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294 Are the Androids Dreaming Yet?

different feel to them. My question is this. Is there more to face-to-face communication between human beings than the simple exchange of symbolic information?

Let us propose an experiment. I erect a 3D screen with a hi-fi surround sound system in a university lecture hall and deliver a lecture to a camera in the adjacent hall. Half the students see the lecture directly, and half remotely. With modern screens, it might be possible to set up the experiment so well that is difficult to tell which hall I am actually in. Is the experience of the remote students the same as the ones sitting in direct proximity with me? Do mirror neurons fire more strongly and pick up more information when you see me in the flesh, or is the feeling that a lecture is better when you are ‘physically there’ an illusion? You are perhaps less likely to fall asleep in my lecture if you are physically there because you are afraid I might walk over and hit you! What possible non-classical effects could be in play when you see an event or communicate in person that might make the communication different? Here are two potential differences:

Information in a face-to-face encounter is continuous, not digitized. Continuous information is infinite in nature and does not have the finite limitation of digitized data. Of course, if we have digitized the sound at 24 bits and replayed it with extreme fidelity, there should not be any loss in information, but the interactivity of the soundscape is hard to simulate.

Light entering your eye contains information that could be quantum entangled with the object you are viewing. You become part of the system rather than merely an independent observer. It is difficult to see why this would produce a different quality of communication but it is testable. Set up the lecture experiment and measure the quality of understanding communicated between the parties.

If we believe our brains are super-Turing, then considering there might be some similar effects involved in human communication is not unreasonable, perhaps quantum effects play a role in communication. If we conclude our brains think classically, then we probably communicate classically.

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