100 ways of spotting spin and nonsense from the media, pundits and politicians.
by Julian Baggini.
Faulty reasoning, spin and tricksy arguments are used around us all the time. Listing some 100 examples, Julian Bagginis book gives us some much needed tools to cut through some of the rhetorical tricks used to influence our thoughts.
Facts and certainty. Some people who don't like the theory of evolution regularly attacks it for not being a ''fact'', in contrast to what they know to be ''facts''. In Julian Bagginis words: ''Evolution is indeed a theory. We also do not know for certain that it is true. But this in itself is an uninteresting claim. Arguably we know nothing for certain. Maybe we are not hominids walking the Earth after all, but lizards plugged into a virtual reality machine on Alpha Centauri, fed the illusion of a normal terrestrial life. This is highly unlikely, but it is possible and we don't know for absolute certain that we are not being deceived in this or in countless other fanciful ways.''
Mood music. If you can't win the argument then ask (silly) questions, where noone can disagree. You might not have argued anything, but you might win votes by setting a mood. In Julian Bagginis words: ''Whats wrong with a little discipline in Schools?'' Why, nothing of course. ''Why can't politicians be more accountable?' Good question!
Flatter people. Flatter works! Flatter your audience and you win the argument!? Politicians say that they trust your wise judgement (while their opponents thinks you are too dumb to make important life-choices for yourself). Pop singers are always happy to come to the middle of nowhere, because ''they love people there'' - which always gets a huge cheer.
Appeal to loyalty. Is obviously a problem. As Julian Baggini points out: The main problem with appeals to loyalty - whether national, familial, tribal or other - is that they bypass any serious discussion of the merits of the case.
Freedom. Is something everybody likes. Surely, no one ever stood on a platform of reduced freedom for all. Still most people want governments to provide health and education services, redistribute wealth in some degree and regulate many areas of public life. So, when something can't be done, because ''it is a free country' - then well, it isn't a completely free country....
Cui bono? Who benefits? The belief that cui bono is a question that leads directly to truth gives some bizarre conclusions. Julian Baggini gives us the following wonderful example: Over the past twenty years, the average circle of close friends has shrunk by a third. Which made one Carol Sarler reach the conclusion: The monstrously expanding counselling trade benefits for encouraging us to talk to shrinks rather than our friends, and ...
Framing a debate. The classic question ''When did you stop beating your wife'' lets us ask one thing, and assume another. By assuming something that has not been established the debate is framed. We should look out for such statements: Why is the government destroying the BBC? How much freedom should we be prepared to sacrifice for our freedom?
People don't want to believe terrible things: We cannot bear very much reality. And we dont want to believe terrible things. Which leads us into all sorts of selfdeceptions. Which is why there is never any shortage of people willing to tell us that someone charged with a crime could never have done it. Again, flatter wins the argument - nothing bad here!
Psychology over logic. We are motivated more by psychology than logic. I you don't vote in an election, you are calculating that the benefit the result will bring multiplied by the probability that your vote will change the outcome - is smaller than the effort to go to the polling station. Thats actually very rational! But as a society we prefer the story that every little bit of effort really makes all the difference. Don't be to logical if you want to win an argument....
Quality, not quantity counts. Dozens of pieces of evidence with low probability pointing to some outcome doesn't add up to make it a certainty..... Yet, people try to persuade us by lining up lists of very unlikely bits of evidence that they think should make us reach some faulty conclusion ....
Simon
Thursday, December 30, 2010
Saturday, July 31, 2010
The Julian Baggini Spacetravel Quiz
Ready for the interstellar space travel?
Just read Julian Bagginis book "Do You Think What You Think You Think?"
In the book you will find some lovely thoughts on immortality and futuristic space travel. Certainly, interstellar spacetravel is going to take a special breed of travellers!
Looked around on the internet for a quiz basedon his thoughts, but couldnt find it.
Still, thereshould be should be such a quiz on the internet!!!
So I made one myself:
Please don't pay too much attention to the rather silly point system in the quiz.
The crux of the whole thing is of course Bagginis questions:
http://www.simonlaub.net/FutureMinds/NeuroSky/Predictions/MarsTrip/index.html
More on future predictions - see:
http://www.simonlaub.net/FutureMinds/NeuroSky/Predictions/longbet.htm
-Simon
Simon Laub
www.simonlaub.net
Just read Julian Bagginis book "Do You Think What You Think You Think?"
In the book you will find some lovely thoughts on immortality and futuristic space travel. Certainly, interstellar spacetravel is going to take a special breed of travellers!
Looked around on the internet for a quiz basedon his thoughts, but couldnt find it.
Still, thereshould be should be such a quiz on the internet!!!
So I made one myself:
Please don't pay too much attention to the rather silly point system in the quiz.
The crux of the whole thing is of course Bagginis questions:
http://www.simonlaub.net/FutureMinds/NeuroSky/Predictions/MarsTrip/index.html
More on future predictions - see:
http://www.simonlaub.net/FutureMinds/NeuroSky/Predictions/longbet.htm
-Simon
Simon Laub
www.simonlaub.net
Monday, July 19, 2010
The Emotion Machine.
Commonsense thinking, AI and the future of the human mind.
Amazon review (5 out of 5 stars) of Marvin Minskys book, July 2010 by Simon Laub July 18th, 2010 - by Simon Laub - Email: slaub@csc.com
If you ''understand'' something in only one way, then you hardly understand it at all. Because when you get stuck, you'll have nowhere to go. On the other hand, if you can represent something in several ways, then you can switch models until you findsomething thats works. Marvin Minsky.
The empires of the future are the empires of the mind.
Winston Churchill, Speech at Harvard University, September 6, 1943.
Mind Design - an overview:
The ''Emotion Machine'' by Marvin Minsky is an introduction to how our minds work. An endeavor to understand mind (thinking, intellect) in terms of its design (how it isbuilt, how it works).
Sure, the inner workings of the mind sometimes appear to be impervious to any kind ofscientific approach. Routine stuff like making mental models of the world, design plans,pursue goals and feel desires aren't all that routine, when you think about it. And the way it all plays together - from simple, instinctive kinds of thought to more complex forms, such as consciousness or self awareness - is obviously very complex.
It would be very easy to get stuck in too much detail or to be too superficial. But somehow Minsky finds the right balance. So overall, the Emotion Machine is a brilliant introduction to how our minds work.
Often he will give us an idea about what must be going in computational terms, and then shieldus from the usual deluge of ''neuro-technical'' terms. Because (in his own words) ''research onthe (actual nitty gitty of the) brain is advancing so quickly that any conclusion one might maketoday could be outdated in just a few weeks.''
In one reviewers words: ''The EmotionMachine rewards careful reading. You'll learn a lot about how your mind works, even if youwon't be all that much wiser about what is actually going on within your brain.'' :-)
Nevertheless, the book is obviously based on the latest advances in computer science, psychology, neuroscience, engineering etc. And certainly, his book is not a bad place to start if one wantsto be a little wiser on the emergent field of Mind Design.
Just like a machine? A six-level model of the mental activities.
Minskys brain models might make the brain look somewhat mechanical, but he is keen to tell usthat if the brain is indeed a bio-mechanical machine, it certainly isn't a machine in the usual sense.
I.e. saying that someone is like a machine usually means that he ''has no intentions, goals or emotions'' or is ''relentlessly committed to a single purpose or goal.'' But in Minskys world, it will eventually be possible to build artificial intelligences that have persistence, aim and resourcefulness. Indeed, future artificial intelligences must be equipped with many different systems for problem solving. If one method fails they should be able to switch to other approaches.
It follows that models for advanced machines (and according to Minsky, models for our minds)can't be all that simple (despite peoples desperate desire for simple formulas...).
According to Minsky: ''If a theory is very simple, you can use mathematics to predict whatit'll do. If it's very complicated, you have to do a simulation. It seems to me that for anything as complicated, as the mind or brain, the only way to test a theory is to simulate it and see what it does.''
Eventually, advanced simulations might pass the Turing Test, ''proving'' that human likeintelligence could be build on machine-like principles.
On a smaller scale, it might eventually be possible to replace damaged brain tissue - with computer hardware that performs a functionformerly carried out by neurons .
According to Minsky, the difference between machine intelligence and human
intelligence might, in the end, not be all that big.
Question: - ''If we developed the perfect artificial brain, what would be the difference between that and the real thing?''
Minsky: - ''Well, it wouldn't die!''
Internally, a human-like intelligence system must be organized in one way or another. Minsky proposes a six-level model for our mental activities. It is intended to be somewhat vague, because our brains are not so neatly arranged.
-- Values, Ideals --
- Self - conscious emotions -
- Self reflective thinking -
- Reflective thinking -
- Deliberative thinking -
- Learned reactions -
- Instinctive reactions -
-- Instinctive behavioral system --
The lowest level corresponds to the most common kind of instincts. The highest level supports the sorts of ideas that we aquire later and call by names like ethics and values. In the middle layer are layers of methods we use to deal with all sorts of problems, conflicts and goals. In the deliberative layer you might consider several actions to take, then image the effects of each, and then compare these alternatives. On top of that, at the reflective levels you may wonder if you decisions at lower levels were good decisions. And final you may ''selfreflect'' and see if your actions were in line with your ideals.
Minsky observes that: ''Just like in societies, the higher executive layers don't know enough of the systems details to specify what must be done. Hence their power actually consists in selecting among options proposed by their subordinates. In that way, the low level are actually controlling or containing what their superiors do.''
Imprimers - What do we want?
Humans wants all sorts of things. A lot of it are due to instincts that tell us to get food, a mate andso forth. Other things are not so easily describe, why would some want to play the guitar, whileothers would consider that to be about the dumbest activity on earth? Indeed, many (humans) are probably clueless to why they have certain highlevel goals, instead of some other highlevel goals!? According to Minsky we learn our high-level goals from our Imprimers. Worried that some future, human-like intelligence Cyberdyne system might kill us all? Well, you shouldn't be... Instead, you should be worried about how the system is educated, what its imprimertells it!
Minsky: ''Getting what you want is one thing. It is quite another to learn what you ought to want. Learning usually works by trial and error - improving our ways to achieve the goalsthat we already hold. When we self reflect on our goals (feel pride or shame) we might change our priorities. Humans learn what they ought to want depending how they interpret the reactions of the persons to whom they are attached. I.e. a child feel grateful and proud when praised by its mother (Generally: the imprimer).''
Imprimer: An imprimer is one of those persons to whom a child has become attached.
The present goal is therefore elevated if the imprimer praises. For evolutionary reasons, normally,only imprimers can change a childs highlevel goals, as it would be no good if strangers could change a persons highlevel goal, and make them do whatever they wanted.
At first the imprimers must be near to us, but once we have made mental models of them, we canuse those models to elevate goals even when those imprimers are absent. Eventually these models becomes conscience, ideals or morals codes.
Which btw. reminds me of Douglas Hofstadters book ''I am Strange Loop''. Here Hofstadter, after the death of his 43 year old wife Carol, writes about the self, as something distributed over many minds.According to Hofstadter: Carol's ''personal sense of 'I' '' lived on (in a ''low-resolution fashion'') as a ''loop''inside me.
In short:
When an imprimer praises, elevate you goal.
When an imprimer scolds, devalue your goal.
It is then obvious why e.g. cults remove people from their family and normal social relations. Then it is much easier to sabotage the persons old goal system! And the cult can then begin thenew impriming, where new ideals are implanted into an anxious and insecure mind.
Why should we have goals at all? The obvious answer is, that we have goals because that is how our brains evolved. The people without goals became extinct, because they simply couldn't compete.
[p. 191, Emotion Machine].
Pain - And how plans change.
We don't want to let our imprimers down. Still it might not be all that easy to achieve all of the high-level goals they have given us. Life is full of things that can go wrong. And sometimes they do. Leaving us with emotional or physical pain.
Pain: We are all equipped with nerves that connect from each part of the skin to several mapsin the brain. However, we are not born with similar ways to represent signals that come from our internal organs.Therefore we usually find it hard to describe pains that are notlocated near our skin. Before modern surgery we had little use for this information, as wecould not repair or protect internal organs anyway.
When we are ''feeling bad'', we are actually talking about the disruption of our other goals. Pain would not serve its function (for which it involved), if it allowed us to pursue our normal goals, while our bodies were being destroyed.Note that goals can not overrule pains, that would be dangerous. Imagine, tf some goal could simply turn hunger off, we would be in peril of starving to death. If we could simply stop sleeping, we would like wear our bodies out.
And pain must obviously be a part of life. I.e. It is ''pleasant'' to have accomplished a difficult task, but this always involves some transient period of severe distress and discomfort.This also applies whenever we try to improve our mental ability, Sure, pleasure might help us learn simple easy things, but we must learn to ''enjoy'' at least some distress, when it comes tolearning things that need larger-scale changes in how we think.
So, should we just stay away from pain and go for pleasure? Well, it might be dangerous! Certainly, addict knows: That when we think we choose theoption that pleases us most, the selection may actually be some process that has silencedall of its competitors.The more pleasure you feel in this way, the more negative may be that hidden effect on the rest of our mental processes.
Common sense thinking.
To find a way through the ups and downs of life, we use our ''common sense''.
According to Minsky: Typical commonsense thinking might begin with a brief ''micro-manic'' phase thatproduces a few ideas, then one find flaws, during a short-lived ''micro-depressive''period [p. 241, Emotion Machine].
I.e. many bipolar disorders (manic-depressive disorders) are really doing the samething as our everyday creative thinking. Whenever we face a new type of problem, we might use procedures like:
Turn most of your critics (Minskys word for procedures that finds problems in plans) off. This helps you to think about things you could do, with little concern about whether they'll work. As though you were in a manic state.Next turn your critics back on, to examine these options more sceptically - As though you were having a mild depression.Finally, choose an option that seems promising, and then pursue it until your critics startto complain that you are not making progress.
Critics help us to recognize the kinds of predicaments we face, and then recommend selections of ways in which we might deal with these situations. And even though our critics tell us a lot of things we might rather not have known,we do pay attention when they ''speak''.
E.g: Self conscious critics -
none of my goals seems meaningful (depression).
I am losing track of what I am doing (confusion).
I can achieve anything (mania).
My friends may disapprove of this (insecurity).
Humans like ''common-sense'' thinking and heuristics a lot better that ''logical'' thinking.Using logic is like walking a plank.It assumes that each separate step is correct. Commonsense thinking demands more support. One must add evidence after everyfew steps.Obviusly, evolutionary pressures made earlier humans rather good at ''common sense''thinking, but not so good at ''logical'' thinking. But today it would be rather convenient, if more people were better at ''logical thinking''. Indeed, perhaps it will one day bepossible to hookup humans to 'logic module''. E.g. through a neural interface.
Luckily, still, we are not forced to do ''hard logic'' to survive. Reasoning by analogy,dividing and conquering, reformulating and other ''common sense'' techniques that we are actually good at, can also be quite helpful.
Representing problems in multiple ways.
Actually, if you can only follow one particular kind of procedure, using one kind of representation - that is not all that impressive. Obviously, human brains can describe and represent problems in multiple wasys - giving many more ways to solve problems [p. 296, Emotion Machine].
And when we have learned something, solved a problem, we should be able to make useful abstractions. If we represent something in the wrong way - like say binary numbers in a connectionist net - it becomes very difficult yo make useful abstractions of that knowledge. On the other hand when something is expressed in say everyday language, there is much more expressiveness [p. 296, Emotion Machine].
