Linkstew

One of the classic questions of cognitive science is "Why do things look as they do?" Two opposing answers to this question are "Things look as they do because we are the way we are," and "Things look as they do because the world is the way it is."

On the one hand, things look as they do because the world is the way it is. Photons are emitted by light sources, bounce off of things, and into our eyes. The wavelengths of these photons determines the colors we perceive.

But on the other hand, things look as they do because we are the way we are. Any optical illusion is evidence of this, because in an optical illusion we perceive something that is contrary to what exists in the world.

The Cognitive Science classes I've taken here at Berkeley concede the necessity of environmental stimulus, but beyond that are pretty organism-centric. The phenomenon of optical illusions (among others) is taken as evidence that our experiences of the world are dependent on our biology.

But "because we are the way we are" always seemed to be missing something for me, and today I figured out what it was.

Why do things look as they do?

Because we are the way we are because the world is the way it is.

We see the colors we do because our eyes are visible to a specific wavelength of light. Why are our eyes sensitive to visible light instead of infrared? Because the majority of the light that reaches the surface of the earth is in that wavelength. Why does the wagon wheel illusion occur? Because the proximity heuristic used to help solve the motion correspondence problem was more accurate than other failed (and hence unknown) heuristics, which gave the organisms with those heuristics an advantage.

If our species had developed on a world where gravity behaved differently, or where other wavelengths of light predominated, we would be different organisms, and we would most likely experience the world differently. Our brains were shaped by the environment in which they developed, making our experiences just as much a product of our environment as they are a product of our biology.

(Please note that I am not talking about "nature versus nurture." That's a whole other can of worms that I'm not even going to get into.)

Inspiration struck me tonight, and realized why I blog: I'm backing myself up.

Now stick with me for a moment while I explain this, because there were a number of steps involved in my reaching this conclusion.

When I find myself explaining the difference between "RAM" and "hard disk storage" to someone who doesn't really know computers, I always end up using the metaphor Computer Memory is Human Memory to help him understand things.

"RAM is like a person's short term working memory he uses when he's actively thinking about something," I tell him. "RAM is that 7+-2 you hear so much about. RAM is where your computer keeps what you're typing until you save the changes, just like short term memory is where your brain keeps what you're thinking about until you make the effort to 'commit it to memory.'"

"Hard disk storage, on the other hand, is like where your brain keeps your memory of your first kiss," I continue. "You have access to it when you want it, and the rest of the time it just sits in your brain until you need it. When you hit 'save,' the hard disk is the memory to which what you typed is committed."

"A person can only think about a few things at once with his short term memory, but by buying more RAM, your computer can think about more things at once. And a person can remember a lot more than he can think about, and by buying a bigger hard disk, your computer can remember a lot more." I explain.

But in Microserfs, a comment is made that "We've reached a critical mass point where the amount of memory we have externalized in books and databases (to name but a few sources) now exceeds the amount of memory contained within our collective biological bodies," and that statement stopped me in my tracks.

In a flash of insight, I turned the metaphor Computer Memory is Human Memory around, switched Human Memory to Human Knowledge, and ended up with Human Knowledge is Computer Memory.

Looking at it from that direction, I realized how amazingly volatile and short term all of human memory really is. We don't "save" things to our "long term" memory. Long term memory happens to be a little less volatile than working memory, but both of them will be lost if we crash.

I realized that if I don't externalize myself, then when I "shut down," my unsaved changes will be lost. I blog in order to save me. I'm backing myself up so that once I'm turned off, my data will still live on.

Through the looking glass of Human Knowledge is Computer Memory, my short term memory becomes registers for my CPU, and maybe a little cache, while my "long term" memory is just my main memory. It's all volatile, though. My blog is my hard disk.

And sprinkling in a little Douglas Adams for good measure, the human species becomes a massively parallel processing computer. Every human experience provides our internal computers with more data that, in combination with data each one of us has acquired by accessing stored human knowledge, produces more data that can be added to the human experience.

But to be part of the human experience, that information has to be saved, by blogging (or other means). Catalogued and indexed in computers, human experience is preserved and available for future generations to build upon, eventually synthesizing the question whose answer is 42.

That last paragraph is awfully human centric, but it's humans who save their changes for later humans to synthesize into still more complex ideas. Like this one.

This UNIX story reminded me so much of The Tao of Computer Programming that I even went and checked multiple versions of the tao to see if it had been added to one of them.

But nope, the story in question doesn't appear to be part of the tao at all. Though it really should be.

