Pew Research has a very interesting piece on the religious affiliations of members of the US House and Senate in the 116th Congress which began this month. As expected, Christians of various denominations dominate, with 293 Protestants, 163 Catholics, 5 Orthodox, and 10 Mormons out of 535 total members. As for the rest, 34 members are Jewish, 3 Muslim, 3 Hindu, 2 Buddhist, 2 Unitarians, and 1 Unaffiliated. Eighteen members did not provide the information. Apparently, not a single member had the guts to call themselves an atheist.
Saturday, January 5, 2019
Wednesday, September 13, 2017
Asma on the Nature of Imagination
In this fascinating piece, the philosopher Stephen Asma lays out a compelling case for why the faculty of imagination may be older - and conceptually prior - to language. In his formulation, wordless imagination was an earlier step above the "lizard brain" state of purely stimulus-response and instinctual behavior. It represented the ability of the brain to generate states that were not triggered directly by stimuli, i.e., a kind of confabulation. Language is then seen as a further complexification, where an apparatus evolved to harness the power of imagination to more useful ends.
This view resonates strongly with my own conception of the nature of the mind, which must be seen in an evolutionary and developmental context to be fully understood. The the "higher" capabilities of human and animal cognition are essentially layers built on top of the basic stimulus-response animal. As these layers of intertwining and autonomously activatable neural networks developed, they created increasingly complex ways for information to "dwell" and ramify within the brain, thus creating room first for imagination and then for language. And next, who knows for what?
This is especially significant in the quest for AI. The entire AI enterprise began with a top-down symbol-centered view. Even though that has now given way to more emergence-based conceptions such as neural networks and subsumption, the phylogenetic sequencing by which intelligence arose in the world is still not appreciated. Nor is the similar ontogenetic sequencing whereby a developing animal moves from a "primitive" stimulus-response functionality towards an increasingly "linguistic" one based on explicit communication. This is true not just in humans but also in primates, birds, probably cetaceans and many other vertebrates. Perhaps we need to abandon all the "short cut" methods we are currently using to produce artificial intelligence, and follow Nature's evolutionary pathway. Start with the simplest Braitenberg vehicles, and let them evolve brains capable first or imagination and then of language. It would be especially interesting to see whether these things emerge spontaneously as a consequence of complexification in brain and body.
This view resonates strongly with my own conception of the nature of the mind, which must be seen in an evolutionary and developmental context to be fully understood. The the "higher" capabilities of human and animal cognition are essentially layers built on top of the basic stimulus-response animal. As these layers of intertwining and autonomously activatable neural networks developed, they created increasingly complex ways for information to "dwell" and ramify within the brain, thus creating room first for imagination and then for language. And next, who knows for what?
This is especially significant in the quest for AI. The entire AI enterprise began with a top-down symbol-centered view. Even though that has now given way to more emergence-based conceptions such as neural networks and subsumption, the phylogenetic sequencing by which intelligence arose in the world is still not appreciated. Nor is the similar ontogenetic sequencing whereby a developing animal moves from a "primitive" stimulus-response functionality towards an increasingly "linguistic" one based on explicit communication. This is true not just in humans but also in primates, birds, probably cetaceans and many other vertebrates. Perhaps we need to abandon all the "short cut" methods we are currently using to produce artificial intelligence, and follow Nature's evolutionary pathway. Start with the simplest Braitenberg vehicles, and let them evolve brains capable first or imagination and then of language. It would be especially interesting to see whether these things emerge spontaneously as a consequence of complexification in brain and body.
Monday, April 10, 2017
Calamari Editors
It seems that octopuses, squids and cuttlefish are really good at using RNA editing to produce proteins that their genes don't code for. This interesting article argues that this flexibility may be an important component of their intelligence. It would be interesting to see if this also plays a big role in the remarkable ability of these animals to change color and camouflage themselves. However, this comes at a price, since it slows down evolution. So yeah, you can open bottles and change colors like nobody's business, but you'll always have eight tentacles growing out of your head....
Your Snout is Showing...
Never forget that when you eat chicken, you're eating a dinosaur. Now some scientists are beginning to unmask the chicken and show us it true face - snout and all. Be very afraid....
One quibble with this piece: There was nothing "accidental" about what happened here. These scientists were out to do exactly what they did. Now if only they'd hatch some of these ugly devils.
One quibble with this piece: There was nothing "accidental" about what happened here. These scientists were out to do exactly what they did. Now if only they'd hatch some of these ugly devils.
Brain Hacking
Getting earworms into your head isn't enough any more. It appears that social media and other on-line businesses are hacking into our brains in quest of clicks, eyeballs and ka-ching. If you are holding your cell-phone, put is down and move away slowly until you can neither see the screen nor hear alerts. Sit down and breathe normally. You'll feel much better in an hour .... that is if you can survive the anxiety of being far from your phone for an hour. Good luck!
Emergent Art - the Reddit Version
This really cool experiment on Reddit demonstrates how complex order can emerge bottom up from relatively simple rules under constraints. While it isn't clear that says all that much about the genesis of art, it certainly provides very interesting insights into the self-organization process - and especially on the delicate balance between randomness and constraint that seems to be essential to produce truly non-trivial and useful order.
(via Yaneer Bar-Yam)
(via Yaneer Bar-Yam)
Fair Inequality
In an interesting review piece in Nature Human Behavior, Starmans et al argue that, in realistic settings involving large groups, people show a preference for "fair inequality" over "unfair equality" in economic terms. The studies with children are the most interesting because studies involving adults are probably too confounded by political leanings and social norms.
"There is immense concern about economic inequality, both among the scholarly community and in the general public, and many insist that equality is an important social goal. However, when people are asked about the ideal distribution of wealth in their country, they actually prefer unequal societies. We suggest that these two phenomena can be reconciled by noticing that, despite appearances to the contrary, there is no evidence that people are bothered by economic inequality itself. Rather, they are bothered by something that is often confounded with inequality: economic unfairness. Drawing upon laboratory studies, cross-cultural research, and experiments with babies and young children, we argue that humans naturally favour fair distributions, not equal ones, and that when fairness and equality clash, people prefer fair inequality over unfair equality. Both psychological research and decisions by policymakers would benefit from more clearly distinguishing inequality from unfairness."
"There is immense concern about economic inequality, both among the scholarly community and in the general public, and many insist that equality is an important social goal. However, when people are asked about the ideal distribution of wealth in their country, they actually prefer unequal societies. We suggest that these two phenomena can be reconciled by noticing that, despite appearances to the contrary, there is no evidence that people are bothered by economic inequality itself. Rather, they are bothered by something that is often confounded with inequality: economic unfairness. Drawing upon laboratory studies, cross-cultural research, and experiments with babies and young children, we argue that humans naturally favour fair distributions, not equal ones, and that when fairness and equality clash, people prefer fair inequality over unfair equality. Both psychological research and decisions by policymakers would benefit from more clearly distinguishing inequality from unfairness."
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