The reflective mind - Choosing the right goal.
We are always comparing various goals, and deciding which ones to put aside or postpone - And one will never make much progress towards achieving any particular goal unless onecan persist at it for long enough. A higher level goal should be able to stop other processes from taking focus.At least goals that will take the same resources. We can walk and talk at the time, becausethat uses different sets of brain resources. But we can't speak and read at the same time, because that would compete for the same language resources.
[p. 249, Emotion Machine].
To accomplish any major goal, one may need to suppress most competing goals, as in''I don't fell like doing anything else''. Pleasure helps us to learn by engaging negative functions (functions that stop over processes) that works to keep our minds from ''changing the subject''.
So, how do we work out what goals to pursue right now? Based on the guidelines we have received from our imprimers we should ''self-reflect''on how things are going right now. That would include predictions that turned out to be wrong, plans that encountered obstacles, and failures to access the knowledge one needs. To see the importance of selfreflection, consider how smart it is to know that you are confused(as opposed to being confused without knowing this). Knowing that you are confused - you elevate yourself to a larger-scale view of your overall goals. Make a better plan, switch toa completely different activity?
Hopefully, we will eventually be able to decide on what to do next.
When people say that they used free will make a decision. What they are actually saying is, ''some process stopped my deliberations, and made me adopt whatseemed best at the moment.'' In other words, free will is not a process to makea decision, but one we use stop other processes.[p. 204, Emotion Machine].
If we end up following the wrong plans, luckily, we can always tell a story about it:
According to Daniel Dennett: Our fundamental tactic of selfprotection, self control and self-definition is not building dams or spinning webs, but tellingstories - about who we are.
(see my Amazon review of Cordelia Fines ''A Mind Of Its Own'' for more about this).
Limited resources.
Blaming problems on limited access to resources is always a popular solution.Errare humanum est. Really, we shouldn't be surprised that we don't achieveall of our goals with such limited brain resources at our disposal ....¨
We don't really see the world out there:The visual systems in our brains receive many more signals from the restof the brain than signals that come in from our eyes. Some 80 % fibers to the lateral geniculate nucleus relay station come downwards from thecortex, adn only about 20 % from the retinas.
[p. 153, Emotion Machine].
Our working memory really isn't that big:Where new memories are briefly maintained in resources that act like acomputers cache - and then over time, more permanent versions arecreated in other regions of our brains.
[p. 245, Emotion Machine].
And it is quite difficult to store information:Then of course there is the ''real estate'' problem for long term memories. Finding places for new memories must involve complex constraints and requirements, and this could be the reason as to why making permanentrecords take so much time. Finding appropriate networks of brain cellsto use without disrupting connections and records that one would not want to erase.
[p. 270, Emotion Machine].
There is simply too much information to keep track of:Different parts of each persons brain are involved with different forms of memory - there are a least sensory, episodic, auto-biographical,semantic, declarative and procedurel memories.
[p. 243, Emotion machine].
And we can't really redesign our own minds for better performance: There are substantial advantages in imposing limits on the extend to whichour mind can examine itself. If a mind can make changes in how it worksit will obviously also face the risk of destroying itself!
With too much control over the systems we use for remembering,it might be possible to overwrite all of a persons old memories.Turning on resources on at will could force a mind to spend all of itstime pursuing one particular goal.
[p. 341, Emotion machine].
And when we build machines to help us, they also have problems with limitedresources:The coming years will see more powerful and resourceful machines. But every system that we build will surprise us with new kind of flaws- until those machines becomes powerful enough to conceal their faultsfrom us.
[p. 345, Emotion Machine].
Learning.
Despite some resource problems and other ''design issues'' we do of course have excellent minds. One of the things that our minds do really well - is our ability to learn almost anything:
It took hundreds of millions of years for us to evolve from the earlist vertebrate fish,and it took those eons to develop the structures that became the the higher reflective layers of our brains. Human children makes extensive use of these high level structures to develop our uniquely human way of represent new kinds of knowledge and processes. This is why it is not easy to make a machine that learn just about anything. You can not learn what you can not represent!
[p. 180, Emotion Machine].
A smart way of learning is of course also necessary with so much to learn in human societies: No infant could by itsef event enough to develop an adult intelligence. So, perhaps ourmost important skill is how we learn, not only from own experiences, but alsofrom being told things by other people.
[p. 271, Emotion Machine].
Still, even for us, learning is a slow and difficult thing:Thomas Landauer concluded that, during any extended interval, none of his subjects could learn at at a rate of more than about two bits per second, whether the realm bevisual, verbal, musical or whatever.
[p. 178, Emotion Machine].
Consciousness.
Some might have hoped Minskys book would end with some grand statements aboutconsciousness. Not so!For starters, he doesn't like the word all that much.
And some of the unconscious thinking that goes on in our minds may actually be a lot more interesting?
Minsky thinks that consciousness is a suitcase-like word that we use to refer to many different mental activities. Which obviously is why it is so difficulet to talk about what consciousness really is! Is it imagery, thinking, decision making, awareness, attention, the concept of self?
Aaron Sloman (1994) makes it even more explicit: People are too impatient. They want a three line definition of consciousness and a five line-line proof that a computational system can or cannot have consciousness. They dont want the hard work of unravelling complex and muddled concepts.
Questions unanswered:
Minskys decision not to go into the nitty gritty of how our brains might actually work allows him to give a good overview, but his approach obviously leaves many questions unanswered.
Brainwaves.
E.g. it would have been nice with a few words about the binding problem , but sadly there is nothing about this in the book. Luckily, New Scientist deals with it
July 10th 2010:
Exactly where brainwaves are generated in the brain, and how they communicate information is somewhat of a mystery. But they must obviously do something these alpha-, theta-, beta- and gamma- waves. When we look at an apple, the apples redness and its roundness are picked up by different cells in the brain, but we don't see red and round - we see one thing.
The rhythmic activity of the brain waves ensures that all the relevant signals relating to a sensation arrives to a binding region at exactly the same time, where they can be recombined into a single sensation. Faulty synchronization between parts of the brain responsible for planning, executing and sensing speech could mean that a person fails to recognize that words he has just uttered is in fact his own words (as in schizophrenia).
Sleep.
And what about sleep? Why do we sleep? According to Wikipedia, there are multiple arguments supporting the restorative function of sleep. And memory seems to be affected differently by certain stages of sleep such as REM andslow-wave sleep (SWS). Indicating that procedural memory might benefit from late, REM-rich sleep,whereas declarative memory might benefit from early, SWS-rich sleep.
William Dement, a co- discover of REM sleep, isn't so sure though: ''As far as I know'', he answered, ''The only reason we need to sleep that is really, really solid is becasuse we get sleepy.''
[National Geographic, May 2010].
Still off we go for that nap. According to one theory, the Thalamus blocks input from the senses,allowing the brain to fokus on processing information from the day. The Hippocampus thenreplays memories to be stored during during REM sleep. At least studies suggest that memory consolidation may be one function of sleep (a transfer of memories from shortterm memoryto longterm memory can only take place, while unconscious, because the same networks are used for other information processing purposes while we are awake)
[National Geographic, May 2010].
==============
Perhaps the Amazon reviewer was right:
(By reading the book) You'll learn a lot about how your mind works, even if you won't be all that much wiser about what is actually going on within your brain.
Still, it is a wonderful book!
July 18th 2010.
-Simon
Simon Laub
www.simonlaub.net
Amazon review (5 out of 5 stars) of Marvin Minskys book, July 2010 by Simon Laub July 18th, 2010 - by Simon Laub - Email: slaub@csc.com
If you ''understand'' something in only one way, then you hardly understand it at all. Because when you get stuck, you'll have nowhere to go. On the other hand, if you can represent something in several ways, then you can switch models until you findsomething thats works. Marvin Minsky.
The empires of the future are the empires of the mind.
Winston Churchill, Speech at Harvard University, September 6, 1943.
Mind Design - an overview:
The ''Emotion Machine'' by Marvin Minsky is an introduction to how our minds work. An endeavor to understand mind (thinking, intellect) in terms of its design (how it isbuilt, how it works).
Sure, the inner workings of the mind sometimes appear to be impervious to any kind ofscientific approach. Routine stuff like making mental models of the world, design plans,pursue goals and feel desires aren't all that routine, when you think about it. And the way it all plays together - from simple, instinctive kinds of thought to more complex forms, such as consciousness or self awareness - is obviously very complex.
It would be very easy to get stuck in too much detail or to be too superficial. But somehow Minsky finds the right balance. So overall, the Emotion Machine is a brilliant introduction to how our minds work.
Often he will give us an idea about what must be going in computational terms, and then shieldus from the usual deluge of ''neuro-technical'' terms. Because (in his own words) ''research onthe (actual nitty gitty of the) brain is advancing so quickly that any conclusion one might maketoday could be outdated in just a few weeks.''
In one reviewers words: ''The EmotionMachine rewards careful reading. You'll learn a lot about how your mind works, even if youwon't be all that much wiser about what is actually going on within your brain.'' :-)
Nevertheless, the book is obviously based on the latest advances in computer science, psychology, neuroscience, engineering etc. And certainly, his book is not a bad place to start if one wantsto be a little wiser on the emergent field of Mind Design.
Just like a machine? A six-level model of the mental activities.
Minskys brain models might make the brain look somewhat mechanical, but he is keen to tell usthat if the brain is indeed a bio-mechanical machine, it certainly isn't a machine in the usual sense.
I.e. saying that someone is like a machine usually means that he ''has no intentions, goals or emotions'' or is ''relentlessly committed to a single purpose or goal.'' But in Minskys world, it will eventually be possible to build artificial intelligences that have persistence, aim and resourcefulness. Indeed, future artificial intelligences must be equipped with many different systems for problem solving. If one method fails they should be able to switch to other approaches.
It follows that models for advanced machines (and according to Minsky, models for our minds)can't be all that simple (despite peoples desperate desire for simple formulas...).
According to Minsky: ''If a theory is very simple, you can use mathematics to predict whatit'll do. If it's very complicated, you have to do a simulation. It seems to me that for anything as complicated, as the mind or brain, the only way to test a theory is to simulate it and see what it does.''
Eventually, advanced simulations might pass the Turing Test, ''proving'' that human likeintelligence could be build on machine-like principles.
On a smaller scale, it might eventually be possible to replace damaged brain tissue - with computer hardware that performs a functionformerly carried out by neurons .
According to Minsky, the difference between machine intelligence and human
intelligence might, in the end, not be all that big.
Question: - ''If we developed the perfect artificial brain, what would be the difference between that and the real thing?''
Minsky: - ''Well, it wouldn't die!''
Internally, a human-like intelligence system must be organized in one way or another. Minsky proposes a six-level model for our mental activities. It is intended to be somewhat vague, because our brains are not so neatly arranged.
-- Values, Ideals --
- Self - conscious emotions -
- Self reflective thinking -
- Reflective thinking -
- Deliberative thinking -
- Learned reactions -
- Instinctive reactions -
-- Instinctive behavioral system --
The lowest level corresponds to the most common kind of instincts. The highest level supports the sorts of ideas that we aquire later and call by names like ethics and values. In the middle layer are layers of methods we use to deal with all sorts of problems, conflicts and goals. In the deliberative layer you might consider several actions to take, then image the effects of each, and then compare these alternatives. On top of that, at the reflective levels you may wonder if you decisions at lower levels were good decisions. And final you may ''selfreflect'' and see if your actions were in line with your ideals.
Minsky observes that: ''Just like in societies, the higher executive layers don't know enough of the systems details to specify what must be done. Hence their power actually consists in selecting among options proposed by their subordinates. In that way, the low level are actually controlling or containing what their superiors do.''
Imprimers - What do we want?
Humans wants all sorts of things. A lot of it are due to instincts that tell us to get food, a mate andso forth. Other things are not so easily describe, why would some want to play the guitar, whileothers would consider that to be about the dumbest activity on earth? Indeed, many (humans) are probably clueless to why they have certain highlevel goals, instead of some other highlevel goals!? According to Minsky we learn our high-level goals from our Imprimers. Worried that some future, human-like intelligence Cyberdyne system might kill us all? Well, you shouldn't be... Instead, you should be worried about how the system is educated, what its imprimertells it!
Minsky: ''Getting what you want is one thing. It is quite another to learn what you ought to want. Learning usually works by trial and error - improving our ways to achieve the goalsthat we already hold. When we self reflect on our goals (feel pride or shame) we might change our priorities. Humans learn what they ought to want depending how they interpret the reactions of the persons to whom they are attached. I.e. a child feel grateful and proud when praised by its mother (Generally: the imprimer).''
Imprimer: An imprimer is one of those persons to whom a child has become attached.
The present goal is therefore elevated if the imprimer praises. For evolutionary reasons, normally,only imprimers can change a childs highlevel goals, as it would be no good if strangers could change a persons highlevel goal, and make them do whatever they wanted.
At first the imprimers must be near to us, but once we have made mental models of them, we canuse those models to elevate goals even when those imprimers are absent. Eventually these models becomes conscience, ideals or morals codes.
Which btw. reminds me of Douglas Hofstadters book ''I am Strange Loop''. Here Hofstadter, after the death of his 43 year old wife Carol, writes about the self, as something distributed over many minds.According to Hofstadter: Carol's ''personal sense of 'I' '' lived on (in a ''low-resolution fashion'') as a ''loop''inside me.
In short:
When an imprimer praises, elevate you goal.
When an imprimer scolds, devalue your goal.
It is then obvious why e.g. cults remove people from their family and normal social relations. Then it is much easier to sabotage the persons old goal system! And the cult can then begin thenew impriming, where new ideals are implanted into an anxious and insecure mind.
Why should we have goals at all? The obvious answer is, that we have goals because that is how our brains evolved. The people without goals became extinct, because they simply couldn't compete.
[p. 191, Emotion Machine].
Pain - And how plans change.
We don't want to let our imprimers down. Still it might not be all that easy to achieve all of the high-level goals they have given us. Life is full of things that can go wrong. And sometimes they do. Leaving us with emotional or physical pain.
Pain: We are all equipped with nerves that connect from each part of the skin to several mapsin the brain. However, we are not born with similar ways to represent signals that come from our internal organs.Therefore we usually find it hard to describe pains that are notlocated near our skin. Before modern surgery we had little use for this information, as wecould not repair or protect internal organs anyway.
When we are ''feeling bad'', we are actually talking about the disruption of our other goals. Pain would not serve its function (for which it involved), if it allowed us to pursue our normal goals, while our bodies were being destroyed.Note that goals can not overrule pains, that would be dangerous. Imagine, tf some goal could simply turn hunger off, we would be in peril of starving to death. If we could simply stop sleeping, we would like wear our bodies out.
And pain must obviously be a part of life. I.e. It is ''pleasant'' to have accomplished a difficult task, but this always involves some transient period of severe distress and discomfort.This also applies whenever we try to improve our mental ability, Sure, pleasure might help us learn simple easy things, but we must learn to ''enjoy'' at least some distress, when it comes tolearning things that need larger-scale changes in how we think.
So, should we just stay away from pain and go for pleasure? Well, it might be dangerous! Certainly, addict knows: That when we think we choose theoption that pleases us most, the selection may actually be some process that has silencedall of its competitors.The more pleasure you feel in this way, the more negative may be that hidden effect on the rest of our mental processes.
