• Zacryon@feddit.org
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    1 day ago

    Not magic, of course. It’s science.

    The elctrical activity in your brain is measurable by electrodes placed on your skull. What we then get is called an electro-encephalogram, short: EEG. Although they rather measure a summation of activity rather than individual neurons. Still, this allows to draw some conclusions and has been widely used in neuromedicine.
    For instance, it can help to diagnose epilepsy, or investigate sleep quality. In contexts of the Emotiv, to put it simply, it rather measures levels of concentration than actual thoughts.

    But, with sufficient training you can enable such a system to perform a bit more complex tasks, like opening or closing a mechanical hand, driving a wheelchair in a simple mamner, etc… Although, from my experience, the applications are very limited and unstable.

    • pelespirit@sh.itjust.worksM
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      1 day ago

      What if, hear me out, there are a few people that can sense that activity when others can’t? Kind of like how some people see sounds and hear color. Since all of you all can’t really sense that shit, you are relentless against people who can. It’s interesting to me. I wonder how that first scientist figured this shit out. Do you know?

      • Zacryon@feddit.org
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        8 hours ago

        You mean sense electrical activity of the brain like EEGs?
        I highly doubt it. The electrical brain activity is, in terms of voltage, very weak outside of the skull. So tiny, you need specialized sensors. Even those are affected by noise in their measurements.

        As far as I know, humans have no sensing organs to directly* perceive voltages, currents or something in that direction. If there would be such a person, that would be a medical sensation and would require scientific confirmation of course.

        *Of course we can passively perceive electric currents and voltages. Everyone who has touched an unisolated electrical conductor or has experienced how body hair is moved by a static electrical field (e.g. a loaded balloon) can confirm that. But those are passive phenomena, i.e., our pain receptors respond to the currents going through our body, while we can see our hair moving and feel that via the “touch-receptors” in our skin. But no one has cells to directly measure magnetic fields, or electric ones or an electrical current.

        This should not to be confused with synesthesia, which is the other point you’ve brought up. I.e., the merging of two or more sensations, like “seeing sound” or “hearing colour”. Based on my current understanding, while fascinating, this is also not “a new sense”, although it can appear as one to those with synesthesia. It’s a combination of existing senses which appears to be caused by how the brain wires our neurological sensing pathways. Simply put, atypical simultaneous activation of regions that are responsible for, e.g., seeing and hearing, while in fact only one of those modalities can currently be perceived (either seeing or hearing something).

        Regarding the history of synesthesia: you can read up on that on Wikipedia or alike. It’s like most other discoveries were made: people investigate and observe. In this case, scientists were investigating human perception and found synesthetics among people via interviews, experiements etc…

        • pelespirit@sh.itjust.worksM
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          18 hours ago

          People are already doing that by using sensors, that’s how the video game works. You guys are so closed minded, I have empathy for you.

            • pelespirit@sh.itjust.worksM
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              17 hours ago

              So science to you is anything that science explains with scientific words, but didn’t exist before that. So joe schmo invents a mind reader, but that’s bullshit until “science” (whatever the fuck that is) tells you it’s real.

              Did you know how an MRI works? It’s magnets. Do you know how a laser works? It’s light. Do you know they’re now using light as therapy? I don’t know how more woo you can get. You guys have blinders on to an awesome world.

              • NotASharkInAManSuit@lemmy.world
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                16 hours ago

                All those things are specifically not magic, scientific discovery doesn’t mean it didn’t exist before. Magnets aren’t magic, MRIs are not magic, photons, which is what lasers are, are not magic.

                Not knowing about something doesn’t mean it’s not part of the natural universe. Magic is fake, you’ve been grifted and miseducated.

                  • NotASharkInAManSuit@lemmy.world
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                    15 hours ago

                    You clearly don’t understand the scientific method, how discovery works, or objective reality in general. Use your brain for something other than woo woo bullshit, the natural world is interesting and complex as fuck without making up nonsense to explain it like a five year old would insist upon doing.