You're looking at Less Wrong's discussion board. This includes all posts, including those that haven't been promoted to the front page yet. For more information, see About Less Wrong.

D_Malik comments on Brainstorming new senses - Less Wrong Discussion

28 Post author: lululu 20 May 2015 07:53PM

You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.

Article Navigation

Comments (91)

Comments (91)

You are viewing a single comment's thread.

Comment author: D_Malik 21 May 2015 01:44:31AM 19 points [-]

Upgraded reflective senses would be really cool. For instance:

  • Levels of various interesting hormones like cortisol, epinephrine, testosterone, etc. For instance, cortisol levels are higher in the morning than in the evening, but this is not obvious. (Or am I lying to prevent hindsight bias?)
  • Various things measured by an implanted EEG. For instance, it would be cool to intuitively know the difference between beta and gamma waves.
  • Metabolism-related things like blood insulin, glucose, ketones.
  • Galvanic skin response. Heart rate variability.

We already have weak senses for most of these, but they're not always salient. Having a constant sense of them would allow you to do biofeedback-like training all the time.

Comment author: Ishaan 21 May 2015 05:34:48AM *  5 points [-]

This is my favorite one so far, unexpected and very practical. You quite plausibly might upgrade your meta-cognitive ability as these upgraded senses improve your ability to notice.

Noticing your body reacting to getting anxious or being able to detect certain mental processes (mind wandering, confabulation, etc) is something you'd really want on all the time, at every second.

Comment author: Gunnar_Zarncke 21 May 2015 10:52:13AM 1 point [-]

And the best thing is that the tech for that is practically there.

Comment author: Viliam 21 May 2015 11:12:07AM 1 point [-]

Levels of various interesting hormones like cortisol, epinephrine, testosterone, etc. Metabolism-related things like blood insulin, glucose, ketones.

Could this be trained? In a safe environment, increasing and decreasing the levels quickly, and noticing what happens. So you would learn how exactly "high level of X" and "low level of X" feel for various values of X.

Powered by Reddit Powered by Reddit