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

"I, Gamer"

In a brief post at Terra Nova, Ren Reynolds wonders what the societal impact will be of a generation of game players that self-identify as "gamers." Without providing any answers - are there any now? - I just thought it was an interesting question, as was the title of his blog post.

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

Counter-factual history: playing "what if"

In a Long Now confrontation yesterday, historian Niall Ferguson and futurist Peter Schwartz squared off over how to assess the past and future. What biases do we bring to an interpretation of the past or of what might happen in the future? The following passage appealed to me because it suggested that wide thinking is needed about deep causes.

Also, I dig the idea of "counter-factual history."

Historians also have heuristic biases, Ferguson added, such as their expectation that 'great events should have great causes.' Historians have much to learn from complexity theory and evolution, he said. His own work with 'counter-factual history' helps expose critical moments in history and provides a way to 'think about what didn’t happen.' The counter-factual technique is an application of scenario thinking to the past.

The Long Now seminars, which have recently featured people such as Craig Venter, Paul Saffo and Nassim Nicholas Taleb, are archived here. Use this link to subscribe to the podcasts.

Wayne

Wikipedia: counter-factual history

Pretend Play and Metaphor

The importance of pretend play has long been noted as an important milestone in children's development.  Pretend Play allows children to experiment with social situations, strengthen vocabulary and build critical thinking skills. A child who engages in pretend play is also beginning the process of metaphorical thinking. 

One cannot think without metaphors. Metaphors are our way of making connections with the rest of the world; it is our way of understanding new ideas and learning. George Lakoff, another of my favorite linguists, explains the concept of metaphor and its relationship to our thinking. But what he doesn't do is talk about the process of becoming metaphorical.

That's where pretend play comes in.

What are the digital literacies?

Initial results from one of the largest ethnographic studies of kids in their native, digital environment are now available. Could the cheap availability of media be creating a new generation of creatives?

Sure, kids have long been attracted to extracurricular activities like dance or sports. But researchers say digital media is bringing up a new generation who are creators of media rather than just passive consumers of it. Within these digital environments among peers, kids who create and evaluate media are deriving a sense of competence, autonomy, self-determination and connectedness, researchers say.

The case studies discussed last Wednesday are part of a $50 million long-range MacArthur Foundation initiative, the digital media and learning project, to study whether - and how - digital media might be changing kids. Full results will be available later in the year.

More on the results of this study can be found on C|NET.

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

Playground architecture teaches "leaps and boundaries"

Not that my two children need any encouragement to swing on the Jungle Jim, but designing playgrounds to encourage that extra leap and to make failure a part of play certainly expand this parent's perspective about what's happening amid the giggles and shouts. Playgrounds teach life lessons.

Wayne

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