[Wyville]

I will never get over what humans can do with math and music and language. To me it seems so far beyond what was needed in terms of evolution I consider it miraculous, even though I am a firm believer in evolution, I think it’s so improbable as to be miraculous, Not in a spiritual sense but just in terms of probability and wondrousness. But it can certainly give rise to a feeling of spirituality.

This is a good example of what I mean. Not everything in biology has to have a reason, sometimes things just happen or are an indirect consequence of something else. The human brain might well be a so-called ‘spandrel’, rather than a direct consequence of adaptation. Stephen J Gould had some very interesting thoughts on that and I fully agree, as it opens up the door for the unique creativity humans have.

 

[Phronesis]

Well, we should also not forget the emotional/psychological impact that music has on us. That has less to do with how we hear and more to do with how we react to what we hear. Unfortunately the mind is something that can't be measured/tested objectively using science. The mind is "us" it's who we are..not a part of the body.

Agreed, and I think we need to consider all the bottom-up and top-down interactions going on. In the bottom-up direction, the physical sound reaching our eardrums can elicit perceptions of sound and music, as well as thoughts and emotions and moods. But in the top-down direction, our thoughts and emotions and moods can also shape how we direct our attention and what we perceive.

I don't really know what to say about mind. To me, it's ultimately the mind that perceives, and the brain makes that possible, but the mind-body problem remains unresolved.

 

[castleofargh]

I have a slightly different take on this:
IMO what make us all unique in some ways, creative, different from machines, etc, are mostly flawed memories and bad logical structure prioritizing speed over accuracy. I find that it explains really a lot, including why it's so hard to develop a consistent model for our thinking and our impressions. because in many ways we're not very consistent ourselves.
at the core of what makes us who we are, there are heuristic techniques and pattern recognition. heuristic doesn't even pretend to return a correct answer, only to return a fast one based on what we know no matter how little that is. yet that's how we deal with the very vast majority of situations in our lives. and pattern recognition... well more than listing the flaws, it's amazing that it even works as well it does under the circumstances. something happens in the objective world, we capture a little bit of the physical effects with some far from perfect sensors, interpret that(usually with the assumption that we got it all, and all correctly... lol). that interpretation will also be affected by ideas, beliefs, previous experiences, and the most fun of all, other senses, even when they have no relation with the event(like sight influencing what we hear). we'll store those interpretations of what happened in our memory for future pattern reference, except that memory is inherently flawed, and stays fluid over time, ensuring that our pattern recognition system can evolve with new data, but also allowing fine memories to be perverted in all sorts of ways. so when we recall something it's unlikely to be an exact copy of what we first stored.yet we will again assume that it is a correct recollection.
so we use senses to judge reality based on inaccurate memories and heuristic judgements, to help form a bigger database of patterns that will then be used to judge the next experiences and how to interpret the data from our senses. and if that wasn't already enough of a recipe for mistakes, most senses are getting recalibrated at all time based on expectation from previous memories of a given event and how long we stay under given conditions(like how we start seeing the "correct" colors again after a while wearing colored glasses, or how we'll try to adapt to a new headphone or a given crossfeed effect and put back the sound how we are used to get it(up to a point, and after long period of time with no other reference, the new conditions will be assumed to be the actual reference of normal, somehow). so senses create the reference that will then be used to set the reference used to interpret the data from our senses, and that strange feedback loop involving too many parameters is to me the mystery chicken or the egg question of our brain. what comes first, some assumptions about the meaning of the data, or only data is stored, and the interpretation come only after a lot of stuff got stored, to start trying to make sense of it all? what's also pretty crazy is how all those intertwined feedback loops trying to readjust themselves, can make a massive change between perceived data and impression in some aspects, but will be almost nonexistent for others of perception. it's like a game of doing everything to throw away the rule that was working 10 seconds ago for the other matter.

it's amazing that we're significantly wrong only many times a day and not always as almost all the data is somehow corrupted. that is to me the real magic of the brain. how it's able to make mostly sense of it all, despite the mess.