Common sense thinking.
To find a way through the ups and downs of life, we use our ''common sense''.
According to Minsky: Typical commonsense thinking might begin with a brief ''micro-manic'' phase thatproduces a few ideas, then one find flaws, during a short-lived ''micro-depressive''period [p. 241, Emotion Machine].
I.e. many bipolar disorders (manic-depressive disorders) are really doing the samething as our everyday creative thinking. Whenever we face a new type of problem, we might use procedures like:
Turn most of your critics (Minskys word for procedures that finds problems in plans) off. This helps you to think about things you could do, with little concern about whether they'll work. As though you were in a manic state.Next turn your critics back on, to examine these options more sceptically - As though you were having a mild depression.Finally, choose an option that seems promising, and then pursue it until your critics startto complain that you are not making progress.
Critics help us to recognize the kinds of predicaments we face, and then recommend selections of ways in which we might deal with these situations. And even though our critics tell us a lot of things we might rather not have known,we do pay attention when they ''speak''.
E.g: Self conscious critics -
none of my goals seems meaningful (depression).
I am losing track of what I am doing (confusion).
I can achieve anything (mania).
My friends may disapprove of this (insecurity).
Humans like ''common-sense'' thinking and heuristics a lot better that ''logical'' thinking.Using logic is like walking a plank.It assumes that each separate step is correct. Commonsense thinking demands more support. One must add evidence after everyfew steps.Obviusly, evolutionary pressures made earlier humans rather good at ''common sense''thinking, but not so good at ''logical'' thinking. But today it would be rather convenient, if more people were better at ''logical thinking''. Indeed, perhaps it will one day bepossible to hookup humans to 'logic module''. E.g. through a neural interface.
Luckily, still, we are not forced to do ''hard logic'' to survive. Reasoning by analogy,dividing and conquering, reformulating and other ''common sense'' techniques that we are actually good at, can also be quite helpful.
Representing problems in multiple ways.
Actually, if you can only follow one particular kind of procedure, using one kind of representation - that is not all that impressive. Obviously, human brains can describe and represent problems in multiple wasys - giving many more ways to solve problems [p. 296, Emotion Machine].
And when we have learned something, solved a problem, we should be able to make useful abstractions. If we represent something in the wrong way - like say binary numbers in a connectionist net - it becomes very difficult yo make useful abstractions of that knowledge. On the other hand when something is expressed in say everyday language, there is much more expressiveness [p. 296, Emotion Machine].
The reflective mind - Choosing the right goal.
We are always comparing various goals, and deciding which ones to put aside or postpone - And one will never make much progress towards achieving any particular goal unless onecan persist at it for long enough. A higher level goal should be able to stop other processes from taking focus.At least goals that will take the same resources. We can walk and talk at the time, becausethat uses different sets of brain resources. But we can't speak and read at the same time, because that would compete for the same language resources.
[p. 249, Emotion Machine].
To accomplish any major goal, one may need to suppress most competing goals, as in''I don't fell like doing anything else''. Pleasure helps us to learn by engaging negative functions (functions that stop over processes) that works to keep our minds from ''changing the subject''.
So, how do we work out what goals to pursue right now? Based on the guidelines we have received from our imprimers we should ''self-reflect''on how things are going right now. That would include predictions that turned out to be wrong, plans that encountered obstacles, and failures to access the knowledge one needs. To see the importance of selfreflection, consider how smart it is to know that you are confused(as opposed to being confused without knowing this). Knowing that you are confused - you elevate yourself to a larger-scale view of your overall goals. Make a better plan, switch toa completely different activity?
Hopefully, we will eventually be able to decide on what to do next.
When people say that they used free will make a decision. What they are actually saying is, ''some process stopped my deliberations, and made me adopt whatseemed best at the moment.'' In other words, free will is not a process to makea decision, but one we use stop other processes.[p. 204, Emotion Machine].
If we end up following the wrong plans, luckily, we can always tell a story about it:
According to Daniel Dennett: Our fundamental tactic of selfprotection, self control and self-definition is not building dams or spinning webs, but tellingstories - about who we are.
(see my Amazon review of Cordelia Fines ''A Mind Of Its Own'' for more about this).
Limited resources.
Blaming problems on limited access to resources is always a popular solution.Errare humanum est. Really, we shouldn't be surprised that we don't achieveall of our goals with such limited brain resources at our disposal ....¨
We don't really see the world out there:The visual systems in our brains receive many more signals from the restof the brain than signals that come in from our eyes. Some 80 % fibers to the lateral geniculate nucleus relay station come downwards from thecortex, adn only about 20 % from the retinas.
[p. 153, Emotion Machine].
Our working memory really isn't that big:Where new memories are briefly maintained in resources that act like acomputers cache - and then over time, more permanent versions arecreated in other regions of our brains.
[p. 245, Emotion Machine].
And it is quite difficult to store information:Then of course there is the ''real estate'' problem for long term memories. Finding places for new memories must involve complex constraints and requirements, and this could be the reason as to why making permanentrecords take so much time. Finding appropriate networks of brain cellsto use without disrupting connections and records that one would not want to erase.
[p. 270, Emotion Machine].
There is simply too much information to keep track of:Different parts of each persons brain are involved with different forms of memory - there are a least sensory, episodic, auto-biographical,semantic, declarative and procedurel memories.
[p. 243, Emotion machine].
And we can't really redesign our own minds for better performance: There are substantial advantages in imposing limits on the extend to whichour mind can examine itself. If a mind can make changes in how it worksit will obviously also face the risk of destroying itself!
With too much control over the systems we use for remembering,it might be possible to overwrite all of a persons old memories.Turning on resources on at will could force a mind to spend all of itstime pursuing one particular goal.
[p. 341, Emotion machine].
And when we build machines to help us, they also have problems with limitedresources:The coming years will see more powerful and resourceful machines. But every system that we build will surprise us with new kind of flaws- until those machines becomes powerful enough to conceal their faultsfrom us.
[p. 345, Emotion Machine].
Learning.
Despite some resource problems and other ''design issues'' we do of course have excellent minds. One of the things that our minds do really well - is our ability to learn almost anything:
It took hundreds of millions of years for us to evolve from the earlist vertebrate fish,and it took those eons to develop the structures that became the the higher reflective layers of our brains. Human children makes extensive use of these high level structures to develop our uniquely human way of represent new kinds of knowledge and processes. This is why it is not easy to make a machine that learn just about anything. You can not learn what you can not represent!
[p. 180, Emotion Machine].
A smart way of learning is of course also necessary with so much to learn in human societies: No infant could by itsef event enough to develop an adult intelligence. So, perhaps ourmost important skill is how we learn, not only from own experiences, but alsofrom being told things by other people.
[p. 271, Emotion Machine].
Still, even for us, learning is a slow and difficult thing:Thomas Landauer concluded that, during any extended interval, none of his subjects could learn at at a rate of more than about two bits per second, whether the realm bevisual, verbal, musical or whatever.
[p. 178, Emotion Machine].
Consciousness.
Some might have hoped Minskys book would end with some grand statements aboutconsciousness. Not so!For starters, he doesn't like the word all that much.
And some of the unconscious thinking that goes on in our minds may actually be a lot more interesting?
Minsky thinks that consciousness is a suitcase-like word that we use to refer to many different mental activities. Which obviously is why it is so difficulet to talk about what consciousness really is! Is it imagery, thinking, decision making, awareness, attention, the concept of self?
Aaron Sloman (1994) makes it even more explicit: People are too impatient. They want a three line definition of consciousness and a five line-line proof that a computational system can or cannot have consciousness. They dont want the hard work of unravelling complex and muddled concepts.
Questions unanswered:
Minskys decision not to go into the nitty gritty of how our brains might actually work allows him to give a good overview, but his approach obviously leaves many questions unanswered.
Brainwaves.
E.g. it would have been nice with a few words about the binding problem , but sadly there is nothing about this in the book. Luckily, New Scientist deals with it
July 10th 2010:
Exactly where brainwaves are generated in the brain, and how they communicate information is somewhat of a mystery. But they must obviously do something these alpha-, theta-, beta- and gamma- waves. When we look at an apple, the apples redness and its roundness are picked up by different cells in the brain, but we don't see red and round - we see one thing.
The rhythmic activity of the brain waves ensures that all the relevant signals relating to a sensation arrives to a binding region at exactly the same time, where they can be recombined into a single sensation. Faulty synchronization between parts of the brain responsible for planning, executing and sensing speech could mean that a person fails to recognize that words he has just uttered is in fact his own words (as in schizophrenia).
Sleep.
And what about sleep? Why do we sleep? According to Wikipedia, there are multiple arguments supporting the restorative function of sleep. And memory seems to be affected differently by certain stages of sleep such as REM andslow-wave sleep (SWS). Indicating that procedural memory might benefit from late, REM-rich sleep,whereas declarative memory might benefit from early, SWS-rich sleep.
William Dement, a co- discover of REM sleep, isn't so sure though: ''As far as I know'', he answered, ''The only reason we need to sleep that is really, really solid is becasuse we get sleepy.''
[National Geographic, May 2010].
Still off we go for that nap. According to one theory, the Thalamus blocks input from the senses,allowing the brain to fokus on processing information from the day. The Hippocampus thenreplays memories to be stored during during REM sleep. At least studies suggest that memory consolidation may be one function of sleep (a transfer of memories from shortterm memoryto longterm memory can only take place, while unconscious, because the same networks are used for other information processing purposes while we are awake)
[National Geographic, May 2010].
==============
Perhaps the Amazon reviewer was right:
(By reading the book) You'll learn a lot about how your mind works, even if you won't be all that much wiser about what is actually going on within your brain.
Still, it is a wonderful book!
July 18th 2010.
-Simon
Simon Laub
www.simonlaub.net
Sunday, June 27, 2010
Ancestors III
They occupied Eurosia for more than 200.000 years before disappearing some 28.000 years ago.
A handful of Neanderthal sites indicates that they used jewelry - long before modern humans arrived in Europe 40.000 years ago?
Neanderthals are not modern in anatomy, but could they be modern in behaviour?
Saturday, June 26, 2010
Decisive Moment - How do we make decisions?
Making good decisions is something of a black art. It takes years of practice, and still it can be quite difficult to explain the mechanics behind it. In the end, our best decisions are a finely tuned blend of feeling and reason, where the precise mix depends on the situation. And with Jonah Lehrers book ''The Decisive Moment'' we become a little wiser on exactly how the brain makes up its mind.
Still, when there is so much to learn, obviously, one book can only take us so far. But this book is a good place to start. And takes us through at least some of the issues involved in human decision making:
a) Limbic impatience.
b) Framing.
c) Loss aversion.
d) Mental accounting.
e) The achoring effect.
f) Rational vs. emotionalprocessing.
g) Outsourcing of decisions.
Limbic Impatience
Understanding the brain circuitry of temptation is one of the practical ambitions of scientists studying decision making. Jonathan Cohen, a neuroscientist at Princeton University, has begun to diagnose the specific brain regions responsible for our attraction to credit card and subprime loans. Putting people inside a fMRI machine he could see that when subjects contemplated long term consequences for their actions, rational planning areas of the brain, such as the prefrontal cortex region, were more active. But when subjects thought about satisfaction here and now, brain areas associated with emotion were more active - such as the midbrain dopamine system and nucleus accumbens. Cells that tell a person to take a morgage (he cant afford) and run up credit card debt, damned be the future. I.e. Cohens study locates the neural source for many financial errors. When self control breaks down, and we opt for rewards we cant afford, it is because the rational brain has lost the neural tug of war. The emotional brain is very impatient. When it wants something - it wants it now.
Framing
People are more likely to buy meat, when it is labelled 85% lean, instead of 15 % fat. And twice as many patients opt for surgery, when told there is an 80 per cent chance of survival, instead of 20 percent chance of dying.
Inside the fMRI machine one can see an activated amygdala whenever a person thinks about losing something. So, framing a question in the direction of loss activates the amygdala and warps the decision towards not taking risks.
Mental accounting
People tend to think about the world in terms of specific accounts. It helps us think faster, but unfortunately, it also introduces new errors. Richard Thaler, economist at the university of Chicago, has investigated mental accounting at work: When he asked people: If they would save 5 dollars on a 15 dollars calculator by driving 20 minutes to the other end of town - 68 percent said yes, they would do that. However, only 29 percent would drive 20 minutes to save 5 dollars on a 125 dollar leather jacket. The same principle goes for luxury hotels charging 6 dollars for a can of peanuts etc. Inside a larger budget it doesnt matter - According to Thaler: ''We have a slow, erratic CPU, and we are busy with other stuff - the prefrontal cortex can only handle about seven things, so we have to bundle things in order to make life manageable''.
We dont have the computational power to process it smarter.
Indeed, to much information is a huge distraction. As the brain has a lot of trouble ignoring irrelevant information.
Rational vs. Emotional processing
So, a lot of the extra information just gets in the way. And often people can perform much better with less information. Another problem is our bad understanding of when we are doing emotional reasoning, and when we are being rational. Finding the right balance, where our emotional centers handles the enormous complexities of daily life and rational centers help us guide the emotions - isnt all that easy.
Instead, people can easily fall into the trap of spending to much time (with their rational centers) on thinking about unimportant minor things. Ignoring that, the prefrontal cortex isnt a place that can handle to much complexity by itself.
Loss aversion and limbic impatience is the other way around, with too much emotional control. People also tend to confuse what decisions are actual rational decisions and what are emotional decisions! It goes back to Kant. Where Kant and other philosophers thought that morality were based on the rational brains thinking. It turns out not to be the case. Confronted by ethical dilemmas the unconscious (emotional) mind generates an answer, which it then interpreted by rational brain centers.
With the human ethical decision system in the hands of the emotional subconscious system, what the rational system actually does is working like a lawyer. It makes the emotional reaction seem reasonable (Psychologist Jonathan Haidt have made some rather startling examples about sibling sex, dog eating families, etc.,that demonstrates how emotions have decided what is right and wrong long before rationality have hada chance of stepping in).
And that human behaviour isnt rational should come as no surprise. Take altruism. It feels good to do acts of charity. From the perspective of the brain it is much better to give (to the group) than to receive. People are programmed to care about each other. And feel each others pain. Sympathy is one of humanitys most basic instincts. The brain is filled with mirror neurons and brain areas that can theorize about other minds.
Same thing goes for monkeys - in one experiment with rhesus monkeys they would receive food by pulling a chain. But with a terrible side consequence - a separate monkey in a different cage was then given a painful jolt of electtricity. All the other monkeys saw what happened
- And all the other monkeys were willing to settle for less food, as long as their fellow monkey wasnt hurt. Some monkeys actually stopped pulling for food - starving themselves for many days, so that the monkey they didnt know wasnt hurt.
Hardly, rational monkeys?
Outsourcing of decisions
Economists also assume that humans are more rational than they actually are. In a typical line of reasoning they assume that shoppers do a rational cost benefit analysis of a certain items price and expected utility.
But studies have shown that it isnt always the case. Instead, it has been demonstrated that the brain outsource these decisions to the emotional brain: The nucleus accumbens (Nacc) is activated according to our desire for a particular object. And the insula produces aversive feelings when we think about the amount of money the item will cost us.
By measuring the relative amount of activity in each brain center, scientists could predict the shoppers decisions, before people themselves did. Pleasure vs. pain tells you want to buy.
