Mind and body

So, what is the relation between the mind and the body? Some thoughts about this:

1. There is an experiment where a volunteer is sitting at a table with one arm below the table. On the table is fake arm from a mannequin. If someone scratch on the fake arm at the same time and place as the arm below the table, the mind of the volunteer will swap the fake arm for the real one, and believe that the fake arm is the real one. This experiment can even be done with short wooden stock. If you then suddenly stick a knife into the fake arm, the volunteer will show the same stress symptoms as if under real threat.
2. There has been an experiment where they try to trick the brain into replacing the whole body (Strange Experiments Create Body-Swapping Experiences). Possible applications could be to fool the brain in a virtual world.
3. In the automotive industri, a lot of effort is spent into getting the right feeling when you drive a car. I now believe this is all about setting up an einvironment where the brain of the driver experiences the car as an extension of the body.
4. That would finally explain why it feels good to have many horse powers. The mind translate this into a feeling of a well fit strong body. That also explains why riding a motorcycle is such an extremly strong feeling. Not only does it give a very strong acceleration, it also provides a tight and effective control.

Economic bubbles

Looking at the bubble that just burst, I have some thoughts about this and what happened.

1. Now and then, there is an inbalance in supply and demand. Sometimes, this inbalance becomes very big. For example, suppose that mortgage interest rate is cut by half.
2. That means that you can, in theory, take a loan twice as big.
3. The first and immediate result is that people get more money to spend.
4. The second result is that people, in theory, can afford real estates for twice the price.
5. If the interest rate stays low for a while, the estate prices will increase a lot every year, for several years.
6. After a couple of years, the estate price should stop at approximately twice the price before the change of the interest rate.
7. But, because of the years of constant growth, some people now believe that the price can continue to grow.
8. The increase of price is now more like a pyramid game. It will continue until there is some disturbance.

What can make this chain of events even worse is if there are investments with leverage. That is, investors take loan to invest even more.

Change of interest rates is a simple example. Another common scenario is a technological change that will change the conditions for a market.

Pirate Bay, media coverage, Rainbows End and Belief circles

The current process against The Pirate Bay has some hidden implications. The superficial purpose is to find out if a couple of people is braking the law when they provide links to copyrighted material they don't own themselves.

The more interesting thing is that the entertainment industry wants to have control over the music, movies, etc. If The Pirate Bay is found to be illegal, maybe the problem can be fixed.

What many realize is that the technology has already passed a point where it is too late to turn back. I don't protect the right to share copyrighted material for free, but the outcome of the court will have no effect. The entertainment industry will have to find other ways to make money from it (and they will). This is understood by many people, but not all.

But the really interesting thing is not about file sharing, and I think most people are missing this. First some background: Reading the book Rainbows End, by Vernor Vinge, was very interesting. It is a story about the near future, with some exciting and frightening visions. At the time when I read the book, I was mostly interesting in the technical visions. But now I realize one of the more interesting visions are about Belief Circles. In the story, there are a huge number of spectators to an event (which I won't go into here). What was interesting about these spectators was the way they participated in the event. This was done mostly through electronic media (while some actually were in place). What I now realize is that this is just what is happening with the trial of The Pirate Bay.

For example, the coverage at Twitter consists of approximately 10 messages per second, and one of the persons, Peter Sunde, standing accused at the trial, is also participating with live comments (according to the Swedish site svt.se). The only thing we miss, that was possible in the book, is the possibility to participate and affect in the event with avatars.