 

[Wyville]

I have a slightly different take on this:
IMO what make us all unique in some ways, creative, different from machines, etc, are mostly flawed memories and bad logical structure prioritizing speed over accuracy. I find that it explains really a lot, including why it's so hard to develop a consistent model for our thinking and our impressions. because in many ways we're not very consistent ourselves.
at the core of what makes us who we are, there are heuristic techniques and pattern recognition. heuristic doesn't even pretend to return a correct answer, only to return a fast one based on what we know no matter how little that is. yet that's how we deal with the very vast majority of situations in our lives. and pattern recognition... well more than listing the flaws, it's amazing that it even works as well it does under the circumstances. something happens in the objective world, we capture a little bit of the physical effects with some far from perfect sensors, interpret that(usually with the assumption that we got it all, and all correctly... lol). that interpretation will also be affected by ideas, beliefs, previous experiences, and the most fun of all, other senses, even when they have no relation with the event(like sight influencing what we hear). we'll store those interpretations of what happened in our memory for future pattern reference, except that memory is inherently flawed, and stays fluid over time, ensuring that our pattern recognition system can evolve with new data, but also allowing fine memories to be perverted in all sorts of ways. so when we recall something it's unlikely to be an exact copy of what we first stored.yet we will again assume that it is a correct recollection.
so we use senses to judge reality based on inaccurate memories and heuristic judgements, to help form a bigger database of patterns that will then be used to judge the next experiences and how to interpret the data from our senses. and if that wasn't already enough of a recipe for mistakes, most senses are getting recalibrated at all time based on expectation from previous memories of a given event and how long we stay under given conditions(like how we start seeing the "correct" colors again after a while wearing colored glasses, or how we'll try to adapt to a new headphone or a given crossfeed effect and put back the sound how we are used to get it(up to a point, and after long period of time with no other reference, the new conditions will be assumed to be the actual reference of normal, somehow). so senses create the reference that will then be used to set the reference used to interpret the data from our senses, and that strange feedback loop involving too many parameters is to me the mystery chicken or the egg question of our brain. what comes first, some assumptions about the meaning of the data, or only data is stored, and the interpretation come only after a lot of stuff got stored, to start trying to make sense of it all? what's also pretty crazy is how all those intertwined feedback loops trying to readjust themselves, can make a massive change between perceived data and impression in some aspects, but will be almost nonexistent for others of perception. it's like a game of doing everything to throw away the rule that was working 10 seconds ago for the other matter.

it's amazing that we're significantly wrong only many times a day and not always as almost all the data is somehow corrupted. that is to me the real magic of the brain. how it's able to make mostly sense of it all, despite the mess.

This touches on what I mentioned earlier. Our brain is not a computer and thus does not store "data". The use of such a term is simply an analogy that helps us to make more sense of what happens in the brain, but in reality there are no such things as bits of information logged in our memory. So it is not really interpretation of data that is influenced by our ideas, beliefs, experiences, etc, but rather that all those things are part of the same one thing. The thing we call "data" cannot be separated from everything else and so reductionism does not work here. That is why everything stays fluid over time and why you get the "chicken and egg" situation.

That is why I prefer to look at the brain and mind with a view on their plasticity, their malleability, and that by giving the right sort of nudges, I can slowly build up to bigger changes. Music is extremely useful there because I think it has the capacity of harmonising brain activity, which is important in my case because of my ADHD, but can help anyone (like listening to calm background music while working to help improve concentration and reduce distraction).

 

[castleofargh]

This touches on what I mentioned earlier. Our brain is not a computer and thus does not store "data". The use of such a term is simply an analogy that helps us to make more sense of what happens in the brain, but in reality there are no such things as bits of information logged in our memory. So it is not really interpretation of data that is influenced by our ideas, beliefs, experiences, etc, but rather that all those things are part of the same one thing. The thing we call "data" cannot be separated from everything else and so reductionism does not work here. That is why everything stays fluid over time and why you get the "chicken and egg" situation.

