Extravolution

Thinking with my Gut

2011-11-15T15:28:00.013Z

I have been practising mindfulness. It's an attempt to get my 'noisy' thoughts under control: I seem to have a 'wordy' brain and the crosstalk can get intrusive to the point where my thoughts sometime feel like the reception of a badly-tuned radio.

Mindfulness can bring odd sensations to the surface. One that has been strengthening is the notion that I have been thinking with my gut. It feels like my gut is contributing to the neural 'interference' and that there is a corrosive 'looping' of disquiet between my gut and my brain. Conversely, a conscious effort to relax my gut during meditation seems to quieten my thoughts.

Gut neurons are much underestimated. Your gut contains a quantity of neurons approximately equivalent to that of a cat brain. It seems perversely brain-centric (and I've certainly been guilty of this) to assume that our total emotional state stems entirely from the limbic system, but it's somehow hard to imagine how our gut might contribute to our state of mind. But contribute it does, and strongly. The 'enteric nervous system', as it is known, is a network of neurons with a complex and quite independent circuitry all of its own. It is entirely capable of sending signals up to the 'head brain' as well as receiving 'afferent' (incoming) signals.

So where in the system does the disquiet start? Perhaps that's a redundant question. Who's to say that feelings of anxiety, upset or depression must always start in the brain then feed into the enteric nervous system. Maybe, at least sometimes, we start with an uncomfortable gut and that feeds into the loop a message that something is wrong or 'out of kilter', leading to general disquiet throughout the system. I am trying, for my own reasons at least, to see the problem as not starting at any specific point in the system: it doesn't really matter where it started - if it has become a loop of corrosive thinking and feeling then it needs to be calmed in order to restore balance.

I think that the mindfulness practice helps to reveal the action of these interacting systems. The partial sensory deprivation bubbles these other, more subtle, cues to the surface. But what to do if your gut feels anxious? A command and control strategy seems inappropriate: I don't want to instruct my gut to behave, I just want to regain equilibrium. There's no easy way to visualise how one might go about mediating the 'dialogue' between the brain and the gut but I am fairly confident that this is something that will come to me in time if I keep up the mindfulness practice. The smooth muscle of the gut wall does seem to respond to gentle persuasion but being able to frame that persuasion at will does not come easily to everyone.

We hear a lot about serotonin because of its involvement in feelings of well-being (or of depression where levels are too low). Antidepressants such as Prozac are part of a class of drugs known as SSRIs (Selective Serotonin Reuptake Inhibitors). But many are not aware that serotonin is predominantly a neurotransmitter of the gastrointestinal (GI) tract. You are having literal 'gut feelings' and scientists are using this fact to try to control your emotions. There is some evidence, however, that the effectiveness of these drugs declines over time as receptors become 'desensitised' and begin to revert to their former states.

We're also well used to hearing of people taking 'stomach pills' such as Losec or omeprazole. These drugs are PPIs (Proton Pump Inhibitors) and are highly effective at inhibiting acid secretion in the stomach. These are powerful drugs but we tend to take them for granted and I wonder about their potential effects on the ability of the enteric nervous system to find its own comfortable level of secretion in harmony with the brain.

I'm fortunate that I've never had to take antidepressants, or indeed PPIs. I sometimes find my mental 'noise' unsettling but it is not distressing to the point where I would consider medication. I have a pervasive feeling that a state of prolonged equilibrium should be possible if I work at it. This may just be wishful thinking but it is a type of wishful thinking that my gut seems to approve of.

A Leadership of Empaths

2011-02-04T15:48:00.006Z

I wrote, a while back in a post called 'Cognitive Democracy', about the idea of intensive psychological evaluation of political candidates in order to find out their true motivations, before they ever have a chance to gain power.

My proposed barrage of tests was something of a blunt instrument in that the specifics of the testing methods were a little ill-defined. My interest in the subject of empathy has now led me to think that the ability to empathise is one of the main defining characteristics of an emotionally-rounded human being. Perhaps, then, scientific evidence of this ability in a given individual should form the core of the "fitness for Office" evaluation.

The definition of what constitutes true empathy may be a human construct but the faculty to empathise is formed of real structures in the brain. It seems odd for me to have to point this out, as it seems self-evident. But empathy strikes many as a woolly concept, too mired in Freudian psychobabble and gender stereotyping to take seriously as a measure of worth. Regardless of these outdated views, progress towards a scientific understanding of the 'mechanics' of empathy has moved on apace.

