A study from researchers at the University of New South Wales (UNSW) in Sydney, Australia suggests that a visual imagination may actually be a requirement for experiencing fear. It suggests some people are less likely to be frightened simply because they lack the imagination it requires. This also means visual stimuli have a special connection to fear and perhaps other emotional experiences.

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How to trick your brain into saving money

It’s hard to scare people without a visual imagination

Next time you listen to scary campfire stories, sit with a friend who has aphantasia.

A strong imagination is generally viewed as being a good thing, even if at times an over-active one can result in self-induced terror as you repeat to yourself, "Just because I can vividly picture something terrible happening doesn't mean it will."

A study from researchers at the University of New South Wales (UNSW) in Sydney, Australia suggests that a visual imagination may actually be a requirement for experiencing fear. It suggests some people are less likely to be frightened simply because they lack the imagination it requires. This also means visual stimuli have a special connection to fear and perhaps other emotional experiences.

The study is published in <a href="https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/rspb.2021.0267">Proceedings of the Royal Society B </a>.

Credit: <a href="https://stock.adobe.com/contributor/208038304/martin-villadsen?load_type=author&prev_url=detail">Martin Villadsen </a>/Adobe Stock/Big Think

It's known that some people have trouble picturing things in their minds. This is called "mind-blindness," or more clinically, "aphantasia." The UNSW Sydney researchers conducted experiments to see if people with aphantasia were harder to scare.

It's believed that aphantasia affects between two and five percent of people, and science is just beginning to understand it. <a href="https://newsroom.unsw.edu.au/news/science-tech/i-aint-afraid-no-ghosts-people-mind-blindness-not-so-easily-spooked">Says </a>the study's senior author <a href="https://www.psy.unsw.edu.au/contacts-people/academic-staff/professor-joel-pearson">Joel Peterson </a>of UNSW Science's <a href="https://www.futuremindslab.com/">Future Minds Lab </a>, "Aphantasia is neural diversity. It's an amazing example of how different our brain and minds can be."

Previous research on aphantasia at UNSW found that it's associated with a general widespread pattern of altered cognitive process, including memory, imagination, and dreams.

Pearson says, "Aphantasia comes in different shapes and sizes. Some people have no visual imagery, while other people have no imagery in one or all of their other senses. Some people dream while others don't."

The new research connects aphantasia for the first time to skin conductivity, a worthy finding all by itself. "This evidence further supports aphantasia as a unique, verifiable phenomenon," says co-author <a href="https://www.science.unsw.edu.au/our-people/rebecca-keogh">Rebecca Keogh </a>. "This work may provide a potential new objective tool which could be used to help to confirm and diagnose aphantasia in the future."

The current study was prompted by comments made on an aphantasia message boards expressing a disinterest in fiction for people with the condition.

Imagining disturbing imagery when you read scary stories

Credit: <a href="https://unsplash.com/@purejulia">pure julia </a>/Unsplash/Big Think

The experiments involved 22 people with aphantasia and 24 people with normal visual imaginations. Individuals were seated alone in a darkened room with electrodes attached to their skin to measure electrical conductivity. Conductivity increases when a person experiences strong emotions. Subjects were shown a succession of 3- to 7-word phrases immediately following one another, with each displayed for two seconds as they developed a frightening narrative.

The stories started innocently enough: "You are at the beach, in the water" or "You're on a plane, by the window." Little by little, unsettling elements were introduced — a mention of a dark flash among distant waves, or people standing on the beach pointing, or the plane shaking as the cabin lights dim.

Pearson reports, "Skin conductivity levels quickly started to grow for people who were able to visualize the stories. The more the stories went on, the more their skin reacted."

Not so for the aphantasic participants, of whom he says: "the skin conductivity levels pretty much flatlined."

Credit: <a href="https://stock.adobe.com/contributor/207681966/mark-kostich?load_type=author&prev_url=detail">Mark Kostich </a>/Adobe Stock

The researchers confirmed that it was the aphantasia which accounted for the different reactions between the two groups by running the experiment again, but this time with pictures instead of words. Visual imagination wasn't necessary — all the disturbing imagery, which included a dead human body and a snake bearing its fangs in threat, were supplied.

