidence. Folks with early stage neurodegenerative conditions like Alzheimers: with voice tagging and some sophisticated searching, it's a memory prosthesis.

...

We may even end up being required to do this, by our employers or insurers — in many towns in the UK, it is impossible for shops to get insurance, a condition of doing business, without demonstrating that they have CCTV cameras in place. Having such a lifelog would certainly make things easier for teachers and social workers at risk of being maliciously accused by a student or client."

--Charles Stross, http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2007/05/shaping_the_future.html

Comment author: gwern 15 October 2010 01:12:12PM *  1 point [-]

For uses, you could also read Gordon Bell's Total Recall. A little imagination suffices to think of uses for lifelogging (getting mugged, getting into accidents, arguments, etc.). LW itself is responsible for an interesting use - sending data to another person so they can see whether you are slacking off/giving into akrasia.

I would point out that no one has ever 'revisited' cyronics patients as well.

Comment author: [deleted] 17 October 2010 03:25:13AM 0 points [-]

Total Recall is an excellent text on the subject. Plus, it's pretty easy to read and Bell does a good job elaborating on the usefulness of lifelogging.

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