The default state of the bain is indecisive disagreement. Various brain parts are constantly insisting that other parts are wrong. Making up your mind is all about ignoring annoying fears and nagging suspicions. Still, the brain should keep on tracking dissonant data - Failing to respond to dissonant data can lead to disastrous results. According to Jonah Lehrer, we should force ourselves to think about data that disturbs our entranched beliefs. When we start censoring our minds, turning off those brain areas that contradict our assumptions, we end up ignoring relevant evidence.
In a final piece of advice concerning making good decisions. Mark Jung-Beeman has shown that people in a good mood are considerable better at solving hard problems, than people who are cranky or depressed. He speculates that this is because brain areas associated with executive control arent preoccupied with managing emotional life. Happy people aren't spending cognitive resources on why they aren't happy. And complex problems needs all the resources they can get:
Use the conscious mind to acquire all the information needed for a decision, and then go on holiday, while your unconscious mind digest the information, and come up with the solution.
-Simon
Still, when there is so much to learn, obviously, one book can only take us so far. But this book is a good place to start. And takes us through at least some of the issues involved in human decision making:
a) Limbic impatience.
b) Framing.
c) Loss aversion.
d) Mental accounting.
e) The achoring effect.
f) Rational vs. emotionalprocessing.
g) Outsourcing of decisions.
Limbic Impatience
Understanding the brain circuitry of temptation is one of the practical ambitions of scientists studying decision making. Jonathan Cohen, a neuroscientist at Princeton University, has begun to diagnose the specific brain regions responsible for our attraction to credit card and subprime loans. Putting people inside a fMRI machine he could see that when subjects contemplated long term consequences for their actions, rational planning areas of the brain, such as the prefrontal cortex region, were more active. But when subjects thought about satisfaction here and now, brain areas associated with emotion were more active - such as the midbrain dopamine system and nucleus accumbens. Cells that tell a person to take a morgage (he cant afford) and run up credit card debt, damned be the future. I.e. Cohens study locates the neural source for many financial errors. When self control breaks down, and we opt for rewards we cant afford, it is because the rational brain has lost the neural tug of war. The emotional brain is very impatient. When it wants something - it wants it now.
Framing
People are more likely to buy meat, when it is labelled 85% lean, instead of 15 % fat. And twice as many patients opt for surgery, when told there is an 80 per cent chance of survival, instead of 20 percent chance of dying.
Inside the fMRI machine one can see an activated amygdala whenever a person thinks about losing something. So, framing a question in the direction of loss activates the amygdala and warps the decision towards not taking risks.
Mental accounting
People tend to think about the world in terms of specific accounts. It helps us think faster, but unfortunately, it also introduces new errors. Richard Thaler, economist at the university of Chicago, has investigated mental accounting at work: When he asked people: If they would save 5 dollars on a 15 dollars calculator by driving 20 minutes to the other end of town - 68 percent said yes, they would do that. However, only 29 percent would drive 20 minutes to save 5 dollars on a 125 dollar leather jacket. The same principle goes for luxury hotels charging 6 dollars for a can of peanuts etc. Inside a larger budget it doesnt matter - According to Thaler: ''We have a slow, erratic CPU, and we are busy with other stuff - the prefrontal cortex can only handle about seven things, so we have to bundle things in order to make life manageable''.
We dont have the computational power to process it smarter.
Indeed, to much information is a huge distraction. As the brain has a lot of trouble ignoring irrelevant information.
Rational vs. Emotional processing
So, a lot of the extra information just gets in the way. And often people can perform much better with less information. Another problem is our bad understanding of when we are doing emotional reasoning, and when we are being rational. Finding the right balance, where our emotional centers handles the enormous complexities of daily life and rational centers help us guide the emotions - isnt all that easy.
Instead, people can easily fall into the trap of spending to much time (with their rational centers) on thinking about unimportant minor things. Ignoring that, the prefrontal cortex isnt a place that can handle to much complexity by itself.
Loss aversion and limbic impatience is the other way around, with too much emotional control. People also tend to confuse what decisions are actual rational decisions and what are emotional decisions! It goes back to Kant. Where Kant and other philosophers thought that morality were based on the rational brains thinking. It turns out not to be the case. Confronted by ethical dilemmas the unconscious (emotional) mind generates an answer, which it then interpreted by rational brain centers.
With the human ethical decision system in the hands of the emotional subconscious system, what the rational system actually does is working like a lawyer. It makes the emotional reaction seem reasonable (Psychologist Jonathan Haidt have made some rather startling examples about sibling sex, dog eating families, etc.,that demonstrates how emotions have decided what is right and wrong long before rationality have hada chance of stepping in).
And that human behaviour isnt rational should come as no surprise. Take altruism. It feels good to do acts of charity. From the perspective of the brain it is much better to give (to the group) than to receive. People are programmed to care about each other. And feel each others pain. Sympathy is one of humanitys most basic instincts. The brain is filled with mirror neurons and brain areas that can theorize about other minds.
Same thing goes for monkeys - in one experiment with rhesus monkeys they would receive food by pulling a chain. But with a terrible side consequence - a separate monkey in a different cage was then given a painful jolt of electtricity. All the other monkeys saw what happened
- And all the other monkeys were willing to settle for less food, as long as their fellow monkey wasnt hurt. Some monkeys actually stopped pulling for food - starving themselves for many days, so that the monkey they didnt know wasnt hurt.
Hardly, rational monkeys?
Outsourcing of decisions
Economists also assume that humans are more rational than they actually are. In a typical line of reasoning they assume that shoppers do a rational cost benefit analysis of a certain items price and expected utility.
But studies have shown that it isnt always the case. Instead, it has been demonstrated that the brain outsource these decisions to the emotional brain: The nucleus accumbens (Nacc) is activated according to our desire for a particular object. And the insula produces aversive feelings when we think about the amount of money the item will cost us.
By measuring the relative amount of activity in each brain center, scientists could predict the shoppers decisions, before people themselves did. Pleasure vs. pain tells you want to buy.
The default state of the bain is indecisive disagreement. Various brain parts are constantly insisting that other parts are wrong. Making up your mind is all about ignoring annoying fears and nagging suspicions. Still, the brain should keep on tracking dissonant data - Failing to respond to dissonant data can lead to disastrous results. According to Jonah Lehrer, we should force ourselves to think about data that disturbs our entranched beliefs. When we start censoring our minds, turning off those brain areas that contradict our assumptions, we end up ignoring relevant evidence.
In a final piece of advice concerning making good decisions. Mark Jung-Beeman has shown that people in a good mood are considerable better at solving hard problems, than people who are cranky or depressed. He speculates that this is because brain areas associated with executive control arent preoccupied with managing emotional life. Happy people aren't spending cognitive resources on why they aren't happy. And complex problems needs all the resources they can get:
Use the conscious mind to acquire all the information needed for a decision, and then go on holiday, while your unconscious mind digest the information, and come up with the solution.
-Simon
Monday, June 21, 2010
Seeing Red - a study in consciousness
In Nicholas Humphreys research with rhesus monkeys, he has showed that they have strong and consistent emotional responses to colored light. When, for example, a monkey is put in a chamber bathed in red light, it becomes anxious and fidgety. When the chamber is bathed in blue,it becomes relatively calm. So, given the chance, rhesus monkeys strongly prefer a blue chamber to a red one.
Most humans have similar preferences, but not exactly. In a study of peoples preferences for colored cards, 70 percent cionsistently preferred blue/green hues to yellow/red hues. But a signicant subgroup of 20 percent preferred yellow/red to blue/green.
Most humans have similar preferences, but not exactly. In a study of peoples preferences for colored cards, 70 percent cionsistently preferred blue/green hues to yellow/red hues. But a signicant subgroup of 20 percent preferred yellow/red to blue/green.
Seeing Red
But onwards to the seeing red thing. Whenever there is a subjective experience, obviously there has to be a subject. It seems absurd to us that a pain, a mood, a wish should rove around in the world without a bearer. The inner world presupposes the person whose inner world it is?
But the situation can also be understood the other way around. That is to say, it is our experience of the inner world that confirms the existence of a person! Certainly sensations are important to us humans, as is being conscious. We even like consciousness in other people. Certainly, the last thing we want is to be conscious in a world where everybody else are zombies.
Sensation
What sensation does is to track the subjects personal interaction with the external world - creating the sense each person has of being present and engaged, lending a hereness, a nowness, a me-nessto the experience of the present moment [p 70].
By putting sensation on the production side of the mind rather than the reception side, we get a degree of central control of what it is like. Sensation are therefore affected by changes in mood, by mind-altering drugs etc. Indeed, mood changes,such as depression, might actually change sensation, just as mescaline or LSD can alter the qualityof sensory experience. Furthermore, it should be noted that it is possible to have sensations that are entirely selfgenerated (visions, dreams).
To Humphrey and others the special quality of consciousness lies with ''re-entrant circuits'' in the brain, neural activity that loops back on itself, so as to create self-resonance. That is to say, the command signals for sensory responses could begin to interact with the very input to which they are response. So as to become almost self-creating and self sustaining. Sure they take cues from the body, but they are also becoming signals about themselves. According to Humphrey: The moment of conscious sensation is not blending past, present and future -put taking a moment and holding on to it! Experiencing it longer than it actually happened!?
Why then, would sensory response circuits have evolved to the point of supporting sustained feedback? What is the payoff - the functional biological payoff - of feedback that brings about this thickening time of consciousness? According to Humphrey, the payoff that it gives the subject is a new sense of self: It lifts the subjectout of zombiedom. It changes ''I have such and such experiences therefore I am'' to ''I am because I have such and such experiencess''.
So, what is then required of an experience, if it is to be something a subject can proudly be the subject of? According to Humphrey: The substantiality that goes with existing in thick time is key.A self that has this as it center will be a self to be reckoned with. Natural selection will then need only a little more work, to shape it up a bit more, so that it becomes the organizing principle for each individuals mental life.
With a self - a human being has a life worth pursuing. Something to build a rich subjective life around. A huge advantages compared to the zombie state of not being there. The more important the self, the greater the boost to human self-confidence and self-importance. The greater the value of own and others life.
-Simon
Sunday, June 20, 2010
Vain Brains
A MIND OF ITS OWN.
- How your brain distorts and deceives.
by Cordelia Fine.
Amazon review (4 out 5 stars). http://www.amazon.com/review/R3JB65N0GP1QSC/ref=cm_cr_rdp_perm
----------------
Selfknowledge is a dangerous thing, as Cordelia Fine brilliantly demonstrates in this witty book about the vain human brain.
---
A group of students are asked to read one of two (fabricated) scientific articles. The first article claims that an extroverted personality helps people to achieve academic success. The second article, handed out to just as many students, claims instead that introverts tend to be more academically successfully.
What happens? I.e. Someone has just offered the students a glitering selfconcept that says - hey, I am going to make it in the world ...
So, whichever personality trait the students thought was the key to success, they rated themselves more highly as possessing [p 12].
That is how reasoning works in vain human brains. Sure, human reasoning is a very powerful tool, but -in vain human brains- certainly not a tool used in a crusade for truth.
No, in vain brains, reasoning is there to save us from truth!?
In vain human brains reason is a lawyer (that works for you).Evidence that supports your case is quickyly accepted. Evidence that threatens reasons most important client (i.e. you), is subjected to gruelling cross-examination. Accuracy and plausibility all come under attack, and the case is soon won.
A victory for justice and truth - Not really, as the only lawyer working in the courtroom was working for you!
The only people who actually come close to the truth about themselves, with a balanced balanced self perception, who assign responsibility for success and failure evenhanded
- are the clinically depressed. Selfknowledge is indeed a dangerous thing!
It is all part of our ''Terror Management System''. In a healthy vain brain it is the ''protective shield designed to control the potential terror that results from awareness of the horrifying possibility that we humans are merely transient animals groping to survive in meaningless universe, destined only to die and decay''.
---
And when our vain brains are not busy editing history,then our feelings are busy changing what the world actually looks like:
The book gives us another wonderful experiment to illustrate the point: A charming stooge enters a room where a volunteer is waiting, sporting a T-shirt from the volunteers university, and offers cookies all around. Another stooge, from a rival university, arrives late, and snaps at the volunteer.
Next, the stooges will begin to play TV tennis. Obviously... the volunteers sentiments towards the stooge bias what they see. Balls that were actually out, but hit by the amiable stooge,were called in - and vice versa. No agenda being served - either consciously or unconsciously - yet attitudes towards the stooges powerfully influenced what volunteers actually saw [p 43].
And apparently all of these feelings are necessary. In the rare cases where the prefrontal cortex succeeds in holding the emotions in a tight leash this leads to depersonalisation episodes. Where life is flat and disturbingly unreal. Music doesnt move anymore, people (spouse,children) becomes distant actors etc. One patient thought she would rather be dead than continue living like this.
// Btw. And the Cotard delusion is even worse. Where depersonalisationl eaves the world distant and unreal - The depersonalisation patientsmay feel as if they were dead - the Cotard patients may actually believe that they are dead. //
So, in the end, it might be our feelings that gifts us with our sense of self. No matter how trivial, they let us know that we are still alive.
Depersonalisation suggest that when the brain turns down the volumen on the emotions, our sense of self begins to slip away.
---
And the brain has more distortions coming our way. Finished with editing history and using feelings to distort reality the vain brain believes all sorts of weird stuff.
I.e The brain likes the ''just world hypothesis'': Our perception of a person is very sensitive to what (we think) will happen to that person next. If good things happens - then the person probably deserves it, and must be a good person - and vice versa. This hypothesis then obviously allows all sorts of horrors to take place without anyone intervening. According to the ''just world world hypothesis'' victims have only themselves to blame [p 61].
And obviously the clergy are no better than anyone else.
In yet another lovely experiment, divinity students are asked to preparesome thoughts on the Biblical story about the Good Samaritan. The researchers then manipulate the urgency of the students mission by telling them that they are late for their speaking assignment in another building. When the students set off to the other building for their speech, they encounter in the alleyway a coughing, distressed man asking for help. Obviously ... the students offer help if they think they have time to do so. But.... If the theologians have little time preparing that all important speech about the Good Samaritan, they would litterally step over the victim as they hurried on their way. Apparently, the brain thinks it is much better to speak about good deeds than doing them.
Especially if that makes the vain brain look better. Immoral?
Then lets proceed to the Milgram experiment, where two-thirds of ordinary men and women will obediently electrocute fellow human being, because a scientist in a lab coat tells them to do so. Cordelia Fine notes that the (vain) brains of her readers obviously are among the one third who would never do such a thing ....
Concerning mad human beliefs, Cordelia Fine concisely notes,that there simply arent enough psychiatrists around to cope.So the definition of a delusion has to be that it must be somewhat rare.
Our natural urge - our default position - is to believe. Afterall, people speak the truth more often than not. It is therefore more efficient to assume that things are true, unless we have reason to think otherwise. The problem is of course, if your brain is distracted or under pressure, you will tend to believe statements that you would normally find rather dubious.
So, sure everyone knows that we should ''consider the counter evidence''and ''entertain alternative hypotheses'' - but, the problem is, again, that the vain brain thinks that it is doing just that ... without spending time on it .....
