I was watching this show yesterday called “What the Bleep: Down the Rabbit hole,” which I would recommend to anyone. It is an extended version of “What the Bleep Do We Know,” which is also quite good. It interviews many people in the fields of quantum and theoretical physics and discusses several questions of the universe.
There was one segment that started getting into the concept of time and its chronology, which I thought would be worth mentioning. A researcher of physiology from San Francisco named Benjamin Libet (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benjamin_Libet) did some experimenting on our neural activities and how events are related to our consciousness. Here’s a little back info: when an event occurs, such as touching the tip of someone’s finger or someone stubbing their toe, it triggers an electric response inside of our neural systems. This is a small electrical pulse that occurs between nerves at a specific location in ones brain. The theory is, or was, that the particular event would occur, then the electrical pulse in our brains, then came our conscious awareness of it. These things were assumed to happen in this order.
Libet did some tests to confirm that this is the actual order of things and he found some interesting stuff. Libet would take a subject and measure where an electrical pulse would occur in their brain when the tip of their finger is touched. He also record wavelengths that would tell of the subject’s awareness of this event. Libet expected to see a slight delay between touching the finger and the electrical pulse in the brain, then awareness would follow. He also expected that if he were to just stimulate an electrical pulse in the brain, the awareness would come much quicker than the actual event of touching the subject’s finger. Well the opposite effect turned out to be true. When stimulating an electrical pulse, there was a delay in awareness; while the act of actually touching the finger created an almost instant awareness.
Another experiment involved sitting a subject down in front of a screen and randomly flashing images in front of them. Some of the images were intense, and brought feelings of stress in the subject, while other images were calming and serene, meant to cause the subject to relax. The subject would watch these randomly generated images while their heart rate and nervous system was being observed. These tests ended up showing the a subjects heart rate and nervous activity would go up prior to an intense image being displayed, and the heart rate and nervous activity would go down prior to calming image being displayed. It’s almost like the subject had a “sixth sense” or ESP (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extra-sensory_perception) about the image that would be coming next.
So what do these experiments show? The concept is known as Readiness Potential (RP) (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Readiness_potential). RP is a concept that talks about our nervous system and our consciousness become aware of an event before it actually occurs. It’s like a very small ability to see split seconds into the future. Think of when someone tickles you, sometimes you will start laughing before you are even touched. This is similar to RP.
These links can all lead to several useful pieces of information that might be able to help us describe some of the time anomalies that we see on Lost. Perhaps the Island can help people heighten this awareness and increase one’s RP. The ambiguous concept of consciousness (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Consciousness) is also quite intriguing, and might help us understand Desmond/Faraday/Minkowski.
Theory by Lost Dbutz
There was one segment that started getting into the concept of time and its chronology, which I thought would be worth mentioning. A researcher of physiology from San Francisco named Benjamin Libet (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benjamin_Libet) did some experimenting on our neural activities and how events are related to our consciousness. Here’s a little back info: when an event occurs, such as touching the tip of someone’s finger or someone stubbing their toe, it triggers an electric response inside of our neural systems. This is a small electrical pulse that occurs between nerves at a specific location in ones brain. The theory is, or was, that the particular event would occur, then the electrical pulse in our brains, then came our conscious awareness of it. These things were assumed to happen in this order.
Libet did some tests to confirm that this is the actual order of things and he found some interesting stuff. Libet would take a subject and measure where an electrical pulse would occur in their brain when the tip of their finger is touched. He also record wavelengths that would tell of the subject’s awareness of this event. Libet expected to see a slight delay between touching the finger and the electrical pulse in the brain, then awareness would follow. He also expected that if he were to just stimulate an electrical pulse in the brain, the awareness would come much quicker than the actual event of touching the subject’s finger. Well the opposite effect turned out to be true. When stimulating an electrical pulse, there was a delay in awareness; while the act of actually touching the finger created an almost instant awareness.
Another experiment involved sitting a subject down in front of a screen and randomly flashing images in front of them. Some of the images were intense, and brought feelings of stress in the subject, while other images were calming and serene, meant to cause the subject to relax. The subject would watch these randomly generated images while their heart rate and nervous system was being observed. These tests ended up showing the a subjects heart rate and nervous activity would go up prior to an intense image being displayed, and the heart rate and nervous activity would go down prior to calming image being displayed. It’s almost like the subject had a “sixth sense” or ESP (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extra-sensory_perception) about the image that would be coming next.
So what do these experiments show? The concept is known as Readiness Potential (RP) (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Readiness_potential). RP is a concept that talks about our nervous system and our consciousness become aware of an event before it actually occurs. It’s like a very small ability to see split seconds into the future. Think of when someone tickles you, sometimes you will start laughing before you are even touched. This is similar to RP.
These links can all lead to several useful pieces of information that might be able to help us describe some of the time anomalies that we see on Lost. Perhaps the Island can help people heighten this awareness and increase one’s RP. The ambiguous concept of consciousness (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Consciousness) is also quite intriguing, and might help us understand Desmond/Faraday/Minkowski.
Theory by Lost Dbutz