I remember being fascinated and delighted to find out, a few years ago, about the existence of what became known as 'mirror neurons'. These are a class of neurons that fire both when an animal is undertaking a given action itself and when it observes that action being undertaken by another. Scientific opinion on the role of mirror neurons in empathy, is divided. But it's clear why scientists might form such a hypothesis. If we see another creature, particularly another human, experiencing physical or emotional pain it's likely that the overall strength of our resulting mirror neuron firing can be correlated with the strength of what one might call our 'empathic response'.

In summation of the above, this hypothesis suggests that if we have trouble 'mirroring' the feelings of others then we have may be unable to sustain a coherent 'theory of mind' about them and, therefore, may be unable to relate to them as thinking, feeling entities in their own right. This brings to mind Kant's 'Categorical Imperative': "The second premise is that conduct is "right" if it treats others as ends in themselves and not as means to an end (the "Second Maxim")".

But I didn't intend this to meander off into philosophy. The point is that empathy is not a philosophical construct but a physical reality. In the above example it follows that if your mirror neurons are few in number you may find yourself physically unable to empathise. Even if the mirror neuron hypothesis is not completely correct it is still the case that we now have scientific methods for measuring empathic response. Recent studies, such as this one undertaken at Columbia University, have mapped the brain regions involved using functional MRI. As Dr Michael Mosley found in his recent BBC series The Brain: A Secret History, discovering via fMRI that your empathic response is weaker than you had led yourself to believe, can be an uncomfortable experience.

It's interesting to note that, as well as regions of the parietal and premotor cortex, some regions responsible for the control of our own emotional responses, were involved. This could be interpreted as an indication that the empathic response is a highly evolved one, bearing little relation to the 'gut emotional responses' of 'old brain' areas such as the amygdala. I like to think of empathy as the ability to emoting with your new brain, rather than your old one. In fact being an 'amygdaloid' (a potential term for an amygdalocentric person) might strongly mitigate against the development of a healthy empathic response.

So we now have the tools to identify individuals with weak empathic response. What are the implications of this and how do we use the knowledge responsibly? I would argue that not using it to test those who seek great power, would be a dereliction of duty. In this scenario we have the ability to get closer to the core of an individual's 'theory of mind'. Not to humiliate them by peeling away their mental defenses but to understand them more clearly, in order to see that what some may perceive as a strength is actually a weakness. I would like to think that treatments could be developed in order to help such people to relate to their world in a fuller and more fruitful way.

Humans lacking empathy may be wandering in a dark and terrible place: They exist in a world that they cannot understand, separated from the rest of humanity, deluged by a continuous flow of the apparently meaningless emotional outpourings of others. They cannot understand that the ability to empathise enriches our lives and allows us to see the similarities between ourselves and others, thus enabling us to dream of richer things than power and privilege. But perhaps these thoughts never even cross their minds.

Those that can empathise strongly with the plight of others less fortunate than themselves, and can turn that emotion into positive action, are a healing force in the world. Those that cannot empathise need help, not power.

Avatar Abuse

2010-11-10T10:56:00.008Z

Last evening, whilst watching television, I noticed an advert for a bread product called "Genius". It wasn't the nonsensical name of the product that caught my eye but the fact that they were using a CGI'd Albert Einstein to promote it. I have been thinking for a while about this growing trend of "re-animating" dead people to use for commercial purposes. I am not altogether comfortable with it.

The famous faces being portrayed are dead, so the use/abuse of their "image" is of no concern to them. My argument is not really to do with dignity either, as I often wonder about the true motivation of those seeking to preserve the "dignity" of the dead. Neither is this connected to the issue of rights or legality: some individual or corporate body (sic) has presumably sold the rights to the deceased's "image" to the marketeers: I am sure the transactions were all above board - at least within the hopelessly anachronistic confines of our current legal systems. My concern is the larger issue of the overall control of the wider "self" or avatar.

It's unlikely that Einstein (for example) would have spent a great deal of time worrying about how his image might be used after his death. He may not have imagined the technology that would make such accurate visual re-animation possible. We can be pretty sure, however, that given a choice of uses of his avatar, having it punting bread-products would not have been high on his list. But this is a flippant example. Now imagine your avatar being used for purposes you positively detest: you were a conservationist but your avatar is a smiling apologist for an oil company; you were an atheist but your avatar is a kiddie-fiddling priest; you were a lifelong anti-militarist but your avatar is a gun-runner in an 18-cert blood and guts video game. And so on. We may get the chance, if we are forced down this route, to protect against these abuses in our wills. But the less-recently deceased will not.

