Coding Knocks on Huxley’s Doors of Perception
Ok, this is a rather nerdy blog and I imagine I’ll
lose some readers when I dip into the topic of coding. It’s a word found in the
lingo-toolbox of several disciplines, ranging from the branch of literary
criticism called semiotics to the business of book publishing when codes are
assigned to designate different book categories or genres (these are called
BISAC codes). Perhaps a more familiar use of the word is in computer speak; software
engineers write code.
This brings me to three seemingly
unrelated uses of coding—or are they unrelated?
Well, I happened to see the film The
Circle yesterday, which is based on Dave Eggers’s 2013 novel and stars Tom
Hanks. The alarming take-it-to-extremes premise of the film is that algorithms
have the potential to penetrate our privacy and anticipate our next moves. Then
this morning, I read an article about Facebook in the New York Times Magazine,
the point being that algorithms target us and send us the information and news
that our patterns indicate we desire or are likely to respond to, even if we
don’t know it yet, no matter whether the news or information is true or
false-fake – no matter whether this push of input undermines democracy and our
ability to make informed decisions.
This all connects to a published paper I
noticed a few days ago, when my Google Alerts drew my attention to the study
described below – and since I am citing it I don’t think the authors of this
scholarly paper will mind that I give them a showcase. Of course, I write about
what they refer to in my book Aldous Huxley’s Hands: His Quest for Perception
and the Origin and Return of Psychedelic Science – minus the word coding.
I will let the following abstract speak for
itself and stand in as my monthly Huxley’s Hands blog. I have taken the liberty
to shorten it somewhat, as indicated by ellipses. The attribution and link to
the original is found at the end.
“Perception is
in the Details:
A Predictive Coding Account of the Psychedelic Phenomenon”
2. Predictive
Coding
“In his book
“The Doors of Perception” (1954), Aldous Huxley described some of his
psychedelic experiences, which led him to propose the idea that perception is a
door between things that are known and things that are unknown. This idea
turned out prescient of the contemporary predictive coding account of brain
processing. According to predictive coding, perception is a continuous process
of combining the brain’s previous knowledge with new incoming data….. This
enables the brain to predict its future state which is an evolutionary
necessity. “
This study is
co-authored by Sarit Hashkes, Iris van Rooij and Johan Kwisthout Radboud
University, Donders Institute for Brain, Cognition and Behavior, Nijmegen, The
Netherlands
Here is the link
to the scholarly paper:
https://noisebridge.net/images/e/ef/Perception_is_in_the_Details12.pdf
