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Your Brain's Predictive Models

Schrodinger's Zebra

And a dandelion dies in the wind
Joined
Mar 8, 2018
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Well this is a new one on me, and I thought it would be good for a thread on here. I couldn't find anything about this already so mods - apologies if there is a more suitable thread for it.

We were watching this video:

Which explains all about the brain's Predictive Models. Basically a person's brain develops models of how the world around it should be; I don't want to give too much away as I would encourage you to watch the video but the crucial thing is, and hence why I'm posting this, is that - according to this - your brain will dismiss things it sees, if they don't fit in with it's preconceived model of the current environment/situation.

This led me to thinking; does this have any bearing on why some people seem more able than others, to see paranormal phenomena?
Do their brains not have the same predictive models, and therefore allow 'abnormal' things to pass into the person's consciousness?
Whereas for anyone with let's call them 'strict' predictive models, anything bizarre would simply be filtered out by the brain, cast aside as "does not compute" before the person ever knows?

And if so, is there a way of freeing our brains from these predictions, to allow us to better experience more of the world around us?
 
This led me to thinking; does this have any bearing on why some people seem more able than others, to see paranormal phenomena?
Do their brains not have the same predictive models, and therefore allow 'abnormal' things to pass into the person's consciousness?
Whereas for anyone with let's call them 'strict' predictive models, anything bizarre would simply be filtered out by the brain, cast aside as "does not compute" before the person ever knows?

And if so, is there a way of freeing our brains from these predictions, to allow us to better experience more of the world around us?

I hesitate to suggest LSD as a means to 'expand your consciousness' although I believe most of the visual and auditory hallucinations are caused by a relaxation in sensory filtration - same effects can be achieved by certain forms of (legal) meditation I'm told. A variation on the gorilla experiment was carried out on two groups of students walking through Edinburgh's Botanical Gardens: one group's trail was intersected by Bigfoot striding in the background, which was missed by about half of them. However, Bigfoot was reported by a member of the other group even though the actor wasn't on their trail. So with predictive models I'd say that if you don't believe in ghosts or fairies or other paranormal phenomena it's unlikely you'll "see" any, but if you do believe then they're all round you. My question is whether that validates paranormal phenomena any more than normal phenomena or indeed LSD hallucinations - unless they're all 'real'.
 
I hesitate to suggest LSD as a means to 'expand your consciousness' although I believe most of the visual and auditory hallucinations are caused by a relaxation in sensory filtration - same effects can be achieved by certain forms of (legal) meditation I'm told. A variation on the gorilla experiment was carried out on two groups of students walking through Edinburgh's Botanical Gardens: one group's trail was intersected by Bigfoot striding in the background, which was missed by about half of them. However, Bigfoot was reported by a member of the other group even though the actor wasn't on their trail. So with predictive models I'd say that if you don't believe in ghosts or fairies or other paranormal phenomena it's unlikely you'll "see" any, but if you do believe then they're all round you. My question is whether that validates paranormal phenomena any more than normal phenomena or indeed LSD hallucinations - unless they're all 'real'.

Interesting, I wasn't aware of that other experiment.

Not sure about the LSD thing though... perhaps my phraseology of "freeing our brains" gave the wrong impression - I was more thinking of ways of training our brains to not be as lazy/predictive :)

I feel like it's more than just believing in these things... for instance I believe in certain paranormal phenomena but I don't find them appearing all around me every day and I'm sure the same applies to others too. So I think these predictive models must get in the way of what is really out there.

And it does make me wonder what on earth the world would look like if we didn't have all these predictive models... :)
 
... Basically a person's brain develops models of how the world around it should be; I don't want to give too much away as I would encourage you to watch the video but the crucial thing is, and hence why I'm posting this, is that - according to this - your brain will dismiss things it sees, if they don't fit in with it's preconceived model of the current environment/situation. ...

To use an information processing metaphor (which doesn't really reflect how things work) ...

There are multiple stages or phases of processing involved in parsing sensory stimuli into cognitively "foreground" mental objects of conscious reference. At the sensory / perceptual "front end" of this processing path, stimuli most often get filtered and / or refined for further processing. At the cognitive / mental "back end" of this processing path, interpretations (distinctions; descriptions; categorizations) are imposed on the incoming stimuli.

Personally, I'd criticize the video's use of the well-known gorilla experiment, because it's not a lucid example of predictive modeling. The gorilla doesn't "register", and this can be explained in terms of attentional focus out at the perceptual "front end" alone.

Crudely stated, you don't notice the gorilla as an object of interest because you're concentrating on a subset of the other people.

You're ignoring the gorilla not because it's a gorilla but because it's a dark figure you've been instructed to ignore by definition - i.e., you're filtering out the things your eyes see but your mind doesn't need to address in the current task.

Under a strict predictive modeling interpretation you wouldn't acknowledge the gorilla because (e.g.) gorillas don't play basketball and shouldn't be in the scene at all.

Predictive modeling would be in play if you were engaged based on "back end" (e.g., semantic) processing such as performing an identification task (e.g., searching for non-humans in the scene).
 
