IdeaFestival

Seeing what you see

Can the epic problem of the mind, "the experience of our matter," the first-person experience, be modeled?

Jonah Lehrer writes about one attempt to do just that, the Blue Brain project.

Physics has a long history of breakthroughs fueled by conceptual ambition. Niels Bohr and Albert Einstein could conceptualize problems and answers by building abstract models using the accurate symbology of math, or drawing upon artful metaphors to visualize the unknowable. As Lehrer has pointed out elsewhere, one of Niels Bohr's central insights was that the world of electrons was essentially a Cubist world.

In the animal kingdom, intelligence comes at a cost

Does the ability to learn come at a cost to health? According to Carl Zimmer at Science Times, that's the conclusion from research showing that for some animals, being smart doesn't equate with living longer. The big idea, as one biologist in the story suggests, is this:

Dr. Kawecki suspects that each species evolves until it reaches an equilibrium between the costs and benefits of learning. His experiments demonstrate that flies [which he has trained to associate some foods with nourishment and some with predators!] have the genetic potential to become significantly smarter in the wild. But only under his lab conditions does evolution actually move in that direction. In nature, any improvement in learning would cost too much.

That cost is measured in other ways as well. Using the example of human infants, which come into the world in an obvious state of helplessness, another researcher put it this way:

'We use computers with memory that’s almost free, but biological information is costly,' Dr. Dukas said. He added that the costs Dr. Kawecki documented were not smart animals’ only penalties. 'It means you start out in life being inexperienced,' Dr. Dukas said.

"Lots of Animals Learn, but Smarter Isn’t Better" is well worth a few moments of your time.

Wayne

Large Hadron Collider to write modern chapter in creation story

In the latest in a series of terrific TED presentations filmed and posted to YouTube, particle physicist Brian Cox explains why the Large Hadron Collider matters.

Twelve particles of matter stuck together by four forces of nature interact in ways that have resulted in the mind and the eyes you are now using to read this post. To complete the mathematical equations in the Standard Model, which, as Cox says, elegantly describes why the sky is blue and could, given enough computing power, suggest why DNA is shaped the way it is, particle physicists want to uncover the Higgs Boson, which the last remaining undiscovered particle predicted by the Standard Model.

He concludes the 17 minute video with a three minute description of what particle physics means to him. Pointing to the stage props around him, he memorably says that everything from Saturn V rockets, to great literature to DNA to science itself "are the things that hydrogen atoms do when given 13.7 billion years." What's more, this narrative, which has only come into focus in the past fifty years, leaves him feeling privileged to be a part of this moment in history.

But to answer the question with which he begun, the LHC matters, he says, because it will write the next chapter of the creation story. Enjoy.

Wayne

Dirk Brockmann on "money circulation science" - IF Conversations

How might the spread of human influenza be modeled? By tracking the movement of dollar bills in the United States, of course! In this IF Conversation, Dirk Brockmann, a physicist at the Max Planck Institute for Dynamics and Self-Organization in Germany talks briefly about “Money-Circulation Science.”

Like the study of the spread of infection diseases, the application of physics concepts to biology and biological systems is the focus of wide inquiry. One book written for a mass audience that touches on biophysical concepts - as well as quite a number of others - is Robert Frenay's, Pulse.

See this clip and other brief video of IdeaFestival participants at IFTV.

Wayne

A science of consciousness? I doubt it.

If like me you really, truly, unhealthily enjoy reasoning about consciousness, the biennial Tucson Science of Consciousness get together has posted abstracts of presentations from its just-concluded conference. It was that conference and my discovery of David Chalmers' description of the "hard problem" of consciousness that got me interested in philosophy of mind in the first place, and I've since written about it here many, many times. If it's any consolation, I suffer just as much as you do.

At any rate, this ought to keep you busy for the next 24 months.

On Splintered Mind Eric Schwitzgebel describes his '08 Tuscon presentation and his doubts about the whole we'll-figure-it-out consciousness enterprise. If I understand his position correctly, brain science might eventually provide a truthful account of phenomenal experience, but subjective report is ultimately needed and those reports can be shown to be unreliable, as he has demonstrated through some experimentation.

Schwitzgebel offers a succinct explanation of this line of thought elsewhere on his blog.

Unlike natural and symbolic languages, which hold descriptive and predictive powers, your consciousness and mine is in direct contact the world, constantly editing reality so that it's intelligible and at some level, comprehensible. And unlike language, there are no one-to-one equivalences to be deployed in the conquest of matter, no clever formulas or stirring poetry to keep what's real at a manageable distance. Consciousness seeks meaning in a confrontation with everything, all at once.

This should boggle us. I'm not surprised that the mechanism itself should incomprehensible. And I too tend to think it will remain so.

Like I said, I enjoy this stuff.

Reading these words on your computer screen, you're probably aware of a certain phenomenal experience of your own. Something like 'wow!" And by "wow!" you're thinking that "Wayne has just had another one of his crap-tasm's!"

Says you.

I wouldn't know what you mean.