I think that this kind of burgeoning abuse is connected to our own mistaken "body centrism": we think of ourselves as self-contained units of being - homunculi driving our own "self-tanks" across the battlefields of daily life. You forget that you are probably the only people that sees yourself that way. Every other person perceives us differently: we are one person to our mothers; another to our wives/husbands; another to our colleagues at work. And in the wider sense we are even less definable: we are more like a story; a web of impressions and moments; a collection of images both still and moving. One that persists for others even after we die.

If one steps back for a moment and looks at the avatar as the "extended self", then everything changes. From this point of view there is a very real (if diluted) part of our "self" in every representation of that self. In this scenario there is a part of Albert Einstein in the horrible Genius bread man. If you think about it another way it must be true, otherwise why would the advertisers wish to use his image in the first place? A portrayal of Albert Einstein with no Albert Einstein in it would be an empty thing indeed. Kind of like a food with absolutely no nutritional value.

I think that the realisation of the concept of the avatar is a good thing. Avatars let us extend ourselves outwards to touch other realities, and to communicate with other people in new and diverse ways. But what happens to the avatar when the "host" dies? Perhaps we have some responsibility to protect those fragile ghosts from the machinations of those who would seek to abuse them.

Food: What if we've got it all wrong?

2010-07-13T10:22:00.006+01:00

Something to contemplate: What if a species suddenly (in relative terms) developed technology which allowed it to grow food, rather than having to find it and/or chase after it? What if it learned a way to manipulate and "enhance" the calorie-poor grown food to make it more calorific and filling? What if it began to eat less of the calorie, fat and protein rich animal-sourced food that used to be available to it and replaced this with refined carbohydrate-rich plant matter?

What I have outlined above is a large and far-reaching change to the evolution-linked diet of a species. By evolution-linked I mean the diet that the species had adapted to over an evolutionarily-significant time period i.e. hundreds of thousands to millions of years. It's not credible to argue that we could safely make this enormous transition without the requisite change to our biology. And there just hasn't been enough time to allow that to happen.

I have been running a diet experiment on myself for the past seven years. My views on human diet have not come about as a direct result of this but my personal experience has certainly influenced my thinking on the subject.

I was incredulous when I first heard about the Atkins diet. I'd never heard of anything like it. How could one possibly eat copious amounts of fat and protein without getting fatigued, constipated, obese; or in some other way damaged? I was also, however, intrigued. I read a little about the general principles of the diet. I bought and skim-read the Atkins books then began the diet. Friends and family were concerned that it may cause some kind of long-term harm. I wasn't worried. I was enjoying the food, it seemed to suit my digestion and metabolism, and I was losing two kilos per week.

I have not, of course, stuck to the diet rigidly for seven years. Cravings for carbohydrate, particularly bread and potatoes, sometimes arise. And when I start to eat those kinds of foods I just want to eat more of them. My weight goes up during holiday periods when I am poor at regulating what I eat. But I can always use the diet to get my weight down again in short order. I am heavier now than I was after my initial couple of months on the diet but not by a great deal. My weight is under control and I am in good health. I don't exercise.

My personal experience of this kind of ketogenic diet would, of course, be classed as anecdotal. That is fair. It is not scientific evidence and I use it only to illustrate my personal interest in the subject. I have fed (sic) that interest by reading various articles and books about ketogenic diets. I recently read "The Diet Delusion" by Gary Taubes. I now have a much clearer understanding of how ketogenic diets work and how the current dreadful state of half-truth and misinformation about human diet has emerged.

The evidence is still incomplete and many lost years of vitally important research and studies still remain to be made up for. But the outline is clear: fat is not bad for you; eating copious refined carbohydrates causes the body to store fat; obese people are not fat because the eat too much - they eat a lot because they are fat; refined carbohydrates appear to be addictive and abuse of these substances can lead to diabetes, heart disease and cancer.

I think that an important part of the reason we have held to the completely unproven notion that fat is bad for us, is a puritanical one. Fat just seems like it should be bad. It can be found in lots of delicious but somehow 'sinful' foods. It also seems logical that fatty substances should block up our arteries in the same way that they can block up our drains. But this 'common-sense' notion is wrong. Our drains do not process fat poured into them whereas our bodies are complex homeostatic mechanisms, finely tuned to process and distribute the nutrients presented to them in the most efficient manner possible. But it's unfair to blame people for these misapprehensions when the patched-together 'fat hypothesis' has be fed to us as fact for decades.

