Secret communication video calls improvement trick, according to a professional mentalist: Although they do not receive too much focus from critics and advanced studies, there are few professions more trained than magicians when it comes to nonverbal communication. Although most of its functions focus on sleight of hand, illusionism and verbiage, from them you can learn a multitude of faculties that then serve in the real world.

This is what the French mentalist Rémi Larousse says, who revealed in a recent conference that, contrary to what people think, the great "magic numbers" depend not on a preset show, but on the reactions that illusionists know how to interpret from their audience. Mainly those related to body language.

"Contrary to popular belief, the study of facial expressions is not a reliable method of perceiving a person's emotional state," Larousse said. In addition to reading the posture and attitude of your audience, he explains, the key always focuses on the speaker's non-verbal communication.

So much so that, subconsciously, we all look for nonverbal clues in any conversation, even in the video calls so frequent today. Based on a study from Stanford University, Larousse resolves that we spend a lot of energy and attention looking for these references in artificial environments, while in a normal conversation body language is the order of the day and is perceived naturally.

Secret communication video calls improvement trick

One way to ease this cognitive load is to literally zoom out. In Larousse's eyes, this means sitting further away from the screen to show the upper body: that is, moving from a close-up to a middle shot, using cinematic language. "Make sure you are not a floating talking head on the screen and that your hands are visible, as they transmit a lot," Larousse explained.

In addition, sitting also relieves the forced intimacy of video calls. "Being in a video conference is like having a conversation with a person sitting half a meter away from you. This distance is typically reserved for close relationships such as our partners, family and close friends, and not for our bosses or customers," Larousse concretes.

In this way, thinking like an illusionist can also help you manage time strategically. The brain tends to remember the "highly dramatic" —highlighting-events that the magician uses to his advantage to divert attention. Anyone can do the same in a normal conversation.

This involves understanding the fluctuations of mental energy, says Larousse. In this way, it is better to approach important issues at times when the audience (or the interlocutor) is ready to pay full attention-there are these dramatic events. After each period of intense concentration, a break with lighter cognitive tasks and better non-verbal communication is important for the brain.

Secret communication video calls improvement trick

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Science and technology work so that your brain can be uploaded to the cloud

Narrator: in the episode of Black Mirror, San Junípero, Yorkie and Kelly meet and fall in love in a virtual afterlife. And in this world, the possibilities are endless. They can dress whatever they want, be in the decade they want and die whenever they want, and even not do it. This technology could be more realistic than that of finding the source of eternal youth. Will it ever be possible to upload your brain to a computer?

Randal Koene: I would be surprised and a little dismayed if that possibility did not exist in this century.

Narrator: the concept of uploading the human brain, its thoughts, feelings, memories and everything else to a server and running it on a computer is called brain emulation. And there are three main areas of technology that need to move forward to make all this possible. Scanning, processing, power, memory and environment. Let's start with scanning, as researchers will also have to start there. The first bottleneck we're going to find connections, which is what would make a complete map of the brain. Basically, the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow for neuroscientists, brains are quite complex. Scientists have only been able to map the complete connection of one creature, the nematode. And the brain of a nematode has about 302 neurons. A human brain has 86 billion. Not to mention the 10,000 or more connections that each neuron makes to other neurons. Our current brain scanning technology, such as MRI or magnetoencephalography are not good enough to map all connections. There are other methods that could show us a clearer picture, but they tend to be destructive.

Randal Koene: the idea is that once a brain has been preserved, it is cut very thin and everything that is there is observed. Much of what is in the brain can be reconstructed from its structure…

Narrator: for living brains, the most promising scanning technology out there is that of electrodes, with thousands of recording points.

Randal Koene: now, it's extremely invasive in the sense that there's a lot of surgery involved.

Narrator: these electrodes, when placed in precise areas of the brain, have the potential to show us thousands of neurons at once....

Randal Koene: because each point can record from multiple neurons and identify which one is based on the specific form, to the action they perform, the type of response.

Narrator: either way, technology has to be able to scan and record massive amounts of data. By massive, we refer to zetas as quantity of information. And we don't even know everything we're looking for yet. Many neurotransmitters have not yet been discovered. Very necessary pieces for connection in this puzzle. So, even if we have all the information, if we don't know what we're looking for then…

Randal Koene: it's like a story written in a book, but if no one reads it and no one understands the words, then it's just a black thing over a white thing.

Narrator: right now, every scanned neuron has to be interpreted by humans in real time, zetas of information slowly sorted by hand. If we want to start reading the principle of those connections, advanced machine learning and data mining will be critical.

Randal Koene: because otherwise you end up with systems where learning, training that model. Only the synchronization of the parameters could take an eternity. Literally, an eternity is the largest temporal unit in the universe. Just because of how exponentially big it is.

Narrator: the processing power of computers has also shown a slight exponential growth over the last century or so. Something similar can be said about computer memory. If the trend continues, we are likely to reach the necessary processing requirements quite soon. But some experts worry that we might be reaching the end of Moore's law.

Randal Koene: I've read about that too, and I'm concerned.

Narrator: Moore's law. At one point he predicted that the power of computers would double every 18 months. And in recent decades, these advances have slowed down. If they stop, our computers will never be fast enough to process the data.

Randal Koene: I'm very concerned because of that big computational bottleneck that I mentioned earlier. Without it, you try to adjust the models, and it's adjustment can be very, uh difficult.

Narrator: once we get over that, then we might be able to run an emulated brain. One of these emulated brains is called SIM, or substrate independent mind. The SIM would be an exact digital replica of the mind that was emulated. And we're actually pretty close to memory requirements. We should not have problems storing SIMs once we are able to create them. But the place where they will be stored is a little different from the place where they will live. And we mean living.

Narrator: and if a SIM is conscious, you don't need to exist in one place and interact with things. In Black Mirror, the characters spend the rest of eternity in a luxurious seaside town. Right now, our capabilities with virtual reality are not good enough to create a paradise like that. To experience virtual reality the way humans experience reality, SIMs would need sensors and Hi-Fi systems to feel the world around them. The graphics, at least, are constantly improving, thanks to the speed and relevance of the video game industry. It is the rest of the sensors that will need to do the most work. Everything from tasting rum and a Coca-Cola, to feeling the pain of a car accident. The bandwidth and unique complexity needed for this should not be underestimated. And while virtual reality isn't the only option for a SIM, real reality still needs some updates. First, we would need a robot avatar. And robots are usually very good at one thing. One of the most advanced humanoid robots in the world is famous for its ability to climb stairs. It's relatively impressive, but it doesn't even come close to replicating the experience of having a real human body. Virtual reality offers a human experience and more in a digital world. SIMs can fly or teleport or even become a lion for a clearly non-human experience. Would that simulation still be you?