Hey readers, Here at Future Perfect, we've been taking in all the news and buzz around AI. We're curious about the questions you might have about ChatGPT, ethics, labor, and more. What's been on your mind as AI headlines break? Don't be afraid to shoot us an email at futureperfect@vox.com to tell us your thoughts, what you've been enjoying, and what you'd like to see more of.
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Q&A: There is now a census for consciousness |
Courtesy of The Perception Census |
For something as intimate to our lives as perception — how we experience ourselves and the world — we know remarkably little about all the ways it can differ. Some people, for instance, have aphantasia, which means they experience no mental imagery, while others have no inner monologue, just silence. Concepts like neurodiversity have begun to call attention to larger varieties of these differences, such as those that show up in our behavior or how we report on our experiences. These differences can also be subtle and difficult to recognize. But as Anil Seth, a professor of neuroscience at the University of Sussex and author of Being You: A New Science of Consciousness, told me, "just as biodiversity is important for the health of an ecosystem," perceptual diversity "is something that enriches society." In 2022, Seth and colleagues, in collaboration with the creative studio Collective Act, launched The Perception Census, an ongoing citizen science project that has already reached more than 20,000 people. By giving participants a series of online tasks and interactive illusions that each probe a different aspect of perception, the survey aims "to paint a multidimensional portrait of this hidden territory of inner diversity," he said. I spoke to Seth about what the perception census is and why perceptual diversity matters. —Oshan Jarow This interview has been edited for length and clarity. What got you interested in a project like the perception census? My research and [that of] many others has led to this view that what we perceive is not a direct readout of what's there. It's an active construction in which the brain plays an essential role. Because of the way perception works, it seems to us that we see the world and hear the world as it is, it doesn't seem like it's a brain-based construction. So unless you interrogate that, it's very hard to understand that somebody might actually be having a different experience, even if they're in the same shared objective reality. And of course, we all have slightly different brains. So we're all going to inhabit different inner universes, and not a lot is known about that. With this idea of perceptual diversity, and through the perception census, what we're trying to do is bring back into the light this idea that, in fact, we all differ, and the differences don't have to be very large to exist. |
Beyond intrinsic interest in learning more about consciousness, what could we do with a richer understanding of perceptual diversity?
One goal of the census is awareness-raising because people are remarkably surprised when they realize that people can have different inner experiences. But they're also surprised just by all the under-the-hood complexity involved in this everyday miracle of just experiencing the world.
I also think it can cultivate a bit of useful humility about our own perceptions and beliefs. If we really had this understanding that the way I see things is not the way they are, then it's easier to understand that somebody else might see something differently. In a world of increasing polarization and fragmentation, understanding that we differ, and how we differ, can build platforms for empathy and communication.
When it comes to mental health, neurodiversity is a well-established community with lots of important lobbying efforts that have done great work. But it tends to be associated with specific conditions and reinforces this normative, neurotypical view for people who aren't neurodivergent in that way. What I'm hoping is that the census can reinforce the recognition of diversity in the normative, neurotypical range.
How do you imagine this kind of research could evolve in the future?
We can start to drill down. For instance, if we find some interesting aspects of perceptual diversity that stand out, or some factor that seems to predict diversity in different dimensions, then we might bring people into the lab. We can do more fine-grained controlled experiments, using things like brain imaging. We might begin to look at the biological mechanisms that are responsible for this diversity. We can't do that in a large-scale survey.
Then we could also zoom out. There are limitations on what we've been doing. We're only looking at people who speak English. We're not really sampling across cultures as much as we would ideally like. Also just for very boring ethics reasons, we're only looking at people 18 and over, so another whole range is what's going on with the development of perceptual diversity, that can be new terrain, too.
And we've got 100 tasks, but that's a small subset of the possible things we might want to ask. One of the things we were worried about was that we're asking quite a lot of people to spend their precious attentional moments on something, so we have to make it rewarding for them. And it turns out, we have 20,000 people already, and one comment we received was that "this is what the internet is made for."