Some doctors actually think that ketosis is bad for you. This makes no sense because it ignores the evolutionary perspective. Human beings have been 'in ketosis' for millions of years. The 'ketone bodies' produced in the body and used by the brain when very little carbohydrate is consumed, are a very efficient fuel and probably the one we have evolved to use, rather than the glucose fuel our brains have increasingly utilised over the last century. I wonder (as an aside) which fuel our brains run most efficiently on.

We are also being fleeced by marketing gimmicks such as 'Low GI'. The Glycaemic Index of a food could be a very useful metric if it actually factored in all the variables. One of the most mind-boggling omissions in the Glycaemic Index scheme is the effect of fructose. Bizarrely fructose, known affectionately as 'fruit sugar', is excluded because it passes directly to the liver and is metabolised there rather than passing into the bloodstream in the way that glucose does. Fructose therefore has a negligible effect on 'blood sugar', allowing marketeers to sell it as a 'Low GI' health product. This, I think, borders on criminal. Consumers naturally make the association with 'healthy stuff' like fruit and buy the product. But fructose appears in fruit and veg only in relatively small quantities. An apple, for example, is far more nutritionally complex than a spoonful of high-fructose corn syrup and the body will, therefore, metabolise the fructose content more slowly and less harmfully. High fructose diets can, in the longer term, induce high blood sugar, high insulin levels and insulin resistance. The 'table sugar' we are probably most used to consuming (the white/brown sugar you put in your tea) is known technically as sucrose and is derived from 50% fructose/50% glucose - it's all bad.

This is a vast subject and I am just highlighting a few examples of how we have this wrong. The 'fat bad/carbohydrate good/sugar indifferent' dogma is decades out of date. And it is just that: a dogma. Too many professional reputations and company fortunes have been staked on it to pull back now. Government health agencies are going to look pretty stupid too.

I have have no particular desire to eat animals. It is fair to call it corpse-food. But my body is the result of an evolutionary process which has come to utilise this matter in a very efficient way. There are, of course, ways to eat healthy quantities of fat and protein without eating dead animals. But we must accept that we need those nutrients and that we cannot live on poor vegetable matter and starchy stodge alone.

We are not omnivorous in the sense that our early ancestors might have been. Our evolutionary path brought us to a point where we had the advantage of large brains in the process of hunting and killing abundant prey. The 'symbiosis' with our prey shaped our diets and our metabolisms to a point where we could derive optimal benefit from the nutrients. Large brains also aided in the process of foraging and discovery of useful 'gathered' foods such as shellfish and, occasionally, nuts and berries. No large quantities of carbohydrate of any kind and virtually no refined carbohydrates whatsoever were available until the advent of agriculture.

I am not 'on a diet'. I eat the food I eat because I enjoy it and because my body requires it. As I write this my brain is running on ketone bodies so please feel free to highlight any errors in my facts, spelling or grammar to use as examples of glucose-deprivation-induced dementia.

Mind Over Me

2010-06-08T09:52:00.005+01:00

The fields of neurofeedback and biofeedback have not received the kind of scientific study and investment that they warrant.

Neurofeedback is about taking brain wave readings, from an EEG for example, and feeding those readings back to that brain. This feedback could be in audio, visual or tactile form. The theory is that the participant can then, by modifying his/her thought patterns, learn to alter those brain outputs and receive some physical health benefit from the process. Biofeedback is a similar idea but also encompasses other forms of input such as GSR (Galvanic Skin Response), hand warmth and heart rate.

It is now common knowledge that humans can, with training, gain some control over their GSR. It would be harder to fool a lie-detector if this wasn't the case. We also know that the brain can be trained to achieve certain brain wave states such as alpha (a kind of "open focus" state) or theta (edge-of-sleep "hypnogogic" state). So the debate is really about whether gaining a measure of control over these outputs is, in any way, beneficial to us.

We aren't straying into "brain training" territory here. The contention of brain training is that we gain some general IQ/mental fitness benefit by playing logic puzzles etc. Neurofeedback or "brainwave training" is about being able to "see" the frequencies of our neural outputs and teach ourselves to modify them at will. It's a different process altogether, and the feedback is the crucial element.

In his book "A Symphony in the Brain" journalist Jim Robbins gives an interesting overview of the history of the field. We get a lot of background on the key players (and their in-fighting) in the development of neurofeedback, in both the scientific and commercial arenas. There are also several fascinating case-studies within the book, including that of Jay Ritchie, who suffered anoxia-related brain damage after an accident at work. From then on Jay appeared semi-comatose. He was wheelchair-bound and not responsive to normal stimuli. The version of events in the book contends that Jay was, after being hooked up to neurofeedback equipment, found to be trapped in a theta-dominant brain state. The feedback allowed him to learn to move from this slow-wave state back into conscious alpha and beta frequencies, thereby allowing him to "wake up" and begin to communicate again.