And the brain is stuffed with stereotypes, ''black men are aggressive'', ''men are more dedicated workers than women'' etc. Why? (Because) A bigoted brain is an efficient brain. A brain unburdened by egalitarian concerns can decide quickly and move quickly to the next thing on the to do list. Sure, the speed comes at cost - mostly to others - of accuracy, particular when the schemas dont reflect reality.But with no time, motivation or mental resources the brain thinks it is the best solution.
Sure, sometimes it leads to very bad results. Take the ''black men are aggressive'' stereotype. Framing the mind in this way can obviously be bad for peaceful black men. Fine mentions the situation after the 2005 London bombing - where it was not a good idea for Londoners of ethnic origin to run after buses. Surely, one unlucky, innocent brazilian was gunned down by police officers with ''framed minds''.
---
Only mum can make people do a good job. Apparently, the only time when people are really doing a good jobi s when they are thinking ''I must do well, so that I can tell mum about this and make her proud of me''. In this lovely experiment - researchers have volunteers write down the sort of goals they have with respect to their mothers. Months later, the researchers prime the mother schema in some of the volunteers by asking questions about their mother. The unprimed volunteers were instead asked questions about themselves. Next all volunteers were asked to take a test: Volunteers who wanted to make their mothers proud and had their mother schema activated outperformed all other groups. It all happened unconsciously obviously, but when the ''make mother proud'' schema were initiated the volunteers worked really hard on the test.
Self control is somewhat tricky for the human brain -try not thinking about white bears for the next 5 minutes - but, if you want to make mother proud, apparently you can do it [p 167].
June 20th 2010
-Simon
Simon Laub
http://www.simonlaub.dk/ http://www.simonlaub.net/
- How your brain distorts and deceives.
by Cordelia Fine.
Amazon review (4 out 5 stars). http://www.amazon.com/review/R3JB65N0GP1QSC/ref=cm_cr_rdp_perm
----------------
Selfknowledge is a dangerous thing, as Cordelia Fine brilliantly demonstrates in this witty book about the vain human brain.
---
A group of students are asked to read one of two (fabricated) scientific articles. The first article claims that an extroverted personality helps people to achieve academic success. The second article, handed out to just as many students, claims instead that introverts tend to be more academically successfully.
What happens? I.e. Someone has just offered the students a glitering selfconcept that says - hey, I am going to make it in the world ...
So, whichever personality trait the students thought was the key to success, they rated themselves more highly as possessing [p 12].
That is how reasoning works in vain human brains. Sure, human reasoning is a very powerful tool, but -in vain human brains- certainly not a tool used in a crusade for truth.
No, in vain brains, reasoning is there to save us from truth!?
In vain human brains reason is a lawyer (that works for you).Evidence that supports your case is quickyly accepted. Evidence that threatens reasons most important client (i.e. you), is subjected to gruelling cross-examination. Accuracy and plausibility all come under attack, and the case is soon won.
A victory for justice and truth - Not really, as the only lawyer working in the courtroom was working for you!
The only people who actually come close to the truth about themselves, with a balanced balanced self perception, who assign responsibility for success and failure evenhanded
- are the clinically depressed. Selfknowledge is indeed a dangerous thing!
It is all part of our ''Terror Management System''. In a healthy vain brain it is the ''protective shield designed to control the potential terror that results from awareness of the horrifying possibility that we humans are merely transient animals groping to survive in meaningless universe, destined only to die and decay''.
---
And when our vain brains are not busy editing history,then our feelings are busy changing what the world actually looks like:
The book gives us another wonderful experiment to illustrate the point: A charming stooge enters a room where a volunteer is waiting, sporting a T-shirt from the volunteers university, and offers cookies all around. Another stooge, from a rival university, arrives late, and snaps at the volunteer.
Next, the stooges will begin to play TV tennis. Obviously... the volunteers sentiments towards the stooge bias what they see. Balls that were actually out, but hit by the amiable stooge,were called in - and vice versa. No agenda being served - either consciously or unconsciously - yet attitudes towards the stooges powerfully influenced what volunteers actually saw [p 43].
And apparently all of these feelings are necessary. In the rare cases where the prefrontal cortex succeeds in holding the emotions in a tight leash this leads to depersonalisation episodes. Where life is flat and disturbingly unreal. Music doesnt move anymore, people (spouse,children) becomes distant actors etc. One patient thought she would rather be dead than continue living like this.
// Btw. And the Cotard delusion is even worse. Where depersonalisationl eaves the world distant and unreal - The depersonalisation patientsmay feel as if they were dead - the Cotard patients may actually believe that they are dead. //
So, in the end, it might be our feelings that gifts us with our sense of self. No matter how trivial, they let us know that we are still alive.
Depersonalisation suggest that when the brain turns down the volumen on the emotions, our sense of self begins to slip away.
---
And the brain has more distortions coming our way. Finished with editing history and using feelings to distort reality the vain brain believes all sorts of weird stuff.
I.e The brain likes the ''just world hypothesis'': Our perception of a person is very sensitive to what (we think) will happen to that person next. If good things happens - then the person probably deserves it, and must be a good person - and vice versa. This hypothesis then obviously allows all sorts of horrors to take place without anyone intervening. According to the ''just world world hypothesis'' victims have only themselves to blame [p 61].
And obviously the clergy are no better than anyone else.
In yet another lovely experiment, divinity students are asked to preparesome thoughts on the Biblical story about the Good Samaritan. The researchers then manipulate the urgency of the students mission by telling them that they are late for their speaking assignment in another building. When the students set off to the other building for their speech, they encounter in the alleyway a coughing, distressed man asking for help. Obviously ... the students offer help if they think they have time to do so. But.... If the theologians have little time preparing that all important speech about the Good Samaritan, they would litterally step over the victim as they hurried on their way. Apparently, the brain thinks it is much better to speak about good deeds than doing them.
Especially if that makes the vain brain look better. Immoral?
Then lets proceed to the Milgram experiment, where two-thirds of ordinary men and women will obediently electrocute fellow human being, because a scientist in a lab coat tells them to do so. Cordelia Fine notes that the (vain) brains of her readers obviously are among the one third who would never do such a thing ....
Concerning mad human beliefs, Cordelia Fine concisely notes,that there simply arent enough psychiatrists around to cope.So the definition of a delusion has to be that it must be somewhat rare.
Our natural urge - our default position - is to believe. Afterall, people speak the truth more often than not. It is therefore more efficient to assume that things are true, unless we have reason to think otherwise. The problem is of course, if your brain is distracted or under pressure, you will tend to believe statements that you would normally find rather dubious.
So, sure everyone knows that we should ''consider the counter evidence''and ''entertain alternative hypotheses'' - but, the problem is, again, that the vain brain thinks that it is doing just that ... without spending time on it .....
And the brain is stuffed with stereotypes, ''black men are aggressive'', ''men are more dedicated workers than women'' etc. Why? (Because) A bigoted brain is an efficient brain. A brain unburdened by egalitarian concerns can decide quickly and move quickly to the next thing on the to do list. Sure, the speed comes at cost - mostly to others - of accuracy, particular when the schemas dont reflect reality.But with no time, motivation or mental resources the brain thinks it is the best solution.
Sure, sometimes it leads to very bad results. Take the ''black men are aggressive'' stereotype. Framing the mind in this way can obviously be bad for peaceful black men. Fine mentions the situation after the 2005 London bombing - where it was not a good idea for Londoners of ethnic origin to run after buses. Surely, one unlucky, innocent brazilian was gunned down by police officers with ''framed minds''.
---
Only mum can make people do a good job. Apparently, the only time when people are really doing a good jobi s when they are thinking ''I must do well, so that I can tell mum about this and make her proud of me''. In this lovely experiment - researchers have volunteers write down the sort of goals they have with respect to their mothers. Months later, the researchers prime the mother schema in some of the volunteers by asking questions about their mother. The unprimed volunteers were instead asked questions about themselves. Next all volunteers were asked to take a test: Volunteers who wanted to make their mothers proud and had their mother schema activated outperformed all other groups. It all happened unconsciously obviously, but when the ''make mother proud'' schema were initiated the volunteers worked really hard on the test.
Self control is somewhat tricky for the human brain -try not thinking about white bears for the next 5 minutes - but, if you want to make mother proud, apparently you can do it [p 167].
June 20th 2010
-Simon
Simon Laub
http://www.simonlaub.dk/ http://www.simonlaub.net/
Sunday, May 30, 2010
Sunday, May 23, 2010
Return of the Boltzmann Brains. And other strange brains out there.
A Boltzmann Brain is a hypothesized self-aware entity, which arises due to random fluctuations out of some (future) state of chaos. I.e. they are hypothetical brains resulting from thermal or vacuum fluctuations - Boltzmann Brains comes from nothing... In stark contrast to a human brain, which is the result of an evolution stretching back through most of the history of planet Earth.
What are the chances then that an everyday object - a rock, a chair, you name it - could suddenly appear out of thin air? Not zero, surprisingly.
In fact, given enough space and time, it is conceivable that a conscious being could arise, even if only for a microsecond.
Surely, if there are many Boltzmann Brains out there, it gives yet another twist to the Copernican principle, that humans are not privileged observers of the universe!
All is not unanimity out in netland though. Have just read yet another ''Boltzmann Brains can't be true''-blog. It makes me wonder what people actually think (is) out there?
Surfed around for some answers (see below):
--------
The universe is not only stranger than we imagine, it is stranger than we can imagine.
Haldane. Possible Worlds and Other Papers (1927), p. 286.
Most animals have brains, in some way or another. Over time, animals' brains have become more complicated because of evolution. Humans might have the most complicated brain.
People used to think that only humans had a sense of humor, but apparently the octopus also has a sense of humor.
Wikipedia.
--------
Biology books tell us that brains came about as the result of evolution. Usually it goes something like this:The human brain is the result of an evolution stretching back through most of the history of the planet. Earth formed around 4.6 billion years ago. A billion years later life emerged in the form of simpleorganisms such as bacteria. Things started to be a little more interesting a billion years ago with the emergence of organisms consisting of more cells. Then some cells took specialized roles. One such specialized cell was the nerve cell (neurone). As evolution proceeded, nerve cells tended to work togetherin neural networks (the first brains). 570 million years ago came the Cambrian explosion, with a sudden increase in the diversity of life on Earth. Following the Cambrian explosion, large brains with elaboratesensory systems appear to have evolved twice, independently. Once among the cephalopods (octopus) and once among our fish like ancestors, the chordates.
So far so good. But then came the ''mad cosmologists''. And introduced us to other kinds of brains.The weird Boltzmann Brains (Susskind, Dyson, Kleban 2002). According to New York Times:You might wonder what’s wrong with a few brains - or even a preponderance of them - floating around in space. For one thing, as observers these brains would see a freaky chaotic universe, unlike our own, which seems to persist in its promise and disappointment. Another is that one of the central orthodoxies of cosmology is that humans don’t occupy a special place in the cosmos, that we and our experiences are typical of cosmic beings. If the odds of us being real instead of Boltzmann brains are one in a million, say, waking up every day would be like walking out on the street and finding everyone in the city standing on their heads. You would expect there to be some reason why you were the only one left right side up.
Charlie Huenemann explains the second problem in laymans terms like this:
The basic idea, as I understand it, is this. Scientists think that the universe’s level of disorder,as a rule, never decreases. What this means is that things decay, disperse, and lose any non-uniform distribution of qualities over time. You can’t unscramble an egg; you can’t unswirl the cream in your coffee; you can’t make the universe, as a whole, warm up, or even stay the same temp. This is the secondlaw of thermodynamics: disorder (entropy) never decreases. That’s a law for the universe as a whole. It doesn’t preclude little isolated burps of increasing organization, so long as, over the long haul, there is a net loss in order. So the universe can tolerate isolated exceptions to the second law. But, since nature seems to always choose the simplest path, these exceptions should be kept to a minimum.Here comes Boltzmann: Suppose the universe had two choices: One is to allow the great big exception to the second law known as the history of human evolution and civilization. The second is to allow the comparatively minor exception which would have you spontaneously come into existence, for a few seconds, with all the memories, perceptions, and expectations you are experiencing right now. Case number two is the smaller breach ofentropy. So we should believe that that’s the truth:You think you are part of a great big exception to entropy, but you’re not. You’re something like a one-second-old brain in a vat. A Boltzmann Brain.
Wikipedia thinks this is all nonsense:The rationale behind this being paradoxical is that, out of chaos, it is more likely for one instance of a complex structure to arise than for many instances of that thing to arise. Which obviously ''ignores the possibility that the probability of a universe in which a brain pops into existence, without any prior mechanism driving towards its creation, may be dwarfed by the probability of a universe in which there are active mechanisms which lead to processes of developmentwhich reasonable probability of producing a species such as ourselves. In a universe of the latter kind,the scenarios in which a brain can arise are naturally prone to produce many such brains, so the largenumber of such brains is an incidental detail''
The same cosmologists, who got us into all the trouble also have a way out (making you real again), sort of:''On Earth humans are not typical animals; insects are far more numerous. No one is surprised by this.''So there can be Boltzmann Brains and there can be humans...phew...
Another contentious issue is whether the cosmologists in their calculations should consider only the observable universe, which is all we can ever see or be influenced by, or whether they should take into account the vast and ever-growing assemblage of other bubbles forever out of our view predicted by eternalinflation. In eternal inflation, the number of new bubbles being hatched at any given moment is always growing, Dr. Linde said, explaining one such counting scheme he likes. So the evolution of people in new bubbles far outstrips the creation of Boltzmann brains in old ones.
Numerous or not. Still, the Boltzmann Brains are still lurking out there. Read this one on Usenet:...Interstellar clouds of hydrogen, which happens to instantiate a particular Turing machine (Boltzmann Brain), but only for a tiny instant before it goes into another arrangement. Thus, not only will smaller systems be more frequent, but briefer systems will be more frequent; it is very unlikely that a large and long-lasting entity like a human brain will appear by chance, but rather more likely that very brief human brain-equivalent snapshots will arise, widely separated in time and space.
Sure, if you want to do something, it's not enough to be complex enough to be a conscious observer - you also need to be physically adapted to exist in the environment in which you appear, and since the way a Boltzmann brain is physically configured is presumably random with respect to its place of ''birth'', the chances of this are exceedingly slim.
Still, noone is saying that you couldn't have really smart Boltzmann brains in places like the inferno of the Big Bang ?And presumably, these Boltzmanns Brains could manipulate the future evolution of the universe?
Even if we could do away with all of Boltzmann Brains, the universe would still be a weird place:
One blogpost suggested that without the Boltzmann Brains - order and common sense is restored in the universe. Evolution creates brains, the end. This triggered me into writing this post - Because, I think there is still plenty of weirdness out there, even without Boltzmann Brains:
According to Hans Moravec life could exist on Neutron Stars as patterns of bounded neutrons.With a breakneck speed of metabolism. Where organisms live and die within 10e-15 seconds. Entire civilisations might be formed within a fraction of a second. Advanced civilisations might create such neutron stars in order to use them as computers. Some 10e30 more powerful than the human brain.In a previous post I have suggested an addendum to this: Future civilisations could install computers in the fabric of spacetime itself. Smash the neutron star a bit further and create a black hole,which explodes into a new universe (big bang) with the new order (computer) installed in its very fabric of space and time http://www.simonlaub.net/Post/omega260402.txt
According to Max Tegmark, current cosmological models may indicate that space is infinite in size. If so, then somewhere out there, everything possible becomes real, no matter how improbable it is. Including an identical copy of the reader.What is left is only to calculate how far away your dobbeltgaenger is! How far away must you gobefore a given configuration of particles repeats (Hubble volume) ? Tegmarks estimate is 10 to 28th meters away
http://www.simonlaub.net/Post/dobbeltgaenger.txt
Not weird enough? Then there are suggestions that everything is resurrected at the end of the universe
http://www.simonlaub.net/Post/neverendingdays.htm
Certainly, Haldane was right:
The universe is not only stranger than we imagine, it is stranger than we can imagine.