So in the fall, I'm thinking about taking Philosophy of Language with John Searle (TTh 2-330), followed immediately by Metaphor with George Lakoff (TTh 330-5). For those of you who aren't in the know, Searle and Lakoff are both hugely egotistical. And while each of them has bigger fish to fry, their paths intersect often enough for there to be some irony in taking that pair of classes. Basically, I think this might be simultaneously one of the worst and best ideas I've ever had. Here's a couple of random comments that people have shared with me on the prospect:

"It would be like escaping the pull of one black hole, only because you were sucked in by another one."
-- Alert, on the prospect of Searle followed immediately by Lakoff.

"It would be like a binary ego system. They don't want anything to do with each other, and yet no matter how hard they try, they can't get away from each other."
-- Pi.

I'm not actually sure if I'll actually end up taking Searle, but I'm definitely taking Lakoff. Mmm, Metonymy.

AI looked interesting, and so I saw it. I would have paid to see it, but I happened to see it for free, and that made it's flaws much easier for me to overlook. But for me to write this, I'm going to have spoil a few things -- so if you're planning on seeing the movie and don't want anything spoiled, then go see it: it's worth it, as long as you want a thoughtful movie.

The movie clocked in over two hours, but thanks to some really strange pacing, it actually seemed much longer. The movie has three distinct pieces, but the transitions between the pieces were a little weak, and the final piece felt really tacked on -- almost like an afterthought. The movie was a futuristic Pinnochio -- In fact, AI admits up front that it's carved from the same block of wood as Pinnochio, and it's almost too easy to map everything in AI to Pinnochio. But though it effectively told the story of Pinnochio, AI managed to offer a new perspective on what it is to be human just because the idea of David hits close to what your average viewer thinks is possible.

The dialogue was stilted in places, but the actors did their best with what they had. But for me, the dialogue was more than made up for by the amazing images and ideas that were the focus of the movie. Even now, thinking about David exploring a submerged Coney Island brings me a sense of wonder.

So what is it that I thought was so ridiculous about the movie right at the end? That David is (more or less) granted his wish because a mechanical Teddy Bear had picked up a lock of hair from the ground. This turned a glaring spotlight on many little bubbles that I'd overlooked earlier in the movie, and which generally left me irritated. Oh well.

I don't feel satisfied with what I've said here about this movie, because it's a complicated movie, and I haven't really talked about what the movie said, just how the movie said it... But I enjoyed the movie, and I wouldn't have minded paying to see it. For the last third of the movie, in that final sequence, the whole audience was fidgety, and some people were outright laughing at it. And when the last light went out, people burst into words -- "Worst movie I've seen in a long time" -- "Who wrote this thing?" -- "I wish I hadn't wasted my money on this" (Heh, if only he knew) -- and so on. And all of those negative opinions made me double check, to make sure that I actually had enjoyed it. And I had. It made me think. It certainly wasn't perfect, but it made me think. I wish more movies did that. 4/5.

At this point, the story of Kaycee Nichole has been covered everywhere from CNN to the New York Times. I haven't seen anything this talked about on the web since November 7th, 2000. For those who don't have any clue what I'm talking about, I'll just link to this msnbc article, because I haven't been paying attention to this topic at all, so I actually have any useful links. I've just read what Kevin and Eve had to say about the situation. (Here are three more links about Kaycee that Eve sent me, if you want to dig deeper.) And today, with still more news on the subject being created, I finally spent a few minutes thinking about it, and this is what occured to me.

First, I'll describe how I understand the situation, because it'll help you understand where I'm coming from if I'm way off base. Girl with a terminal illness has an online journal, chronicling her fight. People read Girl's journal, feel happy when Girl gets better, feel sad when she gets worse. People are affected by Girl. Girl was an incredible optimist, who helped others see a little beauty around them. Girl dies. People around the net are very sad, but other people around the net are suspicious, and snoop around, and ask too many questions, and uncover that Girl did not exist, and as such, never died.

People believed in Kaycee as much as they believe in George W. Bush, though they'd never met her, and all they had to go on were some pictures and phone calls and a lot of meaningful words. Belief is an essential part of the world, as any avid Pratchett fan is well aware. People believed in Kaycee, and therefore, she existed, if not in reality then in the hearts and minds of readers around the world.

Kaycee existed, and Kaycee died, because people believed she did. I had never read her journal, but when I heard she died, I believed right along with everyone else. Apparently some people feel let down, having placed their belief in a fiction, and having cried for a fiction, and yet people willingly cry for books and movies all the daily.

And if you don't like that point of view, then look at it this way: People no longer believe in Kaycee, and without her belief, Kaycee is dead. Dead any way you look at it. And if she's dead any way you look at it, then being sad for her passing is a perfectly natural thing, even if the death was a metaphysical one.