This is an extraordinary claim and so it, and other claims like it (and there are many), requires extraordinary evidence. Jim Robbins admits in his book that large scale, peer-reviewed, controlled scientific studies are thin on the ground. He contends that the "California hippie" reputation of neurofeedback has hobbled its ability to achieve the required funding for such studies. He is probably right about that. The 60s/70s idea of transcendence via meditation left a bad taste in the mouths of the scientific establishment, who largely saw it as nothing more than neo-spiritualist self-indulgence.

But, given what we now know about the brain and its staggering plasticity, can the establishment really continue to ignore technologies that can claim to alleviate serious conditions in a totally non-invasive way? I don't want to make this sound like neuro and biofeedback are seen by all scientists as being on the fringes. There are now many serious medically-trained neurofeedback practitioners around the world treating conditions from ADHD (Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder) to Chronic Fatigue Syndrome (CFS) to Post-traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD). The field is now strong and growing: some claim that it won't be long before we have the equipment in our homes.

I have to be wary of the way in which I am drawn to this idea. It seems like common sense to me, but I am also aware that many commonsense notions are quite wrong. Some of my other blog entries (e.g. Toolbox) have touched on similar ideas and I am quite comfortable with the thought that I am not just a "passenger" in my body. Or in my brain. What could that mean anyway? To be servants to the frequency-modulated whims of our own brains? We are our own brains and learning to recognise and modulate our own brain waves seems the sensible, healthy and responsible thing to do.

The drug companies do not like this idea. "Big pharma" has a huge and obvious vested interest in the neurochemical route to wellbeing. The irony is that neurofeedback is also a neurochemical route. It's just that the chemical change/altered bloodflow/neuronal re-organisation is being stimulated via self-actuated brainwave stimulation.

The potential medical uses of neurofeeback are broad. But this kind of technology will probably impact on other areas of our lives first. Computer gaming is an obvious one. Indeed the concept of using interactive games to stimulate brain frequency change has been around in neurofeedback for many years. Steering an avatar around a virtual landscape by the power of thought is an entertaining prospect. You might be surprised at how many gamers have already tried it.

Personally, I see the arrival of affordable neurofeedback as heralding a kind of awakening. I hope it will allow us to learn that we are, to at least some degree, capable of controlling our own brain states. And that we can, in time, become better users of those brains.

Me and My Big Amygdala?

2010-05-05T18:28:00.004+01:00

Controlling our emotional responses can feel like a struggle. We may feel logical and capable, reasonable and calm, before we face a social challenge. But often, when the time comes to use our logic and serenity in dealings with others, we react in an emotional "knee-jerk" manner.

Emotional responses are multifaceted and are not purely the result of one specific brain area. Current theories are based upon a group of interconnected structures near the brain stem known as the limbic system. Within the "layer cake" context of the brain, with evolutionarily "newer" parts stacked above and around "older" parts, the limbic system structures can be seen as an early development.

The amygdala (or more correctly amygdalae: one in each hemisphere) is part of this conceptual limbic system and it plays a role in many of our responses to different types of social interaction. For example, it is involved in our recognition of and reaction to sexual stimuli (direct or indirect); it interacts with the hippocampus in the process of forming emotional memories; it is involved in fear responses and also in "predatory" and "affective" aggression.

Affective aggression is "display" behaviour, such as making warning noises and adopting defensive postures e.g. when a cat hisses and arches its back in the presence of a dog. Humans often display affective aggression, although not usually in the form of hissing and arching. The sympathetic nervous system (SNS) is involved in this behaviour; bringing about and contributing to a host of "symptoms" over which we may feel we have no control. Examples of this are blushing; racing heartbeat; dry mouth; shaking; sweating.

There is some evidence that a human amygdalectomy (destroying all or part of the amygdala by electrical or chemical surgery) can reduce aggressive behaviour. But this type of psychosurgery would nowadays be considered a drastic procedure of last resort.

I am speculating here but it appears to me that "blurting" responses often come about in extremely quick succession to the SNS responses. We sometimes seem to respond harshly to a challenge to our "authority" or "self-image", perhaps with shouting or expletives, before we have a chance to "think through" our response. I know a few people who think that's a good thing: "Get it off your chest"; "It's better out in the open". But, more often than not, it isn't for the best. Humans have a highly-developed neocortex. If we respond harshly, before taking the time to fully process the information through that "new" structure, we may regret our initial emotion-laden response.

