Topic: Debate with sense

[Oviraptor]

In my list, I made no distinction between active and passive senses, but I don't think it really changes anything I said. Also, I put them in the order I would perceive as most to least effective, but I guess that is something that's at least semi-subjective.

[Yokto]

Well it does have a impact. hearing without active hearing is not that effective unlike sight.

[Oviraptor]

Well, if you read my sound description, it should be fairly obvious that I assumed active sound and passive sound was used. I simply meant that I didn't specify which I meant, not that I didn't think it would make a difference.

[Yokto]

Yes but i felt that it was worth noting. Else i would not have said anything.

Hmm.... A active smell system? That sounds interesting.

[Huckbuck]

You could definitely "see" the world using only smells. However, touch would be a very necessary part of being able to make sens of the smells...

Me and Flisch debated if it would be possible to have creatures who used smell to create images, so you say that it does work in combination with touch? I won Flisch!

I came up with one idea yesterday that Im not sure if its possible, but what if smell, vision AND hearing signals would be converted into ONE image? Would it work? If you only see light and dark with the eyes, and maybe use colors for the hearing and smell in some way it could create some sort of ultrasense. I guess you could add both electricity and echolocation to

Anywayss... When our nose analyses the atoms we sense as smell it translates its analysation of the atoms into impulses sent to the brain. What says that a brain necessarily needs to convert theese impulses to "smell"? Why not translate it to an image? Then we would "see smell". I think it works, and I am ready to debate to death.

How would the image then look like? Basically it's just one single information: This smell stinks. How do you make a picture of just one single information?

[Daxx]

How would the image then look like? Basically it's just one single information: This smell stinks. How do you make a picture of just one single information?

Cue Morbo.

SMELL DOES NOT WORK THAT WAY

You get far more information from a smell than just "this smells". Otherwise, how do you suppose sharks find their prey through smelling the blood? How do dogs find criminals? A smell can tell you what caused it, how long it's been there, how far away it is, whether the thing causing the smell moved. Given enough sensitivity you could smell pretty much anything, though some things wouldn't leave much of an impression. Certainly in the natural world, combined with touch it could still be a reasonably useful and potentially workable sensory system.

Besides which, look up synaesthesia (which I guess you already were asked to and ignored). People can see smells already.

[Flisch]

How would the image then look like? Basically it's just one single information: This smell stinks. How do you make a picture of just one single information?

Cue Morbo.

SMELL DOES NOT WORK THAT WAY

You get far more information from a smell than just "this smells". Otherwise, how do you suppose sharks find their prey through smelling the blood? How do dogs find criminals? A smell can tell you what caused it, how long it's been there, how far away it is, whether the thing causing the smell moved. Given enough sensitivity you could smell pretty much anything, though some things wouldn't leave much of an impression. Certainly in the natural world, combined with touch it could still be a reasonably useful and potentially workable sensory system.

Because, apparently, my knowledge about olfaction isn't as good as yours, would you be so kind to explain it on a bio-chemistrical level? And then explain how molecules, which are detected in the nose can give an answer on how far it is away? And how long this molecule has been there?
And don't link me to a wikipedia site, because I've already read it.

Besides which, look up synaesthesia (which I guess you already were asked to and ignored). People can see smells already.

Thank you, but I looked it up and didn't ignore what Stuck said. Also "People can see smells already." isn't really an answer to my question.

[Manna]

Because, apparently, my knowledge about olfaction isn't as good as yours, would you be so kind to explain it on a bio-chemistrical level? And then explain how molecules, which are detected in the nose can give an answer on how far it is away?

Well, I dont know if MY knowledge of olfaction is any better than yours but try this one out:

There is far more information processing on the visual responses from your retina then just the raw data of what comes in through your pupils. The brain uses a bit of trig and your stereoscopic vision to work out distances to objects as well as past experiences of shadows, textures and memory of any recognisable object's size to give you information about depth. This processing is all done AFTER the cones and rods have triggered as a result of light hitting them which would be the eye's equivalent to molecules of smell hitting your sensory neurons.

What I'm getting at is that a 'visual image' of locations of objects would be a result of data analysis done after you've gathered the data. For example, maybe you could have stereo-olfactic depth information similar to stereoscopic vision. It could hook into your visual cues, connecting remembered smells with visible objects. Hell, it might even be a kind of overlay over your vision with a big red x saying "I think it's coming from here"

Another option would be for the visual representation to just be a series of colours and shapes to identify the molecular structure of the smell because our brains are more highly developed for pattern recognition in visual data then any other sense.