This time, both groups of people became similarly unnerved. "The emotional fear response was present when participants actually saw the scary material play out in front of them," says Pearson.

"The findings suggest," Pearson says, "that imagery is an emotional thought amplifier. We can think all kind of things, but without imagery, the thoughts aren't going to have that emotional 'boom.'"

It also suggests a couple of things about telling scary stories. First, the importance of visual imagination suggests that providing lots of visual details will give a scary story more oomph. Second, people with aphantasia are probably lousy campfire audiences.

Next, the researchers plan to investigate the ways in which disorders such as PTSD might be different for people with aphantasia.

<ul><li><a href="https://bigthink.com/mind-brain/aphantasia">Aphantasia: the condition that darkens the mind's eye - Big Think › </a> </li> </ul>

<ul><li><a href="https://neurocritic.blogspot.com/2020/06/traces-of-fear-in-aphantasia.html">Traces of Fear in Aphantasia - The Neurocritic › </a> </li><li><a href="https://www.verywellmind.com/aphantasia-overview-4178710">Aphantasia: When You Are Blind in Your Mind › </a> </li><li><a href="https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/abs/10.1098/rspb.2021.0267">The critical role of mental imagery in human emotion: insights from ... › </a> </li> </ul>

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The "singleton hypothesis" predicts the future of humanity

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Philosopher Nick Bostrom's "singleton hypothesis" predicts the future of human societies.

<ul><li>Nick Bostrom's "singleton hypothesis" says that intelligent life on Earth will eventually form a "singleton". </li><li>The "singleton" could be a single government or an artificial intelligence that runs everything. </li><li>Whether the singleton will be positive or negative depends on numerous factors and is not certain. </li> </ul>

Does history have a goal? Is it possible that all the human societies that existed are ultimately a prelude to establishing a system where one entity will govern everything the world over? The Oxford University philosopher <a href="https://www.nickbostrom.com/">Nick Bostrom </a>proposes the "singleton hypothesis," maintaining that intelligent life on Earth will at some point organize itself into a so-called "singleton" – one organization that will take the form of either a world government, a super-intelligent machine (an AI) or, regrettably, a dictatorship that would control all affairs.

Other forms of a singleton may exist, and, ultimately, Bostrom believes one of them will come into existence. The philosopher argues that historically there's been a trend for our societies to converge in "higher levels of social organization". We went from bands of hunter gatherers to chiefdoms, city-states, nation states and now multi-national corporations, the United Nations and so forth, all the way to globalization – one of President Donald Trump's <a href="https://time.com/5406130/we-reject-globalism-president-trump-took-america-first-to-the-united-nations/">favorite targets for attack </a>. One view of that trend sees increased power going to multi-national businesses and world government bodies, making globalization somewhat of a punching bag concept, often seen not as a needed re-organization of societies around the world, leading to increased cooperation and a peaceful international order, but rather for its potential to bring about the loss of jobs and undermine the sovereignties of individual countries, making citizens beholden to faceless totalitarian bureaucrats from foreign lands.

But a singleton doesn't have to result in a bad outcome, argues Bostrom. In fact, he thinks it could also be a good thing or at least something that's neither obviously positive or negative – just neutral. One way to get to a singleton, according to the philosopher, is through technology. Improved surveillance and communication, mind-control tech, molecular nanotechnology and artificial intelligence could all bring about a singleton.

While some aspects of such technologies could certainly be unwanted and infringe upon individual freedoms, Bostrom thinks that there are situations in which there could be broad support for either a technological solution or a single government agency to take control of the society. As the world grows more complex, it's harder to achieve efficient coordination between countries and individuals within them. Tech solutions in conjunction with converging moral values and a democratic worldwide government could facilitate that.

Other scenarios, like catastrophic events, could also hasten the creation of singletons. The League of Nations, for example, came out of World War I, while the creation of the United Nations was a byproduct of World War 2.

Some may view the current political trends of rising nationalism, tariff wars and anti-immigration platforms to mean that globalization and an overall unification of people the world over is not coming any time soon. In fact, it feels like we are going backwards on such a path.

In an email exchange with Big Think , Bostrom cautioned us to not only look at what is happening over the course of a decade or maybe even a few decades. There are much larger, historic trends at work, which may see the current times as a blip rather than a change in the overall direction.