This may all seem to imply that having a bigger amygdala would make you more prone to aggressive behaviour; and that men must have larger ones than women. In fact, women have larger amygdalas than men: some ten percent larger. The amygdalas of gay men can be around twenty percent larger.

This appears contradictory until you think of the amygdala in terms of a seat of "emotional intelligence". The amygdala has a strong role in the recognition of the emotional responses of others. This could mean an aggressive emotional feedback loop but instead it often means an empathetic feedback loop. You recognise the emotional response of another human to your cues: your expression, your tone etc; and you respond appropriately to those cues, creating a positive "loop". It's a kind of "mirroring" behaviour. Women and gay men are particularly well-adapted to it.

So, positive social interaction with other humans isn't simply a matter of thinking everything through before expressing an opinion. Certainly it requires logic and tact, but it also requires emotional intelligence; and that requires the timely involvement of the amygdala.

The Brain of Richard Feynman

2010-04-19T17:26:00.003+01:00

I've been interested in the life and work of Richard Feynman for some time. I've read some of the collections of lectures, such as "Six Easy Pieces" and also the collection of reminiscences "Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman!". I don't purport to understand a great deal of the Physics in the lectures, except on a superficial level. I know that I would need to get a decent grasp on mathematics if I really wanted to go there. Maybe one day.

Feynman was a fascinating character. A physicist with a supreme disregard for uniforms and honours, despite his sharing in the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1965, along with Sin-Itiro Tomonaga and Julian Schwinger, for their fundamental work in quantum electrodynamics (QED). He was a handy (sic) bongo player with a sharp sense of humour and a deep love of finding out how things work. He understood that he may not find the answers he sought but the joy of trying drove him on. He had a darker side too. His involvement in the Manhattan Project haunted him later in his life, as must have the death of his first wife.

There is a huge amount of information available about Mr Feynman, and his books are wonderful, so I won't go into his life or work in any more detail here. What fascinates me, personally, about Richard Feynman is the way that he looked at the world. I really wonder if that way of seeing things is accessible to all of us or just to a select few. Was his brain wired so differently that most of us cannot hope to understand his viewpoint?

The part of it I do truly understand is the hardwired loathing of uniforms and honours. The detestation of the elevation to virtual godhood of other humans when they are, in reality, no better or no worse than ourselves. This feeling - the "I can't stand it!" reaction Feynman talks about in one of his TV interviews, comes through the simple application of logic to our real circumstances. We are smart apes with big brains. Feynman didn't "hate" the Pope but he detested the "idea" of people like the Pope, with their ridiculous uniforms and rotten dogmas.

Also, surely, we are all capable of grasping the constantly-questioning aspect of a brain like Feynman's. We are born inquisitive. We just need to keep that into adulthood, and forego the arrogance of assuming that we know much at all about the world. That way we would keep experimenting (often failing) and continue to feel the joy of discovery throughout our lives. This isn't idealistic. It's the only way to grow.

Is there a particular kind of structure to a human brain; a particular configuration of neurons it must have to allow it to think in the "Feynman mode"? I don't think so. Neuroscience is beginning to reveal how plastic the brain actually is. Maybe the very act of keeping that particular kind of inquisitive aspect of our personalities to the fore would change us; not into Richard Feynmans but certainly into better humans with more humility and more capability to deal with constant uncertainty. Uncertainty is natural, fixedness is not. Look at the structure of an atom.

Much as I am interested in him and his "curious" attitude to everything, I know there's no place for a "Cult of Feynman". He would have hated that. It sounds too much like something you might need a uniform for.

The Science of Happiness

2010-03-24T13:01:00.006Z

It may not immediately sound like a subject worthy of rigorous scientific study, but who wouldn't want a clear-cut, scientific explanation of how to be happy?

Perhaps we think we already know what makes us happy and that we don't need neuroscientists, economists and psychologists delving into such nebulous subjects to reach conclusions that are based on entirely subjective information. But the state of mental contentment we dub "happiness" is a psychological state like any other, and must involve certain neurochemical patterns and other markers which make it an observable and measurable phenomenon.

We do not even need to resort to MRI or other brain-scanning techniques in order to study happiness scientifically. We accept the findings of empirical studies in many other fields of scientific research but perhaps we feel, innately, that "our" happiness is special and somehow different from the kind of "general purpose" happiness that studies might throw up.