-Simon
What are the chances then that an everyday object - a rock, a chair, you name it - could suddenly appear out of thin air? Not zero, surprisingly.
In fact, given enough space and time, it is conceivable that a conscious being could arise, even if only for a microsecond.
Surely, if there are many Boltzmann Brains out there, it gives yet another twist to the Copernican principle, that humans are not privileged observers of the universe!
All is not unanimity out in netland though. Have just read yet another ''Boltzmann Brains can't be true''-blog. It makes me wonder what people actually think (is) out there?
Surfed around for some answers (see below):
--------
The universe is not only stranger than we imagine, it is stranger than we can imagine.
Haldane. Possible Worlds and Other Papers (1927), p. 286.
Most animals have brains, in some way or another. Over time, animals' brains have become more complicated because of evolution. Humans might have the most complicated brain.
People used to think that only humans had a sense of humor, but apparently the octopus also has a sense of humor.
Wikipedia.
--------
Biology books tell us that brains came about as the result of evolution. Usually it goes something like this:The human brain is the result of an evolution stretching back through most of the history of the planet. Earth formed around 4.6 billion years ago. A billion years later life emerged in the form of simpleorganisms such as bacteria. Things started to be a little more interesting a billion years ago with the emergence of organisms consisting of more cells. Then some cells took specialized roles. One such specialized cell was the nerve cell (neurone). As evolution proceeded, nerve cells tended to work togetherin neural networks (the first brains). 570 million years ago came the Cambrian explosion, with a sudden increase in the diversity of life on Earth. Following the Cambrian explosion, large brains with elaboratesensory systems appear to have evolved twice, independently. Once among the cephalopods (octopus) and once among our fish like ancestors, the chordates.
So far so good. But then came the ''mad cosmologists''. And introduced us to other kinds of brains.The weird Boltzmann Brains (Susskind, Dyson, Kleban 2002). According to New York Times:You might wonder what’s wrong with a few brains - or even a preponderance of them - floating around in space. For one thing, as observers these brains would see a freaky chaotic universe, unlike our own, which seems to persist in its promise and disappointment. Another is that one of the central orthodoxies of cosmology is that humans don’t occupy a special place in the cosmos, that we and our experiences are typical of cosmic beings. If the odds of us being real instead of Boltzmann brains are one in a million, say, waking up every day would be like walking out on the street and finding everyone in the city standing on their heads. You would expect there to be some reason why you were the only one left right side up.
Charlie Huenemann explains the second problem in laymans terms like this:
The basic idea, as I understand it, is this. Scientists think that the universe’s level of disorder,as a rule, never decreases. What this means is that things decay, disperse, and lose any non-uniform distribution of qualities over time. You can’t unscramble an egg; you can’t unswirl the cream in your coffee; you can’t make the universe, as a whole, warm up, or even stay the same temp. This is the secondlaw of thermodynamics: disorder (entropy) never decreases. That’s a law for the universe as a whole. It doesn’t preclude little isolated burps of increasing organization, so long as, over the long haul, there is a net loss in order. So the universe can tolerate isolated exceptions to the second law. But, since nature seems to always choose the simplest path, these exceptions should be kept to a minimum.Here comes Boltzmann: Suppose the universe had two choices: One is to allow the great big exception to the second law known as the history of human evolution and civilization. The second is to allow the comparatively minor exception which would have you spontaneously come into existence, for a few seconds, with all the memories, perceptions, and expectations you are experiencing right now. Case number two is the smaller breach ofentropy. So we should believe that that’s the truth:You think you are part of a great big exception to entropy, but you’re not. You’re something like a one-second-old brain in a vat. A Boltzmann Brain.
Wikipedia thinks this is all nonsense:The rationale behind this being paradoxical is that, out of chaos, it is more likely for one instance of a complex structure to arise than for many instances of that thing to arise. Which obviously ''ignores the possibility that the probability of a universe in which a brain pops into existence, without any prior mechanism driving towards its creation, may be dwarfed by the probability of a universe in which there are active mechanisms which lead to processes of developmentwhich reasonable probability of producing a species such as ourselves. In a universe of the latter kind,the scenarios in which a brain can arise are naturally prone to produce many such brains, so the largenumber of such brains is an incidental detail''
The same cosmologists, who got us into all the trouble also have a way out (making you real again), sort of:''On Earth humans are not typical animals; insects are far more numerous. No one is surprised by this.''So there can be Boltzmann Brains and there can be humans...phew...
Another contentious issue is whether the cosmologists in their calculations should consider only the observable universe, which is all we can ever see or be influenced by, or whether they should take into account the vast and ever-growing assemblage of other bubbles forever out of our view predicted by eternalinflation. In eternal inflation, the number of new bubbles being hatched at any given moment is always growing, Dr. Linde said, explaining one such counting scheme he likes. So the evolution of people in new bubbles far outstrips the creation of Boltzmann brains in old ones.
Numerous or not. Still, the Boltzmann Brains are still lurking out there. Read this one on Usenet:...Interstellar clouds of hydrogen, which happens to instantiate a particular Turing machine (Boltzmann Brain), but only for a tiny instant before it goes into another arrangement. Thus, not only will smaller systems be more frequent, but briefer systems will be more frequent; it is very unlikely that a large and long-lasting entity like a human brain will appear by chance, but rather more likely that very brief human brain-equivalent snapshots will arise, widely separated in time and space.
Sure, if you want to do something, it's not enough to be complex enough to be a conscious observer - you also need to be physically adapted to exist in the environment in which you appear, and since the way a Boltzmann brain is physically configured is presumably random with respect to its place of ''birth'', the chances of this are exceedingly slim.
Still, noone is saying that you couldn't have really smart Boltzmann brains in places like the inferno of the Big Bang ?And presumably, these Boltzmanns Brains could manipulate the future evolution of the universe?
Even if we could do away with all of Boltzmann Brains, the universe would still be a weird place:
One blogpost suggested that without the Boltzmann Brains - order and common sense is restored in the universe. Evolution creates brains, the end. This triggered me into writing this post - Because, I think there is still plenty of weirdness out there, even without Boltzmann Brains:
According to Hans Moravec life could exist on Neutron Stars as patterns of bounded neutrons.With a breakneck speed of metabolism. Where organisms live and die within 10e-15 seconds. Entire civilisations might be formed within a fraction of a second. Advanced civilisations might create such neutron stars in order to use them as computers. Some 10e30 more powerful than the human brain.In a previous post I have suggested an addendum to this: Future civilisations could install computers in the fabric of spacetime itself. Smash the neutron star a bit further and create a black hole,which explodes into a new universe (big bang) with the new order (computer) installed in its very fabric of space and time http://www.simonlaub.net/Post/omega260402.txt
According to Max Tegmark, current cosmological models may indicate that space is infinite in size. If so, then somewhere out there, everything possible becomes real, no matter how improbable it is. Including an identical copy of the reader.What is left is only to calculate how far away your dobbeltgaenger is! How far away must you gobefore a given configuration of particles repeats (Hubble volume) ? Tegmarks estimate is 10 to 28th meters away
http://www.simonlaub.net/Post/dobbeltgaenger.txt
Not weird enough? Then there are suggestions that everything is resurrected at the end of the universe
http://www.simonlaub.net/Post/neverendingdays.htm
Certainly, Haldane was right:
The universe is not only stranger than we imagine, it is stranger than we can imagine.
-Simon
Saturday, May 22, 2010
Ancestors
Africa ground zero for the hominids.
Ardipithecus ramidus http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ardipithecus_ramidus Ethiopia 4.4 millions years ago. An agitaged troop of Ardipithecus ramidus charge into a shallow stream.
Lucys (Australopithecus afarensis http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Australopithecus_afarensis) child - some 3.4 million years ago.
A curious female Homo habilis http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homo_habilis 1.7 millions years ago. Olduvai. Tanzania.Throughout its lifespan at Olduvai - Homo habilis is associated with tools.
1.5 million years ago lake Turkana, Kenya. A male Homo ergaster http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homo_ergaster .
700.000 years ago. Peking China. Peking man. from Homo Erectus .http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peking_man http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homo_erectus
Neanderthal. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neanderthal Neander Valley, Germany. 130.000 years ago. With a mean braincase of volume of 1420 cc they are quite similar to modern humans.
Friday, May 14, 2010
Minds In The 21st Century. The Next Steps Towards The Singularity.
Our Kurzweilian Future.
Ray Kurzweil explores mankinds ultimate destiny in the bestseller The Singularity is Near. How we will eventually transcend our biology, have radical life-span expansions, understand how the mind works and be able to build new ones - and much more.
So, are we ready for the Kurzweilian future?
Soon, according to Ray Kurzweil, we will be able to augment our bodies and minds with technology. Three important technologies of the 21st century: Genetics, nanotechnology, and robotics (including artificial intelligence) will drive humanity into Blade Runner territory. Here technology reaches a level of sophistication and fine-structuring comparable with that of biology, allowing the two to merge to create higher forms of life and intelligence. Eventually, Kurzweil predicts that this (our) human/machine civilization will expand its frontiers deep into the universe. And as computation and intelligence advances, as we move forward and upward, the end product will be human-machine super intelligence.
Not unlike Pierre Teilhard de Chardins Omega Point, in which mankind will have reached its highest point of complexification and thus its highest point of consciousness. At this point, according to Teilhard de Chardin, consciousness will rupture through time and space.
In The Phenomenon of Man Teilhard de Chardin states that the Omega Point will be
a) Personal – i.e. an intellectual being and not an abstract idea and
b) Transcendent. - Go figure! :-)
Frank Tiplers Omega Point follows suit. Here (at Tiplers Omega Point), the computational capacity of the universe (in terms of both its processor speed and memory storage) is also capable of increasing unlimitedly.
Back on Earth, Ray Kurzweil gives us a number of predictions for the years ahead, speeding ahead towards the coming singularity. Predictions fall in three categories:
a) Cognitive enhancements using pharmaceuticals, genetic therapies and tissue engineering. Direct modification of the organic brain will allow human beings to increase our intelligence, expand our memory, and sharpen our capacity for concentration.
b) 'Cyborgization' - the incorporation of devices, nanorobots and computers into the body. This trajectory may permit the augmentation of the senses with artificial hearing and sight superior to organic ears and eyes, the direct augmentation of cognition with brain prostheses, and connecting the brain wirelessly to the Internet. See Arthur C. Clarke's BrainCap.
c) Civilization (and cultural) enhancements through the creation of 'mind-children', computers and robots with at least, human-level cognition, emotions and abilities.
E.g. according to Kurzweil:
2020s - Personal computers will have the same processing power as human brains.
2020s - Highly advanced medical nanobots will perform detailed brainscans on live patients.
2030s - Mind uploading becomes possible.
2040s - Human body 3.0 (as Kurzweil calls it) comes into existence. Later, human beings will lack a fixed, corporeal form. (When in material form) Organs are gradually replaced by superior cybernetic implants. etc. Effective world domination is shared between machines and humans, who have evolved into postbiological cyborgs.
A ''runaway reaction'' of self-improvement cycles, turns these intelligences into one giant super intelligence. According to Kurzweil much of this will happen as early as 2199.
Sure, others might be worried sick about a coming age of Terminators on Windows. But, in the Kurzweilian universe things work out for the best. And it is both good and necessary that humans tamper with fundamental aspects of themselves. Indeed, one should look elsewhere for answers to questions like:
* What philosophical questions are posed by efforts to enhance intellectual, aesthetic and moral abilities with drugs, gene therapies, brain machines and computers?
* What philosophical questions are posed by cyborgization, blurring of the real and virtual?
* Should we regulate cognitive enhancement, cyborgization and uploading?
* What implications do these technologies pose for personal identity and legal personhood? At what point, if any, do machine minds become rights-bearing persons?
Concrete examples - transcending biological limitations.
The coming Human-Machine Super Intelligence might still be some years out in the future. And sure, we might still not be entirely comfortable with the dawn of a new civilization that will enable us to transcend our biological limitations (and amplify our creativity). Nevertheless, Kurzweil does insist that it is coming. And the book is crammed with examples from recent years that does seem to help prove his point.
Reverse engineering parts of the brain.
a) An artificial Hippocampus.
Ted Berger, University of Southern California, is working on the world's first brain prosthesis. A brain chip - an artificial hippocampus.
The job of the hippocampus appears to be to ''encode'' experiences so they can be stored as long-term memories elsewhere in the brain. ''If you lose your hippocampus you only lose the ability to store new memories.'' says Berger. That offers a relatively simple and safe way to test the device: if someone with the prosthesis regains the ability to store new memories, then it's safe to assume it works.
The chip will be programmed to do the same transformations ordinarily performed by layers of the Hippocampus. Their plan is to test the chip in animals by disabling the corresponding part of the brain. Note the resulting memory failures. And then determining whether the mental functions can be restored by installing the hippocampal chip in place of the the disabled region [Singularity is Near - p 188].
The hippocampus has a similar structure in most mammals, so little will have to be changed to adapt the technology for people (Ted Berger argues). Obviously, human trials will only begin, when Bergers team have proved unequivocally that the prosthesis is safe. Will people eventually accept this transplant? Some say yes: Initially people thought heart transplants were an abomination because they assumed that having the heart you were born with was an important part of who you are!? Perhaps!
Still, replacing damaged tissue, - with computer hardware that performs a function formerly carried out by neurons -, is not trivial. However, ultimately, this approach could be used to replace the hippocampus in patients affected by strokes, epilepsy or Alzheimers disease. And from an artificial hippocampus, using implantables to enhance competency seems just down the road? Just a matter of time?
But, but... before this works you will have to figure out how to connect dendrites and axons of the surrounding brain tissue onto the artificial chip. Not a trivial task! :-) And testing the chip in any sensible way will probably also run into major difficulties. Because taking out the existing hippocampus and wiring this device in somehow would cause damage. More damage than it would potential cure?
b) An artificial Olivocerebellar region.
Modelling brain regions might still be useful, even if implants are to difficult for now. Further on in Kurzweils book one reads: Another region being modelled and simulated is the Olivocerebellar region, responsible for balance and coordinating the movement of limbs. The goal is to apply an artificial Olivocerebellar region in military robots and in robots that will assist the disabled. One of the reasons for selecting this particular brain region is that the region is present in all vertebrates.
According to Rodolfo Llinas, New York University Medical School: The assumption is that it is conserved in evolution because it embodies a very intelligent solution. Robots that uses artificial Olivo-cerebellar systems could be very useful in the future: Think of a paralyzed patient. It is possible to imagine that many ordinary tasks - getting a glass of water,dressing, etc. could be carried out by robotic assistance. [Singularity is Near - p 189].
Deep Brain Stimulation and Brain-Machine interfaces to empower paralyzed patients.