"I don't think there's much evidence in the year-to-year (or even decade-to-decade) political jitters for the question of the long-term fate of Earth-originating civilization," writes Bostrom, while adding "Still, it seems a bit sad whenever the world is moving in the direction of fragmentation and unilateralism."

He would rather see relationships between nations like the United States and China to be cordial rather than the "tussles and tensions" that we get now, with the added risk of a further breakdown in communication leading to even worse outcomes.

"I fear that people have forgotten how bad the Cold War was or have learned the wrong lesson - "well we survived it so it wasn't so bad," warns the philosopher. "But I think it's more like somebody played a round of Russian Roulette and survived and then they say "hey that wasn't so bad, let's play another round!" With the opening of the nuclear archives, we can see how close the world came to the brink on several different occasions. Allowing ourselves to slide into another situation even remotely like that of the Cold War would be a huge mistake."

Political tides certainly can come and go. It might be long until we can definitively tell which era we are living in now. Either advanced technology and a spreading democratic order will create a global techno-utopia of the future or we will be enslaved by corporate hegemony and international oligarchs. There are also options in between. It's important to remember that once created, a singleton could become the way of life for the foreseeable future as it will take measures to stay in existence and to keep away threats.

Before you get set for your life to be dominated by a single agency, Bostrom's <a href="https://www.nickbostrom.com/fut/singleton.html">classic paper </a>on the subject lays out some specific pros and cons of a singleton.

Four Advantages:

- avoiding dangerous arms races – these are costly and potentially disastrous. Without many competing world powers, arms races would be unnecessary.

- avoiding a space colonization race , again leading to potential war and extreme expenses.

- avoiding inequality - a singleton could distribute wealth.

- avoiding evolutionary outcomes we don't want - a singleton (especially an AI) could better keep track of dystopian scenarios, like epidemics, and work towards the survival of the population as a whole.

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Four Disadvantages:

- having one entity control everything could lead to less control over decision-making and things could go bad for us humans. "All the eggs are in one basket" under this scenario, points out Bostrom.

- world without competition between states could be more vulnerable to systemic breakdowns than a world that is less arranged, in which "there are some processes that limit the destructiveness of certain kinds of failures," writes the philosopher.

- some singletons could lead toterrible bureaucracy and inefficiency – it's not certain whether that would outweigh the gains from such a coordinated society. That would depend on the "severity" of the problems.

- some singletons could be created by force - think Ghenghis Khan, Napoleon, Nazis and whatever new dictator is waiting in the wings.

Check out Nick Bostrom's paper<a href="https://www.nickbostrom.com/fut/singleton.html">"What is a Singleton?" here. </a>

Just four colors are enough for any map. Why?

The four-color theorem was one of the past century's most popular and enduring mathematical mysteries.

An illustration of the four-color theorem.

<ul><li><a href="https://www.jstor.org/journal/amerjmath"> </a> Rule of thumb: four colors are all you need to distinguish the countries on any map. </li><li>But why? It's a simple question with a difficult answer, eluding scientists for a century. </li><li>In the end, the four-color problem was the first theorem that was cracked by a computer. </li> </ul>

<img>Graffiti in Örs Vezér Square in Budapest by Hungary's <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hungarian_Two_Tailed_Dog_Party">Two-Tailed Dog Party </a>, illustrating the four-color theorem. <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hungarian_Two_Tailed_Dog_Party#/media/File:Hungarian_Two-tailed_Dog_Party_-_Four_colour_theorem.jpg">Credit </a>: Szilas via public domain

Four colors: that is all you need for giving each country on a map a color distinct from all its neighbors. Perhaps for centuries, that has been a rule of thumb among cartographers. But halfway through the 19th century, people started wondering: Does that rule have some grounding in logic or reason?

On 10 June 1854, an anonymous contributor only identified as F.G. wrote in <a href="https://books.google.be/books?id=Mm1IAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA726&redir_esc=y#v=onepage&q&f=false">The Athenaeum </a>:

"In tinting maps, it is desirable for the sake of distinctiveness to use as few colours as possible, and at the same time no two coterminous divisions ought to be tinted the same. Now, I have found by experience that four colours are necessary and sufficient for this purpose — but I cannot prove that this is the case (…) I should like to see (or know where I can find) a general proof of this apparently simple proposition, which I am surprised never to have met with in any mathematical work."

