Time travel is now possible

[SineSwiper]

Humans can see into the future, says a cognitive scientist.

Well, not really, but it's about how our eyes potentially compensate for the 1/10th second lag that it takes our brain to process optical information. According to the article, it actually processes a "future" snapshot of what the present should look like, based on information from the previous 1/10th shots. So, your visual perception is just a predictive image, and not exactly what you see with your eyes.

Sometimes it predicts it wrong, so you end up with optical illusions.

[Imakeholesinu]

So those magic Eye things I was actually seeing a sail boat from the future???


"You dumb bastard, it's not a scooner it's a sail boat"
"A scooner is a sail boat."
" YOU KNOW WHAT! THERE IS NO EASTER BUNNY, THAT OVER THERE IS JUST A GUY IN A SUIT!"

[Tessian]

So those magic Eye things I was actually seeing a sail boat from the future???


"You dumb bastard, it's not a scooner it's a sail boat"
"A scooner is a sail boat."
" YOU KNOW WHAT! THERE IS NO EASTER BUNNY, THAT OVER THERE IS JUST A GUY IN A SUIT!"

when I clicked on this thread the last thing I expected was a Mall Rats reference

[Zhuge Liang3]

So if I can somehow trick my eyes to see 2/10 of a second into the future, or even more, I would be like, totally kick-ass? So that's how the sharingan works...

[Kupek]

No, you would actually be worse off because then what you see has more predictions - and hence, more errors - than a normal person.

According to the theory, of course.

[Imakeholesinu]

No, you would actually be worse off because then what you see has more predictions - and hence, more errors - than a normal person.

According to the theory, of course.

And that's why the kid saw a scooner instead of a sailboat.

[RentCavalier]

...what, no Back to the Future joke?

[Imakeholesinu]

...what, no Back to the Future joke?

The set at Universal burned down today. It is a sad day.

*Runs to the delorian and cranks it to 88mph!*

[Zhuge Liang3]

No, you would actually be worse off because then what you see has more predictions - and hence, more errors - than a normal person.

According to the theory, of course.

It depends on context. You would be more susceptible to optical illusions certainly, but it's not hard to imagine situations where it might be useful. Imagine an extra tenth of a second to position yourself to catch a ball, or to slip a punch, etc.. With the bit of training, the brain can learn to adapt and take advantage of it. Of course there's a limit. One or two seconds would probably be enough to screw you over in every day life.

[Kupek]

Again, not really. Remember that according to this theory, the prediction is error correction. It's required because it takes time for us to process the light that hits our eyes. The longer the delay, the more error correction needed. What your proposing is equivalent to lengthening the processing time, which increases the amount of error correction. The more error correction that happens, the more likely it will be wrong.

To be better than average you'd decrease the length of the prediction, so that then you're acting on fresher information. Of course, that would require decreasing the processing time.

Keep in mind we already can predict what's going to happen in the future, and oftentimes its instinctual. But triggering that requires recent information, which is where this sight-prediction comes in.

[SineSwiper]

Yeah, actually, it would be better if your brain was processing the optical information faster, so that more of the information was real. In this sense, you could perform moves and watch in real-time, whereas other people have a 1/10th second lag. That lag may deceive them when you're doing moves that would be unpredictable, and your enhanced vision would be able to pick up on quick actions like that.

[Zhuge Liang3]

Again, not really. Remember that according to this theory, the prediction is error correction. It's required because it takes time for us to process the light that hits our eyes. The longer the delay, the more error correction needed. What your proposing is equivalent to lengthening the processing time, which increases the amount of error correction. The more error correction that happens, the more likely it will be wrong.

To be better than average you'd decrease the length of the prediction, so that then you're acting on fresher information. Of course, that would require decreasing the processing time.

Keep in mind we already can predict what's going to happen in the future, and oftentimes its instinctual. But triggering that requires recent information, which is where this sight-prediction comes in.

Sorry, disagree. I'm not suggesting lengthening the processing time at all. I'm saying that under some circumstances, having your eyes "predict" 200ms into the future might be more beneficial as compared to seeing 100ms into the future. Conceptually speaking, the farther ahead you predict, the more error there'd be. And your assumption is that it'd take more processing power and time to predict farther ahead. Maybe, but do you know for sure how it scales? Assuming predicting 200ms doesn't take twice as 100ms (granted it's an assumption), for every day life, I don't think it'd be that hard to find a situation where the benefits of predicting an extra 100ms ahead outweigh the overhead associated with it. Furthermore, in my opinion, for normal activities in the physical world, the "likelyhood" of a wrong prediction between 100ms and 200ms should be pretty small. A baseball is not going to suddenly change direction in that time frame for instance. Of course, you will eventually hit a limit. Extend it 1 second into the future and the probability of incorrect prediction will likely increase dramatically. But my argument was never that it'd be beneficial in all circumstances, just some. Unless you'd like to make the argument that seeing farther into the future by any amount above 100ms will never grant any significant advantage under any circumstance...

Finally, I think it goes without saying that if your brain works faster you'd have a greater advantage. But that's not quite as interesting to talk about