The question, then, isn't one of whether or not she was real, but of the intentions of the deceiver. And as far as I can tell, everyone involved claims that no money or gifts were ever asked for. In this light, belief in Kaycee was an investment which didn't require anything other than the time to read her journal, and if her journal made the reader happy or sad, then it was time well spent. She didn't ask for any money to keep her "church" (web page) running, and she didn't ask for you to even believe in her. If you enjoyed reading what Kaycee had to say, and if she made you happy or sad, then your belief was well founded and the reward was free.

If people are this upset about the Kaycee situation, I'd love to see what'd happen if anyone ever proved The Bible to be fiction and showed a whole lot of people how ill-placed their belief was.

It seems to me that believing in Kaycee may have been an even better way to spend your belief than believing in some religious character.

Over lunch with a co-worker, I brought up some of the stuff I was rambling about after seeing The Mummy Returns last night, and we figured out why computer generated voices aren't as interesting to movie makers as computer generated visuals. The reason, we decided, was because there is no need for computer generated voices.

"Well, do we even need computer generated animation?" You might find yourself asking. And the answer to that is definately yes. In the Pearl Harbor trailer, there is a scene in which the camera flies around some planes flying in formation, and then one of them drops a bomb and the camera follows the bomb as it falls and strikes a ship. Now I'm not a movie maker, but I'm pretty sure that would be hard to do the old fashioned way.

But with voices, there's no need to generate them. It's pretty easy to record a voice, and at worst, it might need to be modified with a computer to create an echo or alter the pitch. And if all else fails, todays speech synthesis tools probably provide the desired fake voice. In fact, the only synthesized voice I can think of hearing lately is when Dr. Hawking is on a show, or is made fun of. So with that taken into consideration, I'm not sure if there'll ever be much demand for a computer which can produce voices.

Of course, this has nothing to do with the demand for a machine which can produce voices, but a computer and a machine, as Searle will remind you, are different things. So if you're not keeping score, just remember that a computer is something which manipulates symbols and follows instructions, while a machine can go further and do more. It's the difference between simulation and duplication.

Billy, you should get to be good friends with Pill, because for the rest of your life, you're going to be stuck in this pill based culture. This Article on msnbc is very scary -- Schools demanding that parents give their children Ritalin. I wonder when it'll be revealed that whichever drug super power owns the name Ritalin is funding children's television and bribing these school officials...

Who, me? No, I'm not paranoid. Just a little bitter. Sure, I pop aspirin all the time, but I believe that they work. If someone replaced my apsirin with sugar pills, my belief would work just as well as the aspirin. Unfortunately, I can't replace them myself, because then my mind wouldn't let the trick work.

Belief is a damn powerful healer, but in this "advanced scientific age," people no longer believe in belief or other forms of healing -- they need "advanced" medicines and surgeries -- I'm just as vulnerable to this as anyone else, but I can recognize it in myself and others.

It's a shame to see pills being forced upon little billy as soon as possible. "Get him hooked on the program," the drug makers say. "Make him believe in us."

I took Philosophy 132 to satisfy one of my major requirements, and assuming I pass it, it will. Not that I'm overly worried about not passing it, but I don't feel that I did stupendous on my final, and my feeling seems to be worse than everyone else I've talked to. The title of the class was "Philosophy of Mind," but I think a better title probably would have been "Philosophy of Searle."

You see, the course was taught by John R. Searle, and Searle wrote the books we read in the class.

If I'd taken this class from anyone but Searle, it probably would have been a fairly even and objective summary of several points of view, instead of the Searle is right and here is why everyone else isn't point of view. Though he admits that some other people are right, too. But only when what they said happens to agree with him.

So while the course material was a little skewed, and Searle had some strange ideas about attendance, Searle is an Okay lecturer. He managed to be amusing at least once a lecture, and he knows what he's talking about. However, one problem with his lectures was that hunks of them were frequently straight out of his books, right down at the wording, even though he seemed like he was being spontaneous. Another problem was that he was too easilly sidetracked, meaning he frequently didn't cover everything he intended to cover. Also, the topics presented in class didn't always seem to flow together. He frequently seemed to be repeating himself, also.

The papers were fine, but a Philosophy final sucked. I suppose that a final is necessary to make sure that people have read the material and not just read what was necessary to write a paper, but dang, having to study "The Philosophy of Searle Mind" and being able to regurgitate it on a final is a large task.

Given that Searle is heavilly entrenched right now, I spent a lot of time wondering what will become of him and his views when he's dead and gone. He's been loud enough and made a big enough splash that he'll be on the books for a long time to come, but will it be as a footnote saying "He thought all this, but he's wrong", or will he be right, or what? Once he's gone, will his views wither away without anyone to defend them, or has he built enough of a following? It'll be interesting -- remind me to check back in 50 years, if I'm still around.