That is why I prefer to look at the brain and mind with a view on their plasticity, their malleability, and that by giving the right sort of nudges, I can slowly build up to bigger changes. Music is extremely useful there because I think it has the capacity of harmonising brain activity, which is important in my case because of my ADHD, but can help anyone (like listening to calm background music while working to help improve concentration and reduce distraction).

yup calling data what ends up memorized and recalled, is probably not the right term. I can't really contest that.
and I can believe what you say for ADHD or other conditions, psychological states, etc. it probably doesn't perform miracles, but because our various senses tend to affect each other in ways that don't always make much rational sense, looking at it from the other hand of the system, it suggests that we may be able to affect something with something else. something maybe similar to how people who lost a limb seem to be able to reduce the phantom pain thanks to sight and mirrors giving the visual impression of looking at the missing limb, and having the one being actually showed, touched or manipulated. this as much as I understand it, takes advantage of how we prioritize vision in our beliefs of what's going on, but I can imagine many such interactions used for the benefits of senses, mental states, etc. the main issue here is probably to become aware that such interactions work and that the effect can be good. because we have a hard time building a consistent model, I imagine that such discoveries takes a massive amount of trial and error, and maybe some luck.

 

[Phronesis]

I boil a lot of this down to the idea that we're fallible and limited beings trying to survive and reproduce in this world with the help of a variety of approximate and incomplete (and inconsistent) models which we create, modify, and discard in timeframes ranging from less than a second to decades. These models involve memory, sensation, perception, thoughts, emotions, moods, heuristics, biases, etc., are highly influenced by our social interactions, and have aspects at both conscious and subconscious levels. Because the subconscious aspect is large, our models are largely hidden from us, despite profoundly influencing what we think and do and experience at a conscious level.

Focusing on music, there's some debate among specialists regarding the extent to which human musicality and music perception has evolutionary adaptive value in itself, versus being a byproduct of functions which evolved for other purposes.

 

[castleofargh]

I boil a lot of this down to the idea that we're fallible and limited beings trying to survive and reproduce in this world with the help of a variety of approximate and incomplete (and inconsistent) models which we create, modify, and discard in timeframes ranging from less than a second to decades. These models involve memory, sensation, perception, thoughts, emotions, moods, heuristics, biases, etc., are highly influenced by our social interactions, and have aspects at both conscious and subconscious levels. Because the subconscious aspect is large, our models are largely hidden from us, despite profoundly experiencing what we think and do and experience at a conscious level.

Focusing on music, there's some debate among specialists regarding the extent to which human musicality and music perception has evolutionary adaptive value in itself, versus being a byproduct of functions which evolved for other purposes.

and our gigantic ego is getting in the way of truth. it's not the only cause of error for sure, but man is it a persistent person.^_^ we keep experiencing changes through life, and it's oh so obvious that our memories change with time and that new information can completely change our impressions or opinions of something. and yet, our first instinct is to think that what we remember is truth and that what we feel is correct. if that's not shooting ourselves in the foot with overconfidence, I don't know what it is.

 

[Phronesis]

and our gigantic ego is getting in the way of truth. it's not the only cause of error for sure, but man is it a persistent person.^_^ we keep experiencing changes through life, and it's oh so obvious that our memories change with time and that new information can completely change our impressions or opinions of something. and yet, our first instinct is to think that what we remember is truth and that what we feel is correct. if that's not shooting ourselves in the foot with overconfidence, I don't know what it is.

A key finding of social psychology is that we construct a concept of a coherent 'self', but the self is kind of an illusory fiction, and the version of self we manifest at a given time depends on the role we're playing (moderator, golden-eared audiophile, skeptic, father, son, professional, friend, competitor, warrior, kind person, etc.). We try very hard to maintain esteem of that self (self-esteem = ego), and our assessment of our self is highly influenced by our interactions with other people (Do they respect me? Do they like me? Do they fear me? Do they believe I do my share and add value to the group?).

A big perpetual concern is to not be thrown out of the groups we identify with, lest our survival and reproduction be jeopardized. When our self-esteem is weak, that may serve as a warning that we're doing things that put us at risk of being thrown out of our social groups. Recall that when people have been convicted of severe crimes, as their punishment they've sometimes been given the choice of execution or banishment (e.g., ancient Greece), and some people chose execution.

 

[castleofargh]

A key finding of social psychology is that we construct a concept of a coherent 'self', but the self is kind of an illusory fiction, and the version of self we manifest at a given time depends on the role we're playing (moderator, golden-eared audiophile, skeptic, father, son, professional, friend, competitor, warrior, kind person, etc.). We try very hard to maintain esteem of that self (self-esteem = ego), and our assessment of our self is highly influenced by our interactions with other people (Do they respect me? Do they like me? Do they fear me? Do they believe I do my share and add value to the group?).