Here, some might ask: Has research in neural interfaces and development of neural prosthetics actually benefited patients? Certainly, the NINDS (US National Institute of Disorders and Strokes) seems quite adamant that it has: Neural interfaces have already provided substantive benefits to individuals. For example, the NIH had a key role in the development of the cochlear prosthesis, which bypasses damaged hair cells in the auditory system by direct electrical stimulation of the auditory nerve. In addition, neural interfaces, that allow deep brain stimulation, have been useful for some patients in reducing the motor symptoms associated with Parkinson's Disease. Where Deep Brain Stimulation uses a surgically implanted, battery-operated medical device called a neurostimulator (like a pacemaker) to deliver electrical stimulation to targeted areas in the brain that control movement, blocking the abnormal nerve signals that cause tremor and Parkinson symptoms. Stimulation from the neurostimulator is easily adjustable — without further surgery — If the patient’s condition changes. Some people describe the stimulator adjustments as ''programming'' .
And patients might soon benefit from Brain-Machine interfaces. In Berkeley, Jose Carmena and others are working on Brain-Machine interfaces to empower paralyzed patients. It has been demonstrated that: It is possible to train neurons in the motor cortex to gain stable control of a prosthetic device, and, most importantly, these neurons are able to retain this knowledge day after day. So, with Brain-Machine interfaces it might be possible to bypass damaged neurons, allowing intact cells to control computers and robots. The interfaces come in a variety of flavors, from invasive surgical methods to non-invasive electrode skull caps. The non-invasive approaches can be used to control computer cursors and spell words (albeit slowly), invasive methods may be more powerful, since proximity to neurons yields a stronger signal.
Synthetic biology - the next steps in human evolution?
And, silicon implants is not the only technology being tested for improving human cognition and health. At the Personal Genome Project they Develop a broad vision for how personal genomes may be used to improve the understanding and management of human health and disease. And foresee a day when many individuals will want to get their own genome sequenced so that they may use this information to understand such things as their individual risk profiles for disease, their physical and biological characteristics, and their personal ancestries. Discover Magazine (March 2010) puts it like this: The Personal Genome project aims to sequence the genomes of 100.000 volunteers for free. The project would provide the first extensive genome database that matches DNA to a wide range of traits. Height, eye color, disease histories and ... personalities? Eventually, with it - individuals can receive preventions and treatments tailored to his or specific genetic makeup, along with predictions of future health issues.
Genetics pioneer George Church takes it a little further (Discover Magazine, March 2010): When he is not involved in projects to engineer bacteria that can produce jet fuel, he is working on a technique he calls MAGE, learning how to insert multiple changes into the genome all at once. According to Discover - With a machine that speeds up evolution: It might provide a way to redesign our selves from the DNA up, so we might no longer be plain old Homo Sapiens.Eventually, this road might make people resistant to a lot of virusses, lengthen life spans, and increase human intelligence. It could advance human evolution, to places it has never gone before.
Church is certainly not a man to be easily stopped. Again, according to Discover Magazine: When Svante Paabo of the Max Planck institute announced that he and his team had sequenced about 63 percent of the Neanderthal genome - Church told the New York Times that a Neanderthal could be brough back to life with present technology for 30 million dollars. - The implications are so mindblowing, that I have to ask you: You dont see anything sacrilegious about this? - I wouldnt say sacrilegious, Church responds - Humans have been manipulating humans in many ways for many years.It would give us an inkling into an alien intelligence possiblely greater than our own.
A brave new world.
According to Kurzweil: Life a 100 years was short, labor intensive, powerty filled, disease and disaster prone... [Singularity is Near - p. 436].
But with the coming Singularity things are beginning to look better: Good news Ray, we've successfully reinstanted you into a more durable substrate, so you wont be needing your old body and brain anymore... [Singularity is Near - p 384].
And before that, nanobots that travel through the bloodstream, go in and out our cells and perform various services. Removing toxins, correcting DNA errors, repairing and restoring cell membranes, modifying the levels of hormones [Singularity is Near - p 257].
Some just can't wait:
I want to do something with my life. I want to be a cyborg.
Kevin Warwick.
While others are not entirely comfortable with nanobots inside the body being controlled by software over the internet. Maybe, some of us have read to much Greg Egan
(http://www.simonlaub.net/Articles/BrainMod.txt).
Sure, now your might think that ''the public will not sit still while the government upload their personalities and more''. But what about a hundred years from now?
For Kurzweil there is no going back: Once human intelligence is understood, expanding its abilities will be done by human scientists, Whose own intelligence has been applified through the merger with non biological intelligences. Over time the non biological portion will begin to dominate.... [Singularity is Near - p 296].
-Simon
http://www.simonlaub.net/
Ray Kurzweil explores mankinds ultimate destiny in the bestseller The Singularity is Near. How we will eventually transcend our biology, have radical life-span expansions, understand how the mind works and be able to build new ones - and much more.
So, are we ready for the Kurzweilian future?
Soon, according to Ray Kurzweil, we will be able to augment our bodies and minds with technology. Three important technologies of the 21st century: Genetics, nanotechnology, and robotics (including artificial intelligence) will drive humanity into Blade Runner territory. Here technology reaches a level of sophistication and fine-structuring comparable with that of biology, allowing the two to merge to create higher forms of life and intelligence. Eventually, Kurzweil predicts that this (our) human/machine civilization will expand its frontiers deep into the universe. And as computation and intelligence advances, as we move forward and upward, the end product will be human-machine super intelligence.
Not unlike Pierre Teilhard de Chardins Omega Point, in which mankind will have reached its highest point of complexification and thus its highest point of consciousness. At this point, according to Teilhard de Chardin, consciousness will rupture through time and space.
In The Phenomenon of Man Teilhard de Chardin states that the Omega Point will be
a) Personal – i.e. an intellectual being and not an abstract idea and
b) Transcendent. - Go figure! :-)
Frank Tiplers Omega Point follows suit. Here (at Tiplers Omega Point), the computational capacity of the universe (in terms of both its processor speed and memory storage) is also capable of increasing unlimitedly.
Back on Earth, Ray Kurzweil gives us a number of predictions for the years ahead, speeding ahead towards the coming singularity. Predictions fall in three categories:
a) Cognitive enhancements using pharmaceuticals, genetic therapies and tissue engineering. Direct modification of the organic brain will allow human beings to increase our intelligence, expand our memory, and sharpen our capacity for concentration.
b) 'Cyborgization' - the incorporation of devices, nanorobots and computers into the body. This trajectory may permit the augmentation of the senses with artificial hearing and sight superior to organic ears and eyes, the direct augmentation of cognition with brain prostheses, and connecting the brain wirelessly to the Internet. See Arthur C. Clarke's BrainCap.
c) Civilization (and cultural) enhancements through the creation of 'mind-children', computers and robots with at least, human-level cognition, emotions and abilities.
E.g. according to Kurzweil:
2020s - Personal computers will have the same processing power as human brains.
2020s - Highly advanced medical nanobots will perform detailed brainscans on live patients.
2030s - Mind uploading becomes possible.
2040s - Human body 3.0 (as Kurzweil calls it) comes into existence. Later, human beings will lack a fixed, corporeal form. (When in material form) Organs are gradually replaced by superior cybernetic implants. etc. Effective world domination is shared between machines and humans, who have evolved into postbiological cyborgs.
A ''runaway reaction'' of self-improvement cycles, turns these intelligences into one giant super intelligence. According to Kurzweil much of this will happen as early as 2199.
Sure, others might be worried sick about a coming age of Terminators on Windows. But, in the Kurzweilian universe things work out for the best. And it is both good and necessary that humans tamper with fundamental aspects of themselves. Indeed, one should look elsewhere for answers to questions like:
* What philosophical questions are posed by efforts to enhance intellectual, aesthetic and moral abilities with drugs, gene therapies, brain machines and computers?
* What philosophical questions are posed by cyborgization, blurring of the real and virtual?
* Should we regulate cognitive enhancement, cyborgization and uploading?
* What implications do these technologies pose for personal identity and legal personhood? At what point, if any, do machine minds become rights-bearing persons?
Concrete examples - transcending biological limitations.
The coming Human-Machine Super Intelligence might still be some years out in the future. And sure, we might still not be entirely comfortable with the dawn of a new civilization that will enable us to transcend our biological limitations (and amplify our creativity). Nevertheless, Kurzweil does insist that it is coming. And the book is crammed with examples from recent years that does seem to help prove his point.
Reverse engineering parts of the brain.
a) An artificial Hippocampus.
Ted Berger, University of Southern California, is working on the world's first brain prosthesis. A brain chip - an artificial hippocampus.
The job of the hippocampus appears to be to ''encode'' experiences so they can be stored as long-term memories elsewhere in the brain. ''If you lose your hippocampus you only lose the ability to store new memories.'' says Berger. That offers a relatively simple and safe way to test the device: if someone with the prosthesis regains the ability to store new memories, then it's safe to assume it works.
The chip will be programmed to do the same transformations ordinarily performed by layers of the Hippocampus. Their plan is to test the chip in animals by disabling the corresponding part of the brain. Note the resulting memory failures. And then determining whether the mental functions can be restored by installing the hippocampal chip in place of the the disabled region [Singularity is Near - p 188].
The hippocampus has a similar structure in most mammals, so little will have to be changed to adapt the technology for people (Ted Berger argues). Obviously, human trials will only begin, when Bergers team have proved unequivocally that the prosthesis is safe. Will people eventually accept this transplant? Some say yes: Initially people thought heart transplants were an abomination because they assumed that having the heart you were born with was an important part of who you are!? Perhaps!
Still, replacing damaged tissue, - with computer hardware that performs a function formerly carried out by neurons -, is not trivial. However, ultimately, this approach could be used to replace the hippocampus in patients affected by strokes, epilepsy or Alzheimers disease. And from an artificial hippocampus, using implantables to enhance competency seems just down the road? Just a matter of time?
But, but... before this works you will have to figure out how to connect dendrites and axons of the surrounding brain tissue onto the artificial chip. Not a trivial task! :-) And testing the chip in any sensible way will probably also run into major difficulties. Because taking out the existing hippocampus and wiring this device in somehow would cause damage. More damage than it would potential cure?
b) An artificial Olivocerebellar region.
Modelling brain regions might still be useful, even if implants are to difficult for now. Further on in Kurzweils book one reads: Another region being modelled and simulated is the Olivocerebellar region, responsible for balance and coordinating the movement of limbs. The goal is to apply an artificial Olivocerebellar region in military robots and in robots that will assist the disabled. One of the reasons for selecting this particular brain region is that the region is present in all vertebrates.
According to Rodolfo Llinas, New York University Medical School: The assumption is that it is conserved in evolution because it embodies a very intelligent solution. Robots that uses artificial Olivo-cerebellar systems could be very useful in the future: Think of a paralyzed patient. It is possible to imagine that many ordinary tasks - getting a glass of water,dressing, etc. could be carried out by robotic assistance. [Singularity is Near - p 189].
Deep Brain Stimulation and Brain-Machine interfaces to empower paralyzed patients.
Here, some might ask: Has research in neural interfaces and development of neural prosthetics actually benefited patients? Certainly, the NINDS (US National Institute of Disorders and Strokes) seems quite adamant that it has: Neural interfaces have already provided substantive benefits to individuals. For example, the NIH had a key role in the development of the cochlear prosthesis, which bypasses damaged hair cells in the auditory system by direct electrical stimulation of the auditory nerve. In addition, neural interfaces, that allow deep brain stimulation, have been useful for some patients in reducing the motor symptoms associated with Parkinson's Disease. Where Deep Brain Stimulation uses a surgically implanted, battery-operated medical device called a neurostimulator (like a pacemaker) to deliver electrical stimulation to targeted areas in the brain that control movement, blocking the abnormal nerve signals that cause tremor and Parkinson symptoms. Stimulation from the neurostimulator is easily adjustable — without further surgery — If the patient’s condition changes. Some people describe the stimulator adjustments as ''programming'' .
And patients might soon benefit from Brain-Machine interfaces. In Berkeley, Jose Carmena and others are working on Brain-Machine interfaces to empower paralyzed patients. It has been demonstrated that: It is possible to train neurons in the motor cortex to gain stable control of a prosthetic device, and, most importantly, these neurons are able to retain this knowledge day after day. So, with Brain-Machine interfaces it might be possible to bypass damaged neurons, allowing intact cells to control computers and robots. The interfaces come in a variety of flavors, from invasive surgical methods to non-invasive electrode skull caps. The non-invasive approaches can be used to control computer cursors and spell words (albeit slowly), invasive methods may be more powerful, since proximity to neurons yields a stronger signal.
Synthetic biology - the next steps in human evolution?
And, silicon implants is not the only technology being tested for improving human cognition and health. At the Personal Genome Project they Develop a broad vision for how personal genomes may be used to improve the understanding and management of human health and disease. And foresee a day when many individuals will want to get their own genome sequenced so that they may use this information to understand such things as their individual risk profiles for disease, their physical and biological characteristics, and their personal ancestries. Discover Magazine (March 2010) puts it like this: The Personal Genome project aims to sequence the genomes of 100.000 volunteers for free. The project would provide the first extensive genome database that matches DNA to a wide range of traits. Height, eye color, disease histories and ... personalities? Eventually, with it - individuals can receive preventions and treatments tailored to his or specific genetic makeup, along with predictions of future health issues.
Genetics pioneer George Church takes it a little further (Discover Magazine, March 2010): When he is not involved in projects to engineer bacteria that can produce jet fuel, he is working on a technique he calls MAGE, learning how to insert multiple changes into the genome all at once. According to Discover - With a machine that speeds up evolution: It might provide a way to redesign our selves from the DNA up, so we might no longer be plain old Homo Sapiens.Eventually, this road might make people resistant to a lot of virusses, lengthen life spans, and increase human intelligence. It could advance human evolution, to places it has never gone before.
Church is certainly not a man to be easily stopped. Again, according to Discover Magazine: When Svante Paabo of the Max Planck institute announced that he and his team had sequenced about 63 percent of the Neanderthal genome - Church told the New York Times that a Neanderthal could be brough back to life with present technology for 30 million dollars. - The implications are so mindblowing, that I have to ask you: You dont see anything sacrilegious about this? - I wouldnt say sacrilegious, Church responds - Humans have been manipulating humans in many ways for many years.It would give us an inkling into an alien intelligence possiblely greater than our own.
A brave new world.
According to Kurzweil: Life a 100 years was short, labor intensive, powerty filled, disease and disaster prone... [Singularity is Near - p. 436].
But with the coming Singularity things are beginning to look better: Good news Ray, we've successfully reinstanted you into a more durable substrate, so you wont be needing your old body and brain anymore... [Singularity is Near - p 384].
And before that, nanobots that travel through the bloodstream, go in and out our cells and perform various services. Removing toxins, correcting DNA errors, repairing and restoring cell membranes, modifying the levels of hormones [Singularity is Near - p 257].
Some just can't wait:
I want to do something with my life. I want to be a cyborg.
Kevin Warwick.
While others are not entirely comfortable with nanobots inside the body being controlled by software over the internet. Maybe, some of us have read to much Greg Egan
(http://www.simonlaub.net/Articles/BrainMod.txt).
Sure, now your might think that ''the public will not sit still while the government upload their personalities and more''. But what about a hundred years from now?
For Kurzweil there is no going back: Once human intelligence is understood, expanding its abilities will be done by human scientists, Whose own intelligence has been applified through the merger with non biological intelligences. Over time the non biological portion will begin to dominate.... [Singularity is Near - p 296].
