Thank you for this, wonderful break down of some amazing history. I have watched that demo many many times in my pursuit of human computer interface thinking.
I often wondered what happened to this piece of hardware… I still hold a deep belief that our current input methods are flawed(as amazing as they are) and we are in need of another leap forward.
Use it as a strength you are not bound by preconceived imagery of what should be. Use the way you recall and collect information to be creative, solve problems and bring a different perspective to things.
With the remember by association I realised I think I can recall the layout of any building I’ve ever been in. I don’t get lost once I’ve explored once.
I did a thought exercise and it’s not validated - but I could “imagine” walking through my pre primary school. But in darkness. So when I have a memory from long ago I now try walk the area I was in when it happened.
It brings up other surprising memories I had forgotten about that were like geo specially tied to the location.
The difference is dreams and imagination for me. Ask me about an apple while awake and I’ll close my eyes and it’s dark blackness of a void.Extreme aphantasia (I also am face blind)
Ask me about it while dreaming and it’s a full on 3D movie/VR experience.
Music too I can play that in my head no problem like my own radio (unless it has words then I can’t imagine it at all) - so I suck at karaoke. Even trying to sing with songs I can’t process it correctly unless it’s tonal sounds from the words.
For a neuroscience background we are certainly not all wired the same. You are correct though that aligning those descriptions and untangling social meanings and words from experience is tricky.
> Ask me about an apple while awake and I’ll close my eyes and it’s dark blackness of a void.Extreme aphantasia
Uhhhhhhhh.......I don't think that's extreme at all. Isn't that normal?? I just asked several people today to close their eyes and imagine an apple (or anything else) and everyone just sees black.
If you could see objects with your eyes closed, I think that's called having a photographic memory? (Which is...rare?)
I can have very vivid mental imagery, I can imagine all sorts of fantastical things in detail in my mind on command. But that doesn't mean I don't see black when I close my eyes. It doesn't mean the mental imagery blocks what I can see normally with my eyes open. It is in your "mind's eye", so it is still triggering the vision parts of the brain, but almost like its on a different screen.
Similarly with imagining sound or music. I can almost perfectly recall some of my favorite music, I can compose a new piece (poorly) in my head based on music and sounds I have heard, but none of it will drown out an actual sound I hear around me.
That being said, if I am very mentally focused on some mental imagery it can still distract me from my real vision and or even sort of "replace it" without my closing my eyes. Sort of like the feeling you get when driving and zoning out thinking about something (but you are still safely driving).
They do make all the above points in the article - including that it’s hard to verify this information.
Comparing it to Stalin is pretty apt - communist party with a figure head trying to hold onto power. Seems like more than just one person vanished and it’s all under totally opaque circumstances.
If the information is difficult to verify the correct way is to be measured.
My main gripe here is the sensationalist take on complex issues, starting with the over-the-top title.
This could have been a substantive and interesting discussion...
Edit: I tried to look past the clickbaity title to get to the interesting part, which I think to find the reason for specific people being 'purged'. Alas it is apparently not possible...
The lack of information is the point. In a Western democracy, government ministers don't just go missing without any official explanation for their disappearance. (I am not suggesting that such official explanations are always true, but they at least exist.)
> The lack of information is the point. In a Western democracy...
...people aren't really used to leaving their bubble and searching for information at the source, especially when the source is a foreign culture/language/platform.
Are you sure that "lack of information" isn't just a skill issue here?
I'm sure that's a factor, but I'm talking about the lack of official statements. Maybe there have been such statements and I don't know about it – in which case, someone can hopefully link to a report of one of the statements.
"On 17 December 1967, Harold Holt, the 17th prime minister of Australia, disappeared while swimming in the sea near Portsea, Victoria. An enormous search operation was mounted in and around Cheviot Beach, but his body was never recovered."
He went for a swim and drowned. The facts of his disappearance are known and fully acknowledged insofar as anyone has been able to discover them. That's hardly an equivalent scenario to that of, e.g., Li Shangfu.
It clearly says his body was never recovered, so 'the facts of his disappearance' are not fully known, by definition.
Anyways, there's dozens of examples of presidents, prime ministers, ministers, deputy ministers, party leaders, etc., who've disappeared or died under mysterious circumstances. And that's just post WW2. Which anyone can find via a quick search online.
>Holt loved the ocean, particularly spearfishing... On 17 December 1967, while Holt was spending the weekend at Portsea, he and four companions decided to drive to Point Nepean to watch sailor Alec Rose pass through The Rip on his solo circumnavigation attempt... Holt convinced the group to stop at remote Cheviot Beach for a swim before lunch – he had spearfished there on many previous occasions, and claimed to "know this beach like the back of my hand". Because of the rough conditions, only one other person, Alan Stewart, joined Holt in the water. Stewart kept close to shore, but Holt swam out into deeper water and was seemingly caught up in a rip, eventually disappearing from view. One of the witnesses, Marjorie Gillespie, described it as "like a leaf being taken out [...] so quick and final".
He drowned. There's nothing mysterious about it. We are not living in an Agatha Christie novel.
The point here isn't just that Li Shangfu has disappeared but that the fact of his disappearance has not even been officially acknowledged. If Lloyd Austin had been missing for months, the US government would at least acknowledge this and make some kind of statement about it.
I was responding to 'The facts of his disappearance are known'.
Which is clearly not the case.
It can be supposed that the facts are known if we assume it was an entirely coincidental and unlucky day to pick for swimming in that area. But that's just a supposition. At best, an agreed upon supposition by the majority of the few hundred or thousand people who've deeply investigated the case. But that still doesn't equate to 'facts'.
We know he drowned. There are witnesses to what happened. If someone goes for a swim in the sea in rough weather, gets swept away by a current, and then is never seen again...I mean, you do the math. If you have some plausible alternative theory then let's hear it. But on the face of it, there is nothing remotely mysterious about Holt's death.
>I was responding to 'The facts of his disappearance are known'.
Not to be too pedantic, but I said "the facts of his disappearance are known...insofar as anyone has been able to discover them". That is, there is no secret cabal that has additional information about what happened. The Australian government is not concealing anything. All anyone knows is what we all know: that he went for a swim in rough weather and drowned.
People go missing/get arrested all the time. What justifies suspicions of foul play is when those disappearances are unusually concentrated in some group, e.g. politicians, and more frequent than usual for that group.
If you genuinely want to know, shouldn't you be asking 'foldr' of why it's relevant to raise the comparison?
I can't speak on their behalf since I am a different person.
See their parent comment:
> In a Western democracy, government ministers don't just go missing without any official explanation for their disappearance. (I am not suggesting that such official explanations are always true, but they at least exist.)
The thing that's flying over your head is that the people preventing it from being measured are the people you're giving the benefit of the doubt because it hasn't been measured.
In such cases, any rational actor has to assume the worst about the party preventing the measurement, to prevent rewarding that behavior and to encourage honest measurements.
AI will give you multiple wrong answers and a possible correct one.
Filtering through these needs education and understanding. Which perhaps can be done but maybe not in the best way.