In his scintillating book "Stumbling on Happiness" psychologist Daniel Gilbert covers, in great and highly-entertaining depth, the repeated "errors" we make in the daily process of trying to gain happiness, both in the present and for the consumption of our "future selves". It is a curious and exclusively human trait to suffer relative "pain" now in order to achieve happiness ("gain") for a person that we do not yet even know (our future self). Gilbert goes into some of the fascinating neuroscience behind this "prospection " or "nexting" behaviour. He contends that humans engage in a mental process of "making future" that is very different from superficially similar processes observed in other creatures.

I've written in the past about "psychological continuity" and this, I think, is an example of the way in which we unquestioningly see ourselves on a continuum from childhood to old age as the "same" entity, despite all the physical and psychological evidence to the contrary. The resulting conclusion could be paraphrased as: "why wouldn't I wish to make provision for that future entity when we are one and the same?"

Gilbert discusses the role of the brain's frontal lobe in "nexting" behaviour and gives us the grisly example of Phineas Gage who, after having a steel tamping rod blasted through his skull and into his frontal lobe, underwent a complete character transformation and began to behave in ways that indicated that he had lost all regard for the future consequences of his present actions.

One of the ideas in Gilbert's book that most struck me was that of a "psychological immune system" that we all possess, to protect us from life's various knocks and traumas. This set of thought-pattern readjustments eventually kicks in, some time after the initial stimulus, in order to allow us to regain (and maintain) a consistent and reasonably positive self-image. This, to me, certainly makes evolutionary sense - a human with a volatile and decaying self-image may make a poor mate, indeed he may seldom feel confident enough to mate. But Dan Gilbert is not attempting to make an evolutionary point here - he is simply pointing out that consistency of self-image is important in order to allow us to function in society.

This ties in, somewhat, with a phrase I once heard: "everyone is the hero of their own story". I don't normally pay much attention to this type of cod-psychology but the more I thought about this phrase the more it appealed. One can, of course, take this point to the extreme. A mass-murderer can be the hero of his own story. This is neither inconceivable, nor inconsistent with the idea of a psychological immune system. The mass murderer must also experience a "reckoning" within his own psyche and, albeit subconsciously, find a way to reconcile the disparate parts of his personality into one consistent self-image. He can be happy too.

So what do mass-murders and tamping irons through the brain have to do with happiness? Well, understanding the neuroscience and psychology of ideas like prospection and self-image-consistency could be a novel route to understanding why we keep getting the "technique" of happiness so horribly wrong. For example, errors of prospection can lead us to feel less, not more, happy because we are brooding on a future over which we may actually have very little control. Scientific studies in this field demonstrate that control is key. People need to feel that they have "agency" over their own path to the future; that they are making decisions which are positively influencing the outcomes, not just floundering in a sea of randomness. This may be self-delusion but it is delusion that appears to have positive effects.

We also make errors in our attempts to estimate how bad we think future calamities will make us feel. For example, if you ask a volunteer in a study how she will feel if she loses her job in the next six months, the chances are that she will give quite a high rating on a scale of how much distress she estimates that would cause her. If you speak to the volunteer again in a year's time, upon finding out that she did in fact lose her job, you will likely find that she rates the distress of the actual event lower than her original estimate. Studies of this type lend weight to the idea that, despite all the personal evidence available to us, we seldom realise that we will be able to quickly readjust to new circumstances and find new reasons for optimism and happiness. This "readjustment" process even applies to dire circumstances, such as permanent disability or the death of a loved one.

Is science any closer to being able to tell us how to be happy? If we choose to pay attention to the evidence we will at least see that many of the behaviours and thought processes we engage in actually detract from our contentment. If we begin to behave in ways that systematically attempt to mitigate the "errors" then, perhaps, we can find a path that contributes to our daily sense of well-being.

There are certainly worse experiments you could do on yourself.

Data

2010-03-05T15:39:00.004Z

How much data do you have to deal with? How much do you carry with you on a daily basis? Is it logical? Is it encrypted? Is it necessary? How do you perceive that 'weight' of data? What is your relationship with it?

You probably haven't asked yourself any of these questions, but my work has put me into the role of 'data controller', so I feel a personal responsibility to maintain the integrity of some terabytes of data. This can be a logistical problem, and it's an issue that we will all increasingly have to deal with.

I once lost some valuable data. I had written some songs and stored them on the hard drive of my PC. I didn't keep backups at that time. My modem was blown out by a lightning pulse and it damaged other components, including the hard drive. A friend eventually managed to retrieve some of the songs for me, but I will not forget the initial sickening realisation that I had not taken steps to protect what had taken me so long to create. I learned to keep backups.

