The Sensory Deception by Ransom Stephens Page A

been observed in the bellies of dead sperm whales or on the decks of whaling ships—except for one case. A dead colossal squid was found wrapped around a dead sperm whale floating off the coast of Chile. Other than this one draw, it might seem like the sperm whale has the advantage, but any colossal squid victories would remain at the bottom of the sea, as unobservable as the sound of a falling tree in an empty forest.” He looked away from Bupin to the other VCs and added, “We were extraordinarily fortunate that the polar bear we equipped with data acquisition equipment had such an amazing experience, but we’re not going to count on it for the Moby-Dick app.”
    Bupin said, “The success of your Polar Bear comes from plight of your bear. Without big squid, how do you make your app killer?”
    “Ringo? Do you want to take this question?”
    “Oh, yeah,” Ringo said, standing as Farley sat. “Do you know what interpolation is?” He waited two beats before continuing. “Interpolation is what you do when you have two data points and want to predict a value that lies between them. Farley is six and a half feet tall and I’m five foot seven, so if we told you that Chopper’s taller than me and shorter than Farley, you could interpolate between those two points and guess that Chopper is six-one. Pretty close, too. So what I’m going to do for Moby-Dick is take several data sets and interpolate between them. One data set will be from the bull sperm whale and its interactions with garden-variety squid and other cephalopods; the other data sets will be acquired from smaller cephalopods and their predators. The problem in the first case is that the squid will be too small and in the other cases that the predator isn’t a sperm whale, but the data sets corral the desired solution—a full-grown sperm whale against a colossal squid. I’ve got a whole library of video interpolation code, mostly rescaling algorithms, but I did something hella cool with it. Check this out: One of the problems with rescaling is that lengths, areas, and volumes scale totally differently—that’s why shipwreck movies look so cheesy. So I used a continuous fractal model to—”
    “Excuse me,” Gloria interrupted.
    Farley said, “If you want to know the details, and I mean
all
the details, Ringo will be happy to share them.”
    Bupin was buried in the proposal again.
    “That’s the zoological angle of our technical challenges,” Farley said. “The neurological angle is what makes VirtExArts special. Chopper?”
    Chopper stood and stared at Bupin until he looked up. Then Chopper began: “My research focuses on how the brain processes sensory data. The concept of sensory saturation comes from something we’ve all experienced: panic. When you’re in an emergency situation, you don’t have time to think and deliberate, much less reflect on your situation, but you do make decisions. Your awareness focuses on right now, no more than a second before or a second after. Now, if we remove the sensation of panic, you find yourself in the state of mind of intelligent nonlinguistic animals. Mammals and birds are focused on the right now. They make decisions based on past experience, but they don’t have the processing power to contemplate or reflect on those experiences and create elaborate plans like this one.” He lifted his copy of the business plan, held it up for a second, and then dropped it on the table.
    Farley caught Gloria’s eye and they shared a smile. She had argued against having Chopper present to the board, but Farley had insisted. He’d told her that Chopper was a man of great depth, not just intellectually, and that his tough-guy exterior provided acuity to his lecturing style.
    With the proposal on the table and Bupin’s eyes on him, Chopper resumed: “That state of total engagement can be attained through what we call sensory saturation. The majority of the processes that produce reflective thought and self-awareness