A big perpetual concern is to not be thrown out of the groups we identify with, lest our survival and reproduction be jeopardized. When our self-esteem is weak, that may serve as a warning that we're doing things that put us at risk of being thrown out of our social groups. Recall that when people have been convicted of severe crimes, as their punishment they've sometimes been given the choice of execution or banishment (e.g., ancient Greece), and some people chose execution.

I don't like it and want a firmware update!

^_^

 

[FFBookman]

Wow great thread. Very interesting reading here.

I never proposed that our skin picks up more sound stimulus, or faster stimulus, or more fine stimulus than our ears. Our ears are clearly designed to collect, amplify, compress, locate, and reduce sound to electrical impulses that our brain can decipher.

It's not all or nothing though. I propose our dermal layer is a portion (10%?) of our hearing. If your ears went totally deaf that 10% would become 100% of your hearing. You can't deny that the nerve endings in every hair follicle report an electrical impulse to the same part of the brain that the ears report to. I think the brain knows when that 10% has been removed (headphones) or when the 90% is removed (deafness).

I have some specific replies to some of the points made above. I'll save those for quoted posts.

 

[Glmoneydawg]

Wow great thread. Very interesting reading here.

I never proposed that our skin picks up more sound stimulus, or faster stimulus, or more fine stimulus than our ears. Our ears are clearly designed to collect, amplify, compress, locate, and reduce sound to electrical impulses that our brain can decipher.

It's not all or nothing though. I propose our dermal layer is a portion (10%?) of our hearing. If your ears went totally deaf that 10% would become 100% of your hearing. You can't deny that the nerve endings in every hair follicle report an electrical impulse to the same part of the brain that the ears report to. I think the brain knows when that 10% has been removed (headphones) or when the 90% is removed (deafness).

I have some specific replies to some of the points made above. I'll save those for quoted posts.

It's not coincidence that the hairs stand up up on the back of your neck when the fight or flight response is initiated....well documented phenomena in the animal kingdom also...high alert ect.

 

[Phronesis]

It's not coincidence that the hairs stand up up on the back of your neck when the fight or flight response is initiated....well documented phenomena in the animal kingdom also...high alert ect.

My understanding is that hairs standing up is a vestigial trait, from ancestors whose hair stood up to make them look bigger when faced with a threat.

 

[castleofargh]

You can't deny that the nerve endings in every hair follicle report an electrical impulse to the same part of the brain that the ears report to

I'm not sure about that. while our overall impressions turn out to be some strange mix of anything and everything, when it comes to senses, the brain is pretty territorial. you stimulate some sense, and a given area of the brain lights up on some fancy machine looking at electrical activity. so based on this I'd be tempted to imagine that at least in the beginning, the brain knows that vision or wind or low freqs shaking my lungs aren't sound at all. but maybe it got used to observing correlations between senses, and so not having those other feelings triggered become cues that it's not "normal". and if I'm correct about the all correlation thingy, then maybe it also explain why we attribute some sound quality to price, or a specific brand, because having things happening together isn't always because one caused the other, but maybe our brain doesn't care about that and if it expects a group of events to happen together, we feel wrong when something is missing(even if it's not directly sound or even if it's just some expectation bias?). I'm just guessing here based on what could fit in my model of things happening to us, I have no clue if it's even remotely accurate. ^_^.

 

[Phronesis]

I4m not sure about that. while our overall impressions turn out to be some strange mix of anything and everything, when it comes to senses the brain is pretty territorial. you stimulate some sense, and a given area of the brain lights up on some fancy machine looking at electrical activity. so based on this I'd be tempted to imagine that at least in the beginning, the brain knows that vision of wind or low freqs shaking my lungs aren't sound at all. but maybe it got used to observing correlations between senses, and so not having those other feelings triggered become cues that it's not "normal". and if I'm correct about the all correlation thingy, then maybe it also explain why we attribute some sound quality to price, or a specific brand, because having things happening together isn't always because one caused the other, but maybe our brain doesn't care about that and if it expects a group of events to happen together, we feel wrong when something is missing(even if it's not directly sound or even if it's just some expectation bias?). I'm just guessing here based on what could fit in my model of things happening to us, I have no clue if it's even remotely accurate. ^_^.

