Daily Report: August 25, 2017

Date: 2017.08.25
Host: Danbee

Day start: 10h13
Lunch break start: n/a
Lunch break end: n/a
Day end: 12h30

# of “good” participants: 32
Estimated average age group: 8-14 year olds and their parents

Brief description of the day: Even though it was a Friday, it was quite quiet. The day started with 2 sets of parents, their very young children in tow (too small to do the exhibit, so they watched their parents eyes). The parents were super engaged in the idea behind the project, and the interaction felt really good – I felt like I was saying things that they found interesting, and I also felt that they got it.

These parents also helped me realize the true purpose of the exhibit, and how everything ties together! So, the posters behind the interactive station talk about how “intelligence” is the power of brains to predict, and create models of the world. Well how do we create these models? In humans, the primary input device to our brains are our eyes. But it’s not often we get to see our own eyes while they work for us. So how good is your model of your eyes? If you try our exhibit, you can find out!

Or something like that :)

I also started explaining to people, as they watch the replay of their eyes, some basic things about pupils. Like how the primary thing affecting the size of the pupils is the amount of light around you – when it’s dark, your pupils grow, and when it’s bright, your pupils shrink. But other things can affect the size of your pupil; for instance, if something you see breaks your “model of the world”, by surprising, exciting, stressing, or scaring you, your pupils will grow then too! So the size of your pupils is an outwardly observable behaviour that tells us a lot about the internal world created by your brain.

And actually, that train of thought led quite naturally to describing comparative neuroscience to visitors. First we establish the importance of behaviours as a more universal form of communication than language – even between humans, we can run into language barriers, which can make it difficult to believe that the face before you contains a mind like your own. But language barriers can be overcome, by actions, body language, pantomime, facial expressions. Similarly, if we want to understand what is happening in the brain of a different species of animal, an important part of understanding their minds is to study and pay attention to their behaviour. If we want to understand intelligence and other universal phenomena of brains, it is very helpful to compare the brains and behaviour of many species in order to validate the universality of a phenomenon under consideration.

One other thing of note happened today: When I arrived, I found the exhibit mildly damaged :( There was a large dent/scrape to the left of the mask, and the faceplate itself was slightly separated from its wooden frame. My guess is that after I closed the exhibit early yesterday, someone came by and banged on the covered faceplate. Why anyone would do this is beyond me, but I’m not very upset given that until now, the exhibit had survived almost 2 months without a single scratch.

Best comment: “Haha, what do you think about this behaviour?” [one of the parents who was super engaged, covered the mouth of his very rambunctious and loud child with a hand in order to have the above philosophical discussion with me and was laughing at having to communicate to his child in this way)