That may have been the starting point for a good old 19th century scramble, in this case toward a four-color theorem — in other words, definite mathematical proof that four colors is sufficient to distinctively mark all countries on any map.

<img>That theorem really ties the room together. <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Four_color_theorem#/media/File:Four_Colour_Map_Example.svg">Credit </a>: Inductiveload via <a href="https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/">CC BY-SA 3.0 </a>

The late 19th century was an era of major scientific breakthroughs with huge societal consequences. To name but three: electricity, telephony, and photography. Yet even in that practical age, some scientists found time for this rather more esoteric topic.

On the face of it, the quest for the four-color theorem does not even sound like much of a scientific challenge, especially for mathematicians. But appearances are deceptive: some math problems are easier explained than solved. For a similar one, see Euler's perplexing Seven Bridges Problem (Strange Maps #<a href="https://bigthink.com/strange-maps/536-walk-like-an-eulerian-the-bridges-of-konigsberg">536 </a>).

In 1879, Alfred B. Kempe published an article "<a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/2369235?origin=crossref&seq=9#metadata_info_tab_contents">On the Geographical Problem of the Four Colours </a>" in the <a href="https://www.jstor.org/journal/amerjmath">American Journal of Mathematics </a> , in which he confidently stated:

"the experience of the map-makers has not deceived them, the maps they had to deal with, viz: those drawn on simply connected surfaces, can, in every case, be painted with four colours."

Kempe then developed a mathematical proof several pages long.

<img>Illustrative addendum to Kempe's article. Unfortunately, the journal was printed in black and white only, so the colors had to be named rather than applied. <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/2369235?origin=crossref&seq=9#metadata_info_tab_contents">Credit </a>: <a href="https://www.jstor.org/journal/amerjmath">American Journal of Mathematics </a>, Vol. 2, No. 3 (Sep 1879), via JSTOR / public domain

Proof delivered, theorem established? Not so fast. As mentioned above, the four-color theorem states that only four colors are needed to ensure adjacent regions have different colors — the point being to make sure that each is distinguishable from the other. But this means that there are a whole raft of special cases: for instance, enclaves and exclaves or where multiple regions touch at a single point (as in Fig. 6 on Kempe's illustration above).

As those examples show, where map theory meets map practice, things will get complicated. That is why, to prove his point, Kempe had to develop so-called "Kempe chains," logical tools that helped him analyze various possible map configurations. Unfortunately, Kempe made a mistake in building his tools, and it took longer than a decade to catch a particularly well hidden one.

Percy J. Heawood (1861-1955, nickname "Pussy") was a British mathematician who spent most of his life working on the four-color theorem. In 1890, writing in the <a href="https://gdz.sub.uni-goettingen.de/volumes/id/PPN600494829">Quarterly Journal of Pure and Applied Mathematics </a>, he exposed the flaw in Kempe's proof. To remedy and salvage the original theory, he proposed a five-color theorem instead.

For almost a century, the four-color theorem was dead. It had been downgraded to a four-color conjecture, lingering in a kind of cartographic limbo between the everyday evidence that four colors do indeed suffice and the scientific inability to explain exactly why this is so.

Over the decades, countless papers and articles were devoted to the four-color problem. It even proved instrumental in developing graph theory, a whole new branch of mathematics.

<img>Five countries, four colors — and the graph structure underpinning the color scheme. <a href="https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Th%C3%A9or%C3%A8me_des_quatre_couleurs#/media/Fichier:4_couleurs_Benelux.png">Credit </a>: GrandEscogriffe via <a href="https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0">CC BY-SA 4 </a>

The problem proved so popular that, in 1887, it was published as a "challenge" in the Journal of Education , attracting a host of replies, one penned by the Bishop of London. In 1980, Edward R. Swart published an article on "<a href="https://www.maa.org/sites/default/files/pdf/upload_library/22/Ford/Swart697-707.pdf">The philosophical implications of the four-color problem, </a>" proposing a new mathematical entity halfway between a conjecture and a theorem.

Aphantasia - Big Think

ROBBY BERMAN

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