«October 2, 2024»

As long as a TV or film soundtrack is synchronized within 80 milliseconds, you won't notice any lag, but if the delay gets any longer, the two abruptly and maddeningly become disjointed. Events that take place faster than 80 milliseconds fly under the radar of consciousness. A batter swings at a ball before being aware that the pitcher has even throw it.

When a situation affords a long latency between stimulus and response, deliberative behavioral control can be used to generate behavior that is strategic, variable, and hard to predict by an adversary. As this latency decreases, reactive control takes over and generates responses that are fast, less variable, and easier to predict by an adversary.

We can characterize deliberative behavioral control or planning as action choices that occur after internally simulating more than one action sequence and its respective consequences. Conversely, reactive control is a rapid stimulus-evoked response. A large amount of research suggests that these two decision making systems have different neural substrates.

Interestingly, the similarities between the lamprey (jawless fish that preceded mammals by 560 million years) and mammalian neural system that is implicated in reflexive behavior suggests that reactive control evolved very early on in the vertebrate evolution.

In contrast, behavioral and neural evidence for planing and higher level cognition seems to only exist for mammals and birds. Evidence for planning is less clear for reptiles and amphibians, and similarly ambiguous or absent in fish.

So, for the current times that are running, mark today's date with a big, fat and colorful marker. Because from now on, every image, every picture, every illustration you are gonna see throughout these days will surely be worth much more than 1000 words.

Neither prophets, nor clairvoyants, nor soothsayers, nor prognosticators, nor optimists will prevent you from seeing the excess in thousands of extra words that you will have to forcefully read from the images, the pictures and the illustrations that will come at you wiping everything around you like a whirlwind in just 80 milliseconds. This has happened like this before, it has been written and registered like this before and it will continue to be written like this from now on. Remember to mark the date. Because from this same instant the images will begin.