The brain is definitely lazy and will tend to default to quick intuitive judgements and decisions ('System 1'), rather than doing tedious time- and energy-consuming analysis ('System 2'). From an evolutionary standpoint, this makes sense. We're not evolved to get things perfect, just good enough, and biased towards erring in the direction of avoiding big mistakes which could jeopardize our survival or reproduction.

Hence we rely on heuristics like expecting gear to sound better if it's more expensive, has better specs, looks better, is bigger, has changing lights, made by a reputable brand, recommended by others, has some magic in it, etc. But it seems that audiophiles are also driven to use audio gear to pursue to some sort of emotional nirvana via sound and music, not unlike drug addicts. Maybe the 'big mistake' audiophiles fear is missing out on a euphoric high which seems nearly within grasp. I suspect that spirituality and religion have a similar sort of drive underlying them (aside from their social aspects).

 

[gregorio]

I propose our dermal layer is a portion (10%?) of our hearing. If your ears went totally deaf that 10% would become 100% of your hearing. You can't deny that the nerve endings in every hair follicle report an electrical impulse to the same part of the brain that the ears report to.

Yes, it's relatively easy to measure brain activity. For example, stimulate a hair follicle, observe some corresponding part of the brain "light up" and correlate that to the reported sensation. We have to be careful though, this rather simplistic view of brain activity and sensation/persception is representative of how we thought the brain worked in the 1950's. Neuroscience has come a long way since then but unfortunately, appears to have fewer absolute answers. I'm certainly no expert on the recent research but it seems to me that much of what we've learned more recently about perception raises more questions than it does answers. It's been calculated that roughly 90% of the sensory input into the brain is discarded, or more accurately, de-prioritised. However it's not a simple equation, the brain doesn't just ignore 90% of the sensory input, it effectively "triages" it. So, some sensory input might "light up" receptors in the brain but be totally eliminated from the perception, IE. We are completely unaware of it. Furthermore, depending on a wide range of variables, such as our emotional state, what we're concentrating on, our circumstances/situation, etc., the way the brain triages this input information changes. A sensory input that may be completely eliminated/de-prioritised from the perception in one situation might be highly prioritised in another, with only a relatively small change in one of the aforementioned variables. In other words, the brain makes a rapid value determination of all the information it receives, discards the vast majority of it and stitches together a perception from what's left but that "value determination" is the interesting part, because it's based on memories/experience, desired outcome (what we're concentrating on) and other variables.

So, while your proposed "10% portion of our hearing" might be accurate under certain specific circumstances but in other circumstances (IE. the vast majority of the time), it might be 0%, say 80% or anywhere in between. This raises another point: In relation to hearing perception, the brain is often described as a "pattern matching machine", which is demonstrably true but only tells part of the story. This is because the brain isn't just matching patterns but actively searching for patterns and the result of this apparently trivial difference in wording actually has a profound effect on our perception. The brain will over-emphasise the relationship between sounds/sonic elements in order to create a pattern, even to the point of creating relationships where in fact there is little (or sometimes no) relationship to start with and occasionally it will even go as far as "making-up" sonic elements that never existed in the aural input, in order to complete a pattern. Furthermore, once identified (or manufactured), these patterns are triaged moment to moment, just like everything else. In other words, the pattern's importance is evaluated moment to moment and over time, if it is unchanging, it will gradually be de-prioritized (or even discarded/entirely eliminated) from the perception.

All this might appear extremely implausible but the very existence of music is entirely dependent on it! In reality music is just a perception, music is little more than semi-random noise from which the brain creates predictable "patterns" and the perception which we collectively call "Music". The fact that the human brain creates these patterns and that they are predictable, is pretty much the ENTIRE basis of music composition and even by 400 years ago, composers were employing shockingly sophisticated methods of using/manipulating this fact (because they started being developed roughly 600 years ago!). The vast majority of people massively underestimates the level of sophisticated understanding of how perception works (and can be manipulated) with regard to music and when that level of understanding was attained, which is not surprising, as the listening public were not really supposed to know what was going on "under the hood". Of course, composers 400 years ago hardly knew what the brain was, let alone the physiological, bio-chemical, electrical and other neuroscience processes that occur in the brain to produce "perception" but they were remarkably advanced in knowing what it's response would be and how to manipulate it.

G