This interplay of what the mind presumptively expects to be "out there" versus what the eyes "see" can trip you up in all sorts of ways.

(If Ringo's reading this he's probably nodding, because mentalists and stage magicians leverage such confusions.)

If a stimulus ends up triggering a mental / cognitive conclusion this conclusion tends to "stick" in one's mind - regardless of whether it's a valid interpretation or a presumptuous misperception.

Back in 2006 I posted within the Misperceptions thread about an incident that illustrates this ...

My most unshakeable misperception occurred on a school or church group picnic to a local dam and associated park when I was around 10 - 13 years old (early 1960's).

At one point we were standing on an overlook that gave us a panoramic vantage over the front face of the dam, the powerhouse, and outlying environs. Next to the spillway opening was a safety station - a brightly colored fencepost upon which hung a life preserver, a box (probably a first aid kit and / or phone), and some other apparatus. On top of the post sat a red or orange cone (like one of those road construction cones).

When I first directed my gaze at this safety post, my initial impression was of a relatively tall gnome, portly in the middle, with a pointed hat. I laughed at myself, knowing it was an arrangement of safety equipment. No matter how much I looked and re-looked at it, I couldn't 'grasp' or 'see' anything other than that gnome figure. It was as if my visual center had 'locked up' on the gnome interpretation.

This went on all day ... From varying distances and angles I would see the gnome no matter how much I reminded myself what I was 'really' looking at ... By the end of the day this effect had become so disturbing I was actively avoiding looking at it ...

ORIGINAL POST: https://forums.forteana.org/index.php?threads/misperceptions.22321/post-656223

Once I'd "flashed" on the safety station as being a gnome, it became something of a situation-specific predictive model for what I would see if I looked at it again.
 
... This led me to thinking; does this have any bearing on why some people seem more able than others, to see paranormal phenomena?

I would put it this way ...

It does NOT have a bearing on why some people seem more able than others, to see paranormal phenomena.

Why? Because the question presumes a given phenomenon is or is not "paranormal" by definition, and there's some "ability" to discern the phenomenon as such. This bias may well be in play once the observer is "primed" with certain concepts or categories into which he / she is thereafter force-fitting everything he / she perceives. However, it doesn't - indeed it can't - explain the bootstrap case of encountering a novel phenomenon for the first time.

It would be more accurate (IMHO) to put it this way:

It DOES have a bearing on why some people seem more PRONE than others, to INTERPRET phenomena as "paranormal."


Do their brains not have the same predictive models, and therefore allow 'abnormal' things to pass into the person's consciousness?
Whereas for anyone with let's call them 'strict' predictive models, anything bizarre would simply be filtered out by the brain, cast aside as "does not compute" before the person ever knows?

Brains are tuned by neural experience such that certain pathways may be more readily triggered than others. Brains serve as predictive models of their own operations and nothing else.

Minds (note the distinction) are similarly tuned by cognitive experience and learning such that conscious recognition of new stimuli / perceptions is correlated with learned categories and associations.

Because they are learned, such purported predictive models can be quite idiosyncratic and unique to one or another individual.

It is certainly the case that some degree of outright filtering or dismissal can occur in the "back end" (cognitive; mental) part of the processing path, but this is not uniquely linked to the presence / absence of predictive models per se. Figuratively speaking, one could always claim un-processable stimuli are simply shunted into a "WTF" bin - i.e., not lost but simply put out of play.

Such dismissal requires recognition of the "WTF" status, and this requires some degree of mental / cognitive processing. I'd therefore deny that such semantic discrimination occurs without intruding on the mind (regardless of how subconsciously this may occur).


And if so, is there a way of freeing our brains from these predictions, to allow us to better experience more of the world around us?

By the time you learn language you're already trapped in certain ways, and these intrinsic constraints might well be construed as predictive models in and of themselves.

Evading or escaping these predictive / presumptive tendencies is possible on at least a transient basis, but it requires engaging with the ineffability that your mind has labored all your life to mask or avoid. That's the "Zen" of it ...
 
The report of the other experiment is slightly incorrect, it was carried out by Charles Paxton and erm Gordon Rutter and was looking specifically at eyewitness testament. The results will be published at some point in the near future.

Well this is embarrassing, I talked about the findings as best as I could remember of a study in 2015 to test the reliability of witnesses to a Cryptozoological event - but Gordon says the results haven't been published yet. I can't find where I got my info from (although I know what my original search was a couple of years ago before getting side-tracked) and it wasn't correct anyway. Curse you Mandela.
 
Don't know about any or you, but I see a turnip pointing at a dragon shaped tornado in the OP. :p
 
Seriously, it's not just visual stimulus, is it, that people learn to deny/dismiss.
 
Seriously, it's not just visual stimulus, is it, that people learn to deny/dismiss.
I have tinnitus, and, most of the time I'm not even aware of it. Every so often I will stop and think 'do I still have....oh, yes, there it is.'
Because my brain is now so used to the sound (it's a high pitched ringing in my case) that it dismisses it completely. And yes, I know I'm very lucky in that respect because tinnitus has driven many to madness. Or maybe I'm already there.
 
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