DARPA Working on Spidey Sense for Soldiers 191
anti-human 1 writes to tell us Wired is reporting that DARPA is developing a new optics system to help soldiers identify threats earlier. "The most far-reaching component of the binocs has nothing to do with the optics: it's Darpa's aspirations to integrate EEG electrodes that monitor the wearer's neural signals, cueing soldiers to recognize targets faster than the unaided brain could on its own. The idea is that EEG can spot 'neural signatures' for target detection before the conscious mind becomes aware of a potential threat or target. [...] In other words, like Spiderman's 'spider sense', a soldier could be alerted to danger that his or her brain had sensed, but not yet had time to process."
Re:Ever hear of the "Sixth Sense" (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Ever hear of the "Sixth Sense" (Score:5, Insightful)
Science doesn't have to explain it. That part comes after proving that it actually exists.
Re:Ever hear of the "Sixth Sense" (Score:3, Insightful)
I kinda have a 'sixth sense' that someone is staring at this post right now.
And yet soldiers don't want this crap (Score:5, Insightful)
Within the article:
"It's unclear what the final system will look like." but "Darpa says it expects to have prototypes in the hands of soldiers in three years."
Sure. It's like the Popular Science covers of the 1960s "Flying cars tomorrow! Pick your model today!"
If we really want to helps soldiers brains, help them come back from a bogus war with fewer instances of PTSD and other psychological damage.
Re:Ever hear of the "Sixth Sense" (Score:3, Insightful)
True about entire societies. The more evolved, the truer — one may even perish completely, when confronted by another, which manages to concentrate on the mission of killing the enemy, instead of "seeing his side".
Almost like forcing "DSI"... (Score:5, Insightful)
A tactile DSI, would always feel like they just put that watch on, it can be quite irritating after a while. Tactile DSIs often do things like cut tags off of thier clothing and take other such steps to minimize the sensory overload they are exposed to.
I'm an auditory DSI, I have a hard time blocking out background noise and often times, it competes with what I should be paying attention to. My work-around is to wear wireless full-coverage headphones that pipe in soft classical music. Thus, I reduce the distractions to a single source that is easy to manage.
These days however, I have an office so I can also just close my door.
Based upon my experience, I say this won't work like they hope it will.
Book: Blink (Score:2, Insightful)
This technology would merely make your subcontious more contious. But it doesn't tell you anything that you don't already know. Green recruits dropped into combat with this technology wouldn't get any use out of it, since they don't have the experience to understand what to look for. And all it would do to senior soldiers is confirm their already itching suspicions.
http://www.amazon.com/Blink-Power-Thinking-Withou
It's an interesting idea, especially for scientific purposes of visualizing what goes through a soldier's mind during combat. You get the possibility of mapping the subcontious in a visual way. But I have a strong feeling this tech will never make it on a practical side.
Re:Ever hear of the "Sixth Sense" (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Ever hear of the "Sixth Sense" (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Ever hear of the "Sixth Sense" (Score:4, Insightful)
Then get scientific evidence for it: Make absolutely sure that the observer cannot affect the environment of the subject in any way, and record the results.
All sorts of EMP studies have been tried, and there is still no evidence for it. Given how easy it would be to get evidence if it did work, I think the only conclusion has to be that it doesn't.
My own opinion of this sort of anecdotal evidence is that 1) it is very startling when someone who you are sure cannot see you looking at them turns and looks at you (hence we tend to remember it as important event), 2) it's not very remarkable when people don't turn when you are looking at them (so we tend to forget it), and 3) our brains very very good at making connections between tiny bits of sensory data and the possibility that someone is looking at us (so in our everyday lives we are likely to see a bias towards people noticing us watching them).
They never admit defeat (Score:4, Insightful)
When people want to believe in something extraordinary there's no way an experiment, no matter how well performed, will convince them of the contrary. They will always assume the experiment itself was faulty in some way.
It seems that for some people the need to believe in something is so strong it overrides reason.
Re:Ever hear of the "Sixth Sense" (Score:2, Insightful)
This is what separates normal people from sociopaths and it isn't a good thing to head down that road. You should think about what you're doing, who you're doing it to, and be able to do it anyways and deal with the thoughts of it later. This is what it is to fight in the most limited way and not come to enjoying the killing, but only do what is necessary when necessary. Dehumanizing objectification has allowed people throughout history to do things to people that they ordinarily would never have done.
Re:They never admit defeat (Score:1, Insightful)
Like you believe that experiments are infallible.
Re:They never admit defeat (Score:1, Insightful)
It seems that for some people the need to believe in something is so strong it overrides reason.
Whoops, turned that around on ya, huh.
Re:They never admit defeat (Score:3, Insightful)