Re: forward masking (was: Re: Hugos)

From: Eliezer S. Yudkowsky (sentience@pobox.com)
Date: Mon Dec 18 2000 - 01:13:30 MST


Jason Joel Thompson wrote:
>
> I wonder if 'make-the-fingers-type-letters-brain' isn't instinctively doing
> a look-up on the word in question to save time. That is to say: I wonder if
> it doesn't also have some direct access to 'proper-vocabulary-brain,' and it
> bypasses 'conscious-sentence-forming-brain,' when it thinks it knows what
> the word is.

Typing certainly doesn't require consciousness. I recall one occasion
when I turned around to talk to someone - my brother, in fact - and found,
when I turned back, that some keywords had been typed on the screen. At
the very least, the word-to-finger connection is direct and does not
require conscious attention. That being the case, it seems quite possible
that a slip of the fingers could occur independently of a slip of the
mind's tongue.

-- -- -- -- --
Eliezer S. Yudkowsky http://singinst.org/
Research Fellow, Singularity Institute for Artificial Intelligence



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