Helgi Schweizer February 24, 2010: Ouija

From: Helgi Schweizer <jon.helgi@web.de>
Date: February 24, 2010 5:11:07 AM EST
Subject: Ouija
Dear Xin Wei.

This seems to me almost spooky. We have been working on the Ouija-phenomenon for several years. Now one of my doctoral-students, Mirko Diclic, is performing experiments, we have been preparing for almost two years. The technical equipment in Innsbruck is rather desastrous, so we had to develop the  experimental apparatus ourselves. Especially we hat to develop means to measure details of very fast  joint movement. 

We have studied how joint action relates to facilitated communication and some magical stage- tricks. I think the  key to this mystery is an altered concept or theory of community (Gemeinschaft). Supposedly we have to rethink interindividual interaction in a somehow more holistic way. Mirror neurons may give a hint to some kind of "prestabilised harmony" other hints come from flocks of birds and fishes or even yawning people. We have especially be interested in dancing and the synchronisation of dancing couples. 

So far we have favoured models on the basis of populations of coupled oscillators, but I have to admit, that the required mathematics surpass my capabilties by far. We therefore concentrate on the experimental part, though I am not very happy about that.

The reply I wrote to your last mail may already be outdated, but the comments on Nessi are  out of time and space anyhow, so I send you the whole letter.

With best regards.

Helgi

22.2.10

Dear Xin Wei.

Ok. We seem to be quite on the same track, and there was another Gentleman on the same track, Ivo Kohler, Helga´s and my  Professor in Innsbruck 
His famous Goggle-Experiments were not payed the attention they deserved, probably because he had a tendency to report his findings in a rather curious way. (He for instance pretended, that there was only one experimental subject you could trust, namely yourself).
He carried two sorts of Goggles modifying  the experience of space. One turned upside down, the other interchanged left and right. After a while (in the case of the left-right goggles, many weeks) the initial discoordination of the sensory and the motor „Space“ beginns to give way to a complicated process of realignment.  This process I think provides some extremly valuable  insights into the architecture of the subjective space.

Just one example how the brain relies on clues from past experience: Having seen the world for weeks with left-right-conversion-goggles, moving your head from left to right may still cause your surroundings move from left to right, but with one exeption: written things, they move in the opposite direction  but nevertheless stay in their correct place relative to the rest of the environment. In the case of upside down goggles there are more clues (as Kohler put it, mountains tend to be broader on their  base than on their top). The realignment  is obviously connected to the motor interaction with the environment. So for instance carrying a stick, you might have the things you touch with the stick, turn upside down and nevertheless  retain their relative position. (I suppose, you have much better tools to describe this miracle).

There are other interesting hints being provided by certain scarce cases of mental illness, especially of epilepsia and schizophrenia. Most famous is the so called out of body phenomenon. People experience themself as moving out of their body. Other interesting abnormal experiences relate to the bodily space, so for instance a person may experience himself  happy only on the right half of the body.

I think it  could be helpful to study these cases of malfunction in order to improve our understanding of space. I could go on reporting them to you if you think that could be helpful.

The question „what is nessi“ and my inability to give a satisfactory answer, upset Carl Pribram (and not only him) over and over.  I said she is rather a description than a simulation, but this is far from being an acceptable answer. Now, after a quater of a century, I would rather  say, she is the simplest mind in the simplest world , some kind of  ultimate abstraction of everything, inclusive myself. (pPease dont blame me for  such lunatic sentences).Back in the eighties, when we started programming Nessi (not knowing, it would take us two years to finish the work), the prevalent idea was to  overcome the drawbacks of spoken or written language. Back then,  my favourite metaphor was that of describing a clockwork, drawing a clockwork and showing a functioning clockwork. We thought then, the sourcecode could serve as an other form of description (of a theory). There was a dicussion of the so called „non statement view of theories“ going on back in those days and what was regarded as pivotal was the mathematical structure, the kernel at the heart of a theory. We thought, lets give them what they want. But as we brought Nessi along, they (my habilition committee) seemed embarrassed or even disgruntled. At the same time an ambitious young lady from Strassburg  wrote a thesis on Nessi. Nobody really understood her, but she was invited to San Diego and gave a presentation at the first (I suppose) congress on artificial intelligence. This saved my soul and the habilitation process .Nessi gained some attention as a mysterious curiosity. I have been told, that the they still keep a copy in San Diego and are still racking their brains. 

I shall dig into my shelfs and boxes, and look for some ancient remains of Nessi. There should even be an article written in English (A Paradigm Called Nessi). If I find the article, we shall scan it.

With best regards 

Helgi.