Today in Philosophy, Searle somehow got off on a tangent talking about Chaos Theory and The Butterfly Effect. He mentioned that while the Butterfly Effect was an outrageous example, he agreed that weather is such a complex system that the smallest details do have an impact on the actual weather. However, For someone reason that I didn't quite catch due to studying for Japanese, he said that he didn't agree that something like Chaos Theory was to play in the mind. Maybe I heard that wrong, but that's about what I caught. In other words, he was saying that he didn't think that what The Society for Chaos Theory in Psychology and Life Sciences is about is correct.

Then, however, came the punchline. He said something along the lines of "I don't believe that something like chaos theory applies to human consciousness, because if it did, the hotdog I ate yesterday are the butterflies in my stomach, so to speak." Oh man, I'm still laughing over that. So Funny! I wonder if he knew he was being funny?

Back to the matter at hand, however -- I'm kind of torn on the issue. On one hand, arguing for something like chaos theory of the mind is pretty much arguing for determinism, because something millions of years ago sent into events that are still happening today. On the other hand, there is a complex network of connections, and past events do have an effect on future events. Tough Call. No matter which side you take, though, you can use Searle's joke.

It's currently 6am on Thursday, September 28. What a shitty time to be up. I'm currently working on my paper for philosophy 132, after I went to sleep at around 1:30 am, having been relatively unproductive to that point.

What I'm not mentioning is the part where I have a sore throat, a bit of a fever, stuffy throat and nose, and the kind of headache where the more you move, the more you hurt. And on top of all those symptoms I've got allergies, which only amplify several of the symptoms. Whine. Complain.

Back to the allegory of the people in the cave by the greek guy no one understands. Oh wait, wrong class. Back to the allegory of the bats with no sensations by the the weird guy that searle -- I can't remember if searle disliked or liked the bat guy. I guess my first guess would be dislike, knowing Searle.

The very last thing to happen to me in my life occurred on March 29, 1980. This happened a little bit later than it should have happened, but on the whole, it was pretty close.

The very last that has happened in my life was my birth.

The very last thing that will happen to me hasn't happened yet, and I don't know when it will happen. If fiction is any clue, it will be a cold and damp day, and birds will chatter as the world is silent.

The very last that will happen in my life will be my death.

The proposal that I turned 12 before I turned 11 but that I will turn 42 before I turn 43 draws funny looks from people, but when I state that I was born after I'd experienced my first step, or my first word, people grow upset.

Understanding, let alone accepting, any view of time other than the 'natural' human view (Well, more the view of "Western Culture", but whatever) requires quite a large paradigm shift, and it's one that most people aren't willing to try.

Right now I am 18, and I will most clearly turn 19 before I turn 20. Looking in the direction of the future, one thing very clearly has to happen before the next can happen. Looking forward, it is clear that the last thing to happen will be my death, which could happen at the age or 27 or at the age or 98.

Right now, I am 18, but before that I was 17, and before that 16. Looking in the direction of the past, one thing very clearly happened before another. Looking into the past from the present, I was clearly 17 before I was 16, and 16 long before I was born.

This makes enough sense, but conflicts with a human understanding of time. Humans view time as having a begining and an end, with the begining coming before the end. When I say that I turned 17 before I was born, I am looking at a world in which time has no begining or end, just now.

From now, there is the past and the future. The past is what happened before now, and the future is what will happen after now. There are any number of pasts which could have led to now, but we only remember one particular past. Likewise, there are any number of futures which could happen after now, but because the future has yet to happen, we don't remember which particular future happened yet.

The potential futures which are available to us in the present are determined by the one past of the many potential pasts which we remember. I remember the past in which I went to West High School, was shaped by my experiences at Stine Elementary and was born a boy on March 29, 1980. This past clearly leads to the present in which I am at Berkeley, and confines the potential futures to those which stem from this present and the past which I remember. Another possibility may have been that I went to BHS, was shaped by experiences at Roosevelt and was born a girl on April 1, 1980. If I remembered that past, I would be a girl in the present, and the potential futures would be restricted to the set in which I am a girl.

There are a countless number of things that could happen to me in the future, but the number that can happen in the near future is significantly less than the variety that exists in the far future. Likewise, any number of things could have led to the present, but the near past had fewer possibilities than the far past did to achieve this particular present.

The future and the past are remarkably similar, and yet everyone understands them as being two distinctly unique things, each occuring in a different order. Clearly, it makes more sense to view both past and future as being different instantiations of a general form, which varies only in the fact that one has yet to happen while the other has already happened.