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Gram_Stone comments on The Rubber Hand Illusion and Preaching to the Unconverted - Less Wrong Discussion

10 Post author: Gram_Stone 29 December 2014 12:56PM

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Comment author: Gram_Stone 29 December 2014 02:25:37PM *  2 points [-]

About the blockquotes in this comment, for some reason I can't separate your quotes from the paper's quotes if they're right after one another, so you'll have to pay attention. To be clear, my response will always follow your quote. I've looked at Markdown syntax documentation but I can't figure out how to fix this. I'd appreciate help from anyone.

CFAR exist in the background of the realisation that's quite easy to want to be rational and read a list of mental biases but that this usually doesn't make people more rational. It thus important to develop techniques to reliably make people more rational and that includes us as well.

I know what CFAR is and what it's for, I just said that because I didn't know if they had tried rationality training with anyone else but entrepreneurs and people with a lot of experience in mathematics. If this has changed, I'd appreciate it if someone told me.

Just because someone changes their beliefs doesn't mean they do Bayesian inference. Bayesian inference is a specific heuristic and I consider it unlikely that the body uses it for this purpose.

For one, I didn't say that Bayesian inference was the conscious process by which the person changed their beliefs.

Now, I'll begin by saying that I don't know an explicit thing about Bayesian inference. Despite that, I wrote that because I've seen this researcher cited elsewhere on the site and I assumed that if he used the adjective 'Bayesian' in one his papers, you all would want to know about it. From the paper, these are the things that I'm talking about:

Wheras Botvinick & Cohen (1998) interpret their results in terms of resolving incongruities between visual versus proprioceptive location of the hand, our table experiment would lead us to argue that the illusion arises mainly from the ‘Bayesian logic’ of all perception; the brain’s remarkable ability to detect statistical correlations in sensory inputs in constructing useful perceptual representations of the world—including one’s body.

We suggest that the principle underlying this illusion is Bayesian perceptual learning—that two perceptions from different modalities are ‘bound’ when they co-occur with a high probability.

The McGurk effect is much easier to demostrate if you want to show someone how is perception is flawed.

I had never heard of this, but I just read the introduction to the Wikipedia article to get an idea of it and apparently the McGurk effect is hit or miss. To my knowledge, everyone can experience the rubber hand illusion regardless of previous experience.

As for this:

I'm not really sure that the paper demostrates that. You could also say that the person has empathy with the table.

I really don't believe that one could say that. I may be wrong, but it seems that the paper actually addresses this:

The brain’s remarkable capacity for extracting statistical correlations in sensory input is most apparent in the table condition. In the hand experiments, given the visual similarity between the fake and real hand, it is not unreasonable for the brain to tolerate some level of discrepancy between the felt position of the hand and its apparent visual location. (Indeed, Graziano (1999) has shown specific cells in the macaque to be responsive to the visual appearance of both a monkey’s real hand and a proximate fake one.) This argument, however, is difficult to apply to the case of the table; indeed, we would argue that the assimilation of the table into the body image is dictated exclusively by the Bayesian logic underlying all perception; in this case the brain’s tendency to take advantage of statistical correlations (even when they do not ‘make sense’ from the cognitive point of view and contradict a lifetime of experience with our own bodies).

Mimikry of body language leads in humans to a feeling of rapport.

I don't understand how this is relevant.

I'm also uncomfortable with the semantics of "human body" in this case. I would guess that most of the participants wouldn't say that the table is part of their body.

I agree that it's improbable that a person would explicitly consider the table a part of their body. I also think that it's probably true that most of the participants wouldn't say that they can anticipate or feel pain due to injury to something that is not part of their body.

Comment author: ChristianKl 29 December 2014 04:32:21PM 2 points [-]

I've looked at Markdown syntax documentation but I can't figure out how to fix this.

Separate paragraph by empty lines.

[re mimikry] I don't understand how this is relevant.

They get the effect by having a stimulus applied at the same time to both hands. If the real hand moves the fake hand moves as well in the same way. That's how you create rapport. If two people are in strong rapport and you hurt one of them, the other also feels hurt.

I also think that it's probably true that most of the participants wouldn't say that they can anticipate or feel pain due to injury to something that is not part of their body.

I don't think that's true. Any neurotypical person who has a decent level of empathy, should have experiences where they felt pain when another person got hurt.

Comment author: Gram_Stone 29 December 2014 04:48:06PM *  2 points [-]

Separate paragraph by empty lines.

I did. I also tried putting a less-than sign on each line as suggested elsewhere. I don't know what's going on with that.

They get the effect by having a stimulus applied at the same time to both hands. If the real hand moves the fake hand moves as well in the same way. That's how you create rapport. If two people are in strong rapport and you hurt one of them, the other also feels hurt.

This is too vague for me to make heads or tails of it, but in any event, some subjects actually mistook the rubber hand for their real hand. I also said that some subjects felt physical pain. This is not a matter of empathizing with the pain of something else. And we're talking about a table. I don't know anyone who's ever empathized with a table.

I don't think that's true. Any neurotypical person who has a decent level of empathy, should have experiences where they felt pain when another person got hurt.

It sounds like this is just turning into a semantic argument about the definition of the word 'pain.' You know how you feel when you see someone else get a paper cut on their finger? That's not the kind of experience that I'm talking about. You know how your finger feels when you get a paper cut? That's the kind of experience that I'm talking about. You know how you feel when you trip and you're on your way to kiss the ground? That's the kind of anticipation that I'm talking about.

Comment author: ChristianKl 29 December 2014 05:42:13PM *  1 point [-]

You know how your finger feels when you get a paper cut? That's the kind of experience that I'm talking about.

Do you actually have experience with this experiment and what it feels like or does your information come from the paper?

Comment author: Gram_Stone 29 December 2014 05:59:15PM *  1 point [-]

I have not been subjected to the experiment. Even if I were, I would most likely not feel physical pain because only a small selection of subjects did. I do not believe that the terms 'pain' and 'anticipation of pain' are contestable or capable of being confused with empathy. I'm tapping out because I don't believe that this conversation is productive.

Comment author: ChristianKl 29 December 2014 10:07:28PM 1 point [-]

While not having done this experiment in particular I do have experience in distinguishing a lot of the relevant qualia and what mimikry does for emotional transfer.

In a study they got 31/108 to feel pain when seeing images/clips.

The sensations they felt were most often described as “tingling”, followed by “aching”. Other descriptions included “sharp”, “shooting”, “throbbing”, “stabbing” and “tender”. The pain was described as lasting for “a few seconds”, “fleeting”, or “for a split second as soon as the picture appeared.”

That's a simple picture without any rapport building and more than the 20% in study you cited report feeling pain.