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I'm sure it's actually a spooky feeling people are getting but somehow this wired article fails to convince me. The researchers suggest that the subjects’ brai

by po 12y ago

I'm sure it's actually a spooky feeling people are getting but somehow this wired article fails to convince me. The researchers suggest that the subjects’ brains reconcile this mismatch by creating the illusion of another presence that’s doing the poking. After all, something is poking them in the back. Yeah, It's a robot! Why is it that people feel like it's a person and not a robot or a coat rack or whatever? That part seems odd to me. Is it not because we tend to only be poked by people in our daily lives so given the stimulus, we interpret it to be a person?

hanoz 12y ago
This reminds me of the book Phantoms in the Brain by one http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vilayanur_S._Ramachandran http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vilayanur_S._Ramachandran in which he describes a similar experiment. It's a great read by the way. Anyway, as I recall, watching someone tap and stroke a model body part, say a nose, in a non predictable pattern, whilst an unseen hand replicates the touches exactly on your own nose, can result in an overwhelming sensation that the model, though yards away from you, is actually your own nose. Always meant to try it out, it sounds great fun. I don't know if the Wired article or the experiment itself has glossed over this first stage - before the delay is introduced - but perhaps if the first step has already introduced the spooky feeling of your back being an arms length in front of you (maybe to a milder degree than if it had looked like a back), then when you start feeling your back (still in front of you) being touched when you can clearly see noone is touching it, this could naturally lead to a feeling of an invisible actor?