Wayne

Hawking: unintelligent life likely

Participating in NASA's celebration of 50 years of space exploration, famed physicist Stephen Hawking suggested that life in the universe might be common. Intelligent life? Not so much. 

Given the organic stew brewing in places elsewhere in our own solar system, the possibility that bacteria and other primitive life forms have managed to gain a foothold in hostile environments doesn't seem at all far-fetched. The expoplanet count, now 200+ strong, continues to expand; there is no reason to believe that ongoing refinements in discovery techniques won't quickly send the number of new planets much, much higher.

Surely there is another rocky world orbiting a distant sun in the Goldilocks zone.

And we also know that so-called "extromophiles" with no access to sunlight have managed to make a home near very hot sulphuric vents in the deepest parts of the Atlantic. Opportunistic, life would appear to have both means and opportunity - on Earth and off.

Wayne

Wikipedia: extremophile, exoplanetololgy

Be thankful, be happy

Sure there seems to be a fuzzy correlation between gratitude and a generally happy outlook on life. Many of you may know someone like that. Or conversely, perhaps you're acquainted with a hard-headed "realist" who has no time for such huff-puffery.

Still, can the practice of gratitude actually lead to happiness? Dave Munger reports.

Wayne

I want to be foolish like this

Writing about the death of MIT computer science professor, Joseph Weizenbaum, Harvard crank Nicholas Carr and Discover columnist Jaron Lanier use Eliza's tale to assay against errors of the computational kind.

Let me explain.

In the 1960's Weizenbaum created a program called Eliza that would rephrase statements as questions and pose them to test subjects in what became an infamous test of computer-human interaction. Some individuals came to believe that the computer program was a human and lessons drawn from the episodes found their way into Weizenbaum's Computer Power and Human Reason: From Judgment to Calculation, which Carr references in his post, Eliza's World:

Perhaps we are beginning to understand that the abstract systems — the games computer people can generate in their infinite freedom from the constraints that delimit the dreams of workers in the real world — may fail catastrophically when their rules are applied in earnest. We must also learn that the same danger is inherent in other magical systems that are equally detached from authentic human experience, and particularly in those sciences that insist they can capture the whole man in their abstract skeletal frameworks [emphasis supplied].

It's easy now to poke fun at the subjects who came to believe that Eliza was human. But the larger lesson that I take - and the one suggested by Carr - is that reason and logic are only part of the human experience.

That is particularly true when it comes to thinking because it is belief - and theatrically, the suspension of disbelief - that makes us human. Belief combined with experience holds out possible worlds for our examination; it is on the superstructure of belief that we can absorb wisdom, practice empathy, strive for justice and extend mercy where none may be merited.

As cheaply amusing as it might be in hindsight, what Eliza demonstrated was not that we can foolishly ascribe feelings to objects, but that it is the suspension of the facts that makes foolishness - as well as soul-stirring grace - possible. The rules be damned.

An interactive Web-based version of Eliza is here.

Wayne

Unwinding "Bolero"

What do the composer Maurice Ravel and Anne Adams, a Canadian scientist-turned-artist who died of a rare disease last year have in common? Both suffered from the same brain disorder and both produced memorable art at the age of 53 - Ravel composed "Bolero" and Dr. Adams painted it. New York Times:

'Bolero' alternates between two main melodic themes, repeating the pair eight times over 340 bars with increasing volume and layers of instruments.  At the same time, the score holds methodically to two simple, alternating staccato base lines.... [building] without a key change until the 326th bar. Then it accelerates into a collapsing finale.

Adams translated the music thusly:

Dr. Adams, who was also drawn to themes of repetition, painted one upright rectangular figure for each bar of 'Bolero.' The figures are arranged in an orderly manner like the music, countered by a zigzag winding scheme.... The transformation of sound to visual form is clear and structured. Height corresponds to volume, shape to note quality and color to pitch. The colors remain unified until the surprise key change in bar 326 that is marked with a run of orange and pink figures that herald the conclusion.

Because of the way one variant of the disease progresses, some individuals develop artistic talents as the brain literally reorganizes. For Adams that meant an area of the brain known to be responsible for the integration of perception such as color, sound, touch and space took on a larger role to compensate for the diminished capacity of the frontal cortex, resulting in an overwhelming creative urge and an ability to cross-scribe sense. Over a ten year period, Adams gave medicine unprecedented insight into that urge by undergoing periodic scans that documented the changes in her brain.

Her art may be found here and here.

Wayne

Wikipedia: Synesthesia

Generative Linguistics 101

For a quick history on the godfather of linguistics go to Noam Chomsky's website. Here you'll find all of his writings, tons of information on linguistics and many debates on the "Chomskian" theory of linguistics.  Chomsky is given credit for really expanding the science of linguistics and for theorizing that language is an innate, biological process that humans have from birth. Whether you believe that language is innate or that it is a learned process, reading Chomsky's stuff will really make you think about what you think. One has to admit, language, no matter where it develops, develops in a systematic manner.

Tina

Wikipedia: Norm Chomsky, generative grammar