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

Information age: what happens to the "cognitive surplus?"

Making the rounds in support of his new book, Here Comes Everybody, digital media theorist Clay Shirky has been asking some provocative questions lately - for example, is there a cognitive surplus waiting to be tapped? 

Put another way - and I think this is a Shirky formulation from several years ago and a question for which I certainly have no answers - what happens to society when everything knowable can be known? He elaborates on these and other issues in the video above.

Wayne

"The Last Lecture"

It's a smash on YouTube. The New York Times, the USA Today and others have run articles on the book. And last Thursday while sitting in a local the coffee shop I overheard three women talking about it. So perhaps you too have heard about the "last lecture."

What would you say if you knew you were dying?

Wayne

 

What's it like to be me?

Wired has just concluded a contest that invited readers to submit self-portraits. Reader favorites are here and editor favorites, here. There are some awfully interesting and skillfully done compositions, so give them a look.

Wayne

The biggest questions are human questions

Covering the presentations at this year's TED, Ethan Zuckerman has wrapped up his marathon liveblogging effort with posts that drive home the point that the Big Questions that were theme of TED08 have all-too-human dimensions.

One post points out the lack of political diversity at TED and describes why people of all political persuasions need humility.

Using the famous Zimbardo experiments and, more recently, the torture of prisoners at Abu Ghraib, another post describes the latent capacity of everyone to engage in behavior that under normal circumstances we wouldn't even contemplate. Why, indeed, do ordinary people do evil things?

And lastly, read Ethan's post about why John Francis didn't speak for 17 years. What did he - what can we - learn by not talking?

Wayne

"Fastest global diffusion of technology in history"

What does it mean when there is one cell phone for every two people on the planet? The Washington Post reports. Hat tip: Putting People First.

Wayne

Mystery, problem, enigma, riddle, puzzle

Nosing around the Web while doing Friday's post on dark energy - what should we make of the unknown? - I looked up "mystery" at Merriam Webster online. The entry characterized many kinds of not knowing, which seems like an odd thing to want to know, but since a solid understanding of the nature of any problem will shape the solutions that follow, I thought the distinctions were helpful. Here they are.

mystery applies to what cannot be fully understood by reason or less strictly to whatever resists or defies explanation <the mystery of the stone monoliths>. problem  applies to a question or difficulty calling for a solution or causing concern <problems created by high technology>. enigma  applies to utterance or behavior that is very difficult to interpret <his suicide remains an enigma>. riddle  suggests an enigma or problem involving paradox or apparent contradiction <the riddle of the reclusive pop star>. puzzle  applies to an enigma or problem that challenges ingenuity for its solution <the thief's motives were a puzzle for the police>.

Wayne

Creativity needs constraints

As jazz great Charles Mingus famously said, 'You can't improvise on nothing, man; you've gotta improvise on something.'

In "Get Back in the Box" Fast Company points out that creativity needs constraints.

Wayne

Machines (more) like us

If we aren't exactly machines, could machines be more like us? Having written about the necessity of emotion for thought a couple of times, a post from Luciano Floridi about a forthcoming book on sociable robotics grabbed my attention for his unexpected pairing of two words. If emotion is required for thought, if knowing is a matter of biology, how might synthetic emotion be created? I really hadn't thought of it that way before.

Wayne