If you'd like to help chart the terrain of perceptual diversity, you can take the perception census here. |
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Are we headed toward a "polycrisis"? The buzzword of the moment, explained. |
Dursun Aydemir/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images |
The proponents behind everyone's favorite new word, "polycrisis," are trying to get at something more than just history happening. They are putting a name to the belief that a more interconnected, complex world is vulnerable to an interconnected, complex global catastrophe. Those warnings might be well-intentioned, but they also assume the existence of powerful negative feedback effects that may not actually exist. That might do more harm than good, argues international politics professor Daniel Drezner. More on this topic from Vox: |
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FairTax, the GOP plan for a 30 percent national sales tax, explained |
Don Emmert/AFP via Getty Images |
The FairTax, at its heart, is simple enough: It would take almost every federal tax and replace them with a fat 30 percent sales tax on everything. Virtually every American would get a monthly check from the government to cover the cost of paying the tax on essentials. It's a radical idea, but one that since its first introduction to Congress in 1999 has been a favorite of conservative Republicans. In his latest piece, Future Perfect's Dylan Matthews answers (almost) every question there is around the FairTax, ranging from "Sales taxes are regressive, right? Won't this hurt low-income people?" to "Isn't that a basic income?"
More on this topic from Vox:
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Best headline of 2023 so far? "Scientists invented a melting liquid robot that can escape from a cage." You have to watch the video to believe it. While the story calls The Terminator movies to mind, in which shape-shifting abilities are employed to help the Terminator more efficiently track down and kill people, the feat from Hong Kong, Chinese, and American scientists could be used to help humanity. In one video, the researchers placed the metal robot in solid form into a fake human stomach, melted it, and directed the robot to cover and "hug" a foreign object lodged in the stomach. It then cooled back down to solid form and could be safely removed. —Kenny Torrella In 2022, Los Angeles kicked off the largest basic income pilot program in the US, distributing $1,000 a month to 3,200 people. With roughly 80 similar pilots ongoing across the US, reports can blur together. For the Nation, Sasha Abramsky followed four recipients throughout the program, delivering a vivid, well-rounded image of life in the trenches of poverty, the potential of cash transfers, and their limitations. "We give tax breaks for the wealthy," one recipient told her, "but somehow it's wrong to give low-income people $1,000 so they can feed their children." —Oshan Jarow With commercial egg prices skyrocketing, there's been a surge of people buying egg-laying backyard hens from breeders. If you're considering this for yourself, I hope you don't mind me weighing in: It's probably a bad idea. "These folks are about to discover that chickens are animals — not egg-laying machines," as journalist Tove Danovich put it in a recent Washington Post op-ed. The reasons not to buy chicks from a hatchery are very similar to the reasons not to buy from puppy mills: Both industries are cruel and treat animals as disposable commodities. —Marina Bolotnikova In this article, Insider's Voices of Color fellow Isaiah Reynolds dives into the history behind Sesame Street. Research from 2015 shows that the long-running television series has been "the largest and least-costly [early childhood] intervention that's ever been implemented," Phillip Levine, an economics professor at Wellesley College, told the Atlantic. Additionally, as Reynolds writes, when Sesame Street was being developed, one of the key goals of the show was to "combat microaggressions" and provide a positive representation of Black communities. As schools across the United States face teacher shortages and students experience Covid-related learning curves, the history and success of Sesame Street is a positive reminder that there are realistic ways to improve our education system. —Rachel DuRose There is a lot of controversy over what US schools should be teaching, but just as important is the question of how they should be teaching. In a deeply researched story for Aeon, British educational expert Carl Hendrick attacks the increasingly influential idea that students have individual learning styles — visual, auditory, kinesthetic — that teachers should shape their lesson plans around. Hendricks makes an effective case that learning style is more about learning preference, and that there's no proof that catering to those preferences helps students learn better. Sometimes, kinesthetic or not, you just have to do the reading. —Bryan Walsh |
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