Terabyte drives are now common but, surprisingly, that's probably not enough backup space even for the average small business. Bloated software has led to bloated file sizes; the availability of large amounts of storage space means that workers don't run up against data storage problems on a regular basis, so they continue to create massive graphical files; people dump their mp3 collections to office file servers; incremental backups going back weeks eat up further space. Little or nothing will be done about these issues. Data storage will continue to grow in capacity and transfer speeds will increase. None of this will matter.

Many of us now carry large amounts of data around with us. Think about how it mounts up. The pen drive; the SD card in the camera; the hard drive in the ipod; the mini-SD in the mobile phone. This could easily amount to 70GB or more of capacity, without even taking netbooks or laptops into account, although most of us only use a fraction of that available capacity to store all our data. How important is all that data to us and how would we feel if we lost vital parts of it? It's OK to admit that you would feel a great deal of emotional trauma in such a situation. You have collected it, created it, improved it. This data is part of your life. It is part of you, externalised.

Corporations now move and store vast amounts of data. Wal-Mart, for example, handles more than one million customer transactions every hour and keeps databases estimated at more than 2.5 petabytes in size. They obviously value their data about us. Perhaps we should value our own data a little more. It is easy and cheap to get the storage space but managing it and backing it up in a regular and logical manner requires a bit of effort. There's definitely room in the market for powerful, but more user-friendly file management and backup software.

The subject of data storage may seem mundane but not if seen in a wider context. Everything is made of information. We are entities that use our intelligence to create a constant stream of new data. Much of it is junk and noise but there is also much beauty. We create beautiful patterns in language, music, mathematics, art. We retrieve data streams back from our spacecraft about the conditions on other planets. We send data about ourselves out into space, that other patternists may some day find and understand it. It is a hopeful enterprise and one that, if we chose to see it, can hold meaning for us.

To use the processing power of stars and fill the universe with intricate patterns of data. My pen drive and I, onward to new frontiers.

Entropic Footprints and Personalities

2010-02-03T09:49:00.007Z

Some people seem to assist entropy more than others.

Chaos abounds in the systems of our world, both natural and man-made. We know that entropy can be construed as a measure of the "disorder" within a given "closed" system. In thermodynamics it is a a physical fact. But is it reasonable to say that some individuals (or groups) "assist" in the growth of entropy within our effectively closed system(s). And, if so, should they be held to account (or just taxed) for this.

This may seem like a far-fetched notion but, until recently, we would all have scoffed at the idea of a personal "carbon footprint". What about one's "entropic footprint"? Of course this would be impossible to measure accurately but that should not prevent us from widening the concept of an individual's "detrimental impact" on a given system to cover as many other harmful aspects as possible.

Some immediate physical aspects of an "entropic footprint" should be readily measurable. The fact that we have found ways to measure a carbon footprint demonstrates this. We have taken an evidence-based principle - that man's modern activities lead to an increased release of CO2 into the atmosphere, causing an increase in global temperature - and developed from it a measurement of an individual's contribution to this phenomenon. How, though, do I measure say my "mercury footprint"? How my "hexavalent chromium" footprint? And do these "footprints" attach to me directly or to the original producer of the substance, or a bit of both in some complex ratio?

What about those who lead chaotic, shambolic lives? "Chaotic" in this sense is often loosely used but it may be more accurate than it first appears. We all know individuals who can't seem to get organised. They are often late; always losing their keys; their homes are disordered or even run-down; they fail to take notes of important events; they lose vital paperwork. But how often do we think about how that "chaotic" lifestyle feeds into the lives of others? There is, of course, a direct impact on those they live with. Perhaps the partner is conscious of the problem but struggles to keep up with its growth. He worries about it and has difficulty organising his own life under the circumstances. There is also a direct impact on those they work with - the repercussions may be "shallower" (at least at first) but also much broader in this context.

Their is a psychological "cost" to living or working within the sphere of influence of such behaviour. It could be argued that this "cost" has a progressive, "entropic" quality. The effect is increasingly wearing. In some situations the effect is so intense, and grows so quickly, that the system of family or work cannot hold together for long. In others is takes much more time, as the less "entropic" try repeatedly to mitigate the negative impacts of their "chaotic" family-member(s) or colleague(s). Some can feel trapped but manage to escape the dysfunctional system, others never do. Psychological effects are physical - does anyone have the right to affect your brain chemistry? Your sleeping patterns? Your rate of ageing?

Disorder within socio-economic systems will tend to grow, despite the best efforts of some individuals and groups to rein this in. But the lack of willingness to try, as an individual, to mitigate the effects of "social entropy", through reasonable efficiency but also (