-Simon
http://www.simonlaub.net/
How Empires fall, - and the rise and fall of Tiger Woods
http://s2.webstarts.com/xtragrovysite/howempiresfall.html
How great empires fall. Steep debt. Slow growth. It begins with a debt explosion. In ends with reduction in the resources available for the army.
http://s2.webstarts.com/xtragrovysite/tiger_woods_-_it_continues.html
It started out innocent enough.There is a car accident in his driveway.First the swedish wife rescues the poor golfer ...
Then things start to go wrong....pr. wise.Now she is actually the homewrecker, who smashed the car window with golf club?
and then things go really wrong .....
How great empires fall. Steep debt. Slow growth. It begins with a debt explosion. In ends with reduction in the resources available for the army.
http://s2.webstarts.com/xtragrovysite/tiger_woods_-_it_continues.html
It started out innocent enough.There is a car accident in his driveway.First the swedish wife rescues the poor golfer ...
Then things start to go wrong....pr. wise.Now she is actually the homewrecker, who smashed the car window with golf club?
and then things go really wrong .....
Fra data til tanker om tanker - Peter Naur 80 aar
Fra data til tanker om tanker - Peter Naur 80 aar.
Wednesday, May 12, 2010
Best way to embed video into website (was: Will flash continue to be popular? Future video standard?)
From: Simon Laub
Newsgroups: alt.www.webmaster
Sent: Tuesday, May 11, 2010 10:30 PM
Subject: Best way to embed video into website (was: Will flash continue to be popular? Future video standard?)
There are a lot guides out there on how to convert your video to flash flv and host it your website.But will Flash continue to be popular?
(I.e. You dont want to put a lot of work into a site that is going to be obsolete next year...)
And it is not very clear what the video standard is - or is going to be?
-----------
[[--- Well there is a new standard in HTML5 for playing videos using the >>VIDEO<<
Newsgroups: alt.www.webmaster
Sent: Tuesday, May 11, 2010 10:30 PM
Subject: Best way to embed video into website (was: Will flash continue to be popular? Future video standard?)
There are a lot guides out there on how to convert your video to flash flv and host it your website.But will Flash continue to be popular?
(I.e. You dont want to put a lot of work into a site that is going to be obsolete next year...)
And it is not very clear what the video standard is - or is going to be?
-----------
[[--- Well there is a new standard in HTML5 for playing videos using the >>VIDEO<<
Sunday, May 9, 2010
Positiv Psykologi - Noter fra kursus
Positiv Psykologi – Noter fra kursus, div links mm.
Kursus på FolkeUniversitetet, Psykologisk Inst.
Aarhus, forår 2010
I forbindelse med kursusrække på Aarhus FolkeUniversitet, foråret 2010, blev rigtigt mange ideer vedr. Positiv Psykologi (v. Martin Seligman m.fl.) behandlet.
Under kurset tog jeg noter. Dels vedr. emner behandlet på kurset, dels vedr. nogle af de mange associationer som kom op sideløbende i samtaler med medkursister mm.
http://www.simonlaub.net/Post/PositivPsykologiNoter.pdf
Kursus på FolkeUniversitetet, Psykologisk Inst.
Aarhus, forår 2010
I forbindelse med kursusrække på Aarhus FolkeUniversitet, foråret 2010, blev rigtigt mange ideer vedr. Positiv Psykologi (v. Martin Seligman m.fl.) behandlet.
Under kurset tog jeg noter. Dels vedr. emner behandlet på kurset, dels vedr. nogle af de mange associationer som kom op sideløbende i samtaler med medkursister mm.
http://www.simonlaub.net/Post/PositivPsykologiNoter.pdf
Friday, April 30, 2010
Et mesterværk - 2008
Håber Dorte Toft får Cavling prisen (2010).
http://bizzen.blogs.business.dk/
Snublede lige over et gl. blad, hvor man ser hvad hun var oppe imod i
sommeren/efteråret 2008. .....
Click 2 gange på billederne for at læse den oprindelige artikel i fuld størrelse.
http://bizzen.blogs.business.dk/
Snublede lige over et gl. blad, hvor man ser hvad hun var oppe imod i
sommeren/efteråret 2008. .....
Click 2 gange på billederne for at læse den oprindelige artikel i fuld størrelse.
Sunday, April 11, 2010
Top 10 reasons why people don't like robots
1. They will kill us.
2. They will turn us into slaves.
3. They destroy the free will.
4. They make sex old-fashioned.
5. They make us depressed over life's brevity.
6. They are annoyingly fearless.
7. They are ugly.
8. They destroy our memories.
9. They undermine human rights.
10. They are new and annoying.
More at:
http://www.simonlaub.net/Robot/whypeopledontlikerobots.html
2. They will turn us into slaves.
3. They destroy the free will.
4. They make sex old-fashioned.
5. They make us depressed over life's brevity.
6. They are annoyingly fearless.
7. They are ugly.
8. They destroy our memories.
9. They undermine human rights.
10. They are new and annoying.
More at:
http://www.simonlaub.net/Robot/whypeopledontlikerobots.html
Saturday, March 13, 2010
Arthur C. Clarkes Braincap
The Braincap is one of Arthur C. Clarkes predictions for the future.
Braincaps will directly link (bypassing ears, eyes, skin etc) the human brainwith seemingly unlimited computing power. Hooked in it will be possible to enterwhole new universes of experiences, real and imaginary.According to Clarke, braincaps will be available from around 2025.
''Any sufficiently advanced technology, is indistinguishable from magic.''. Arthur C. Clarke.
Our world is quite different from the world of our grandparents. Common words today like ''megabytes'',''hard drive'', ''back-ups'' and ‘''Googling'' probably would have been utterly meaningless to most peopleonly a few decades ago. Likewise , few of us can imagine what the world will be like,when real history begins in the year 2100 (according to Clarke).
Clarke didn't claim to be able to see into the future (noone can do that),totally unexpected inventions or events can render predictions absurd after only a few years.Clarke himself used the statement (made in the late 1940s by the then chairman of IBM),that the world market for computers was five, to show that making predictions is a tough game.
Nevertheless, Clarke was quite good at the prediction game. And his list of predictions for beyond 2001 stands not only as an informed guess, it has also for decades been an inspiration for coming scientists and engineers.
In the list, the braincap is predicted to be available from around 2025 (and in his novel ''3001''noone can imagine humans without it ...)And surely, the enhanced cognitive powers available with the braincap will be just like magic.A transhumanist singularity now dream coming true.E.g. with the ''braincap'' people could swap thoughts in the air: Instead of blowing a kiss to yourspouse at the airport, you could blow him or her an entire farewell letter, with photos and audioclips. Etc. etc.
Brain cap details
When neurological research comes to an understandingof all the senses, and direct inputs become possible (bypassing eyes, ears, skin etc.) people will beginthinking about linking the brain directly to computers.
According to Clarke, the result will be the metal "braincap". Anyone wearing this helmet, fitting tightly over the skull, will be able to merge in real-time with other minds over the (inter)net.Brain caps, Clarke explained, will also eliminate menial tasks: "I think it's imminent," he said,"For some simple things like switching lights on, or the air conditioner, or starting your car."
There is more:
a) The Braincap will be a boon to doctors, who can now experience their patients' symptoms (suitable attenuated).
b) It revolutionises the legal profession, as deliberate lying, with the right settings on the braincap, will thenbe impossible.
c) In education, the braincap will do away with thetraditional school system: In Clarkes ''3001: the FinalOdyssey'' astronaut Frank Poole (sent into the deepfreeze of space by the homicidal HAL) is revived and given a crash course in human history bya brain cap, which pumps information directly into his cerebral cortex. I.e. a braincap is fitted onto Pooles skull and the history and customs of humanityis downloaded into his brain.
d) In psychology, braincaps serves as an early-warning system for psychosis. Mental deviancies are treated immediately. As a result, no one in the fourth millennia starts wars, acts violently or has bad marriages. Sure, marriages have by then taken the eminentlyreasonable form of fifteen- year renewable contracts. Still, braincaps can pick up on unfortunate thoughtpatterns and automatically send people to couples therapy.
---
The braincap could indeed be the ultimate virus scanner. On constant lookout for mind viruses. And obviously, there must be a privacy issue or two with this scenario!?It gets worse though. Surely, people will want all/some of these biotech enhancements,to alter their personalities, boost intelligence, and live longer healthier livesHowever, as braincaps becomes more and more integrated with human brainsbuggy braincap software might be among the worst mental diseases of the future?
BTW. Who will be doing Quality Assurance on braincap software?And what kind of security will there be on links between braincaps andthe skynet braincaps are hooked in to?
Indeed, with a virus scanner, working inside the braincap, on the lookout for dangerousthought patterns and behaviours, future systems might conclude that humans runningaround out there IRL is just way to dangerous for their own good?Perhaps, it will be concluded that is much better to have the brains run Avatars,using telepresence. With human brains stored away in some safe environment?
Or perhaps, braincap enhanced life in the 21st century will only be little smarter,but just as dangerous as it has always been?
More on:Machines like us: [1]
Citizen cyborg: [2]
-Simon
Simon Laub
http://www.simonlaub.net/
XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX
Arthur C Clarke (1917 - 2008).
Is acknowledged as one of the greatest science fiction writers ofall time. His writing spans six decades and more than 100 books. In 1945 he was the first to propose using a network of satellitesin geo-synchronos orbit for telecommunication purposes. A vision which became a reality in the 1960s.
His writing has inspired many. Among them Tim Burners-Lee, who was inspired by ''Dial F for Frankenstein'', when he(and others) invented the world wide web. --- As a teenager, Berners-Lee read science fiction voraciouslyand was fascinated with Clarke's short story ''Dial F for Frankenstein'', in which computers are networkedtogether to form a living, breathing human brain
---
For 2025 Clarke predicted the braincap. That gives the brain direct access to seemingly unlimited computing power. Wearing this close-fitting helmet also makes it possible toenter a whole new universe of experiences, real and imaginary.According to Clarke: One factor that might delay its generaladoption is that the wearer would probably have to be completelybald to use the tightly fitting helmet.So wig-making could become really big business in a few decades..Whatever way they are eventually designed, advances in neurological understanding (to make direct links to the brain, by-passing eyes,ears etc.) and advances in computer technology should make braincaps a reality by 2025.
Braincaps will directly link (bypassing ears, eyes, skin etc) the human brainwith seemingly unlimited computing power. Hooked in it will be possible to enterwhole new universes of experiences, real and imaginary.According to Clarke, braincaps will be available from around 2025.
''Any sufficiently advanced technology, is indistinguishable from magic.''. Arthur C. Clarke.
Our world is quite different from the world of our grandparents. Common words today like ''megabytes'',''hard drive'', ''back-ups'' and ‘''Googling'' probably would have been utterly meaningless to most peopleonly a few decades ago. Likewise , few of us can imagine what the world will be like,when real history begins in the year 2100 (according to Clarke).
Clarke didn't claim to be able to see into the future (noone can do that),totally unexpected inventions or events can render predictions absurd after only a few years.Clarke himself used the statement (made in the late 1940s by the then chairman of IBM),that the world market for computers was five, to show that making predictions is a tough game.
Nevertheless, Clarke was quite good at the prediction game. And his list of predictions for beyond 2001 stands not only as an informed guess, it has also for decades been an inspiration for coming scientists and engineers.
In the list, the braincap is predicted to be available from around 2025 (and in his novel ''3001''noone can imagine humans without it ...)And surely, the enhanced cognitive powers available with the braincap will be just like magic.A transhumanist singularity now dream coming true.E.g. with the ''braincap'' people could swap thoughts in the air: Instead of blowing a kiss to yourspouse at the airport, you could blow him or her an entire farewell letter, with photos and audioclips. Etc. etc.
Brain cap details
When neurological research comes to an understandingof all the senses, and direct inputs become possible (bypassing eyes, ears, skin etc.) people will beginthinking about linking the brain directly to computers.
According to Clarke, the result will be the metal "braincap". Anyone wearing this helmet, fitting tightly over the skull, will be able to merge in real-time with other minds over the (inter)net.Brain caps, Clarke explained, will also eliminate menial tasks: "I think it's imminent," he said,"For some simple things like switching lights on, or the air conditioner, or starting your car."
There is more:
a) The Braincap will be a boon to doctors, who can now experience their patients' symptoms (suitable attenuated).
b) It revolutionises the legal profession, as deliberate lying, with the right settings on the braincap, will thenbe impossible.
c) In education, the braincap will do away with thetraditional school system: In Clarkes ''3001: the FinalOdyssey'' astronaut Frank Poole (sent into the deepfreeze of space by the homicidal HAL) is revived and given a crash course in human history bya brain cap, which pumps information directly into his cerebral cortex. I.e. a braincap is fitted onto Pooles skull and the history and customs of humanityis downloaded into his brain.
d) In psychology, braincaps serves as an early-warning system for psychosis. Mental deviancies are treated immediately. As a result, no one in the fourth millennia starts wars, acts violently or has bad marriages. Sure, marriages have by then taken the eminentlyreasonable form of fifteen- year renewable contracts. Still, braincaps can pick up on unfortunate thoughtpatterns and automatically send people to couples therapy.
---
The braincap could indeed be the ultimate virus scanner. On constant lookout for mind viruses. And obviously, there must be a privacy issue or two with this scenario!?It gets worse though. Surely, people will want all/some of these biotech enhancements,to alter their personalities, boost intelligence, and live longer healthier livesHowever, as braincaps becomes more and more integrated with human brainsbuggy braincap software might be among the worst mental diseases of the future?
BTW. Who will be doing Quality Assurance on braincap software?And what kind of security will there be on links between braincaps andthe skynet braincaps are hooked in to?
Indeed, with a virus scanner, working inside the braincap, on the lookout for dangerousthought patterns and behaviours, future systems might conclude that humans runningaround out there IRL is just way to dangerous for their own good?Perhaps, it will be concluded that is much better to have the brains run Avatars,using telepresence. With human brains stored away in some safe environment?
Or perhaps, braincap enhanced life in the 21st century will only be little smarter,but just as dangerous as it has always been?
More on:Machines like us: [1]
Citizen cyborg: [2]
-Simon
Simon Laub
http://www.simonlaub.net/
XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX
Arthur C Clarke (1917 - 2008).
Is acknowledged as one of the greatest science fiction writers ofall time. His writing spans six decades and more than 100 books. In 1945 he was the first to propose using a network of satellitesin geo-synchronos orbit for telecommunication purposes. A vision which became a reality in the 1960s.
His writing has inspired many. Among them Tim Burners-Lee, who was inspired by ''Dial F for Frankenstein'', when he(and others) invented the world wide web. --- As a teenager, Berners-Lee read science fiction voraciouslyand was fascinated with Clarke's short story ''Dial F for Frankenstein'', in which computers are networkedtogether to form a living, breathing human brain
---
For 2025 Clarke predicted the braincap. That gives the brain direct access to seemingly unlimited computing power. Wearing this close-fitting helmet also makes it possible toenter a whole new universe of experiences, real and imaginary.According to Clarke: One factor that might delay its generaladoption is that the wearer would probably have to be completelybald to use the tightly fitting helmet.So wig-making could become really big business in a few decades..Whatever way they are eventually designed, advances in neurological understanding (to make direct links to the brain, by-passing eyes,ears etc.) and advances in computer technology should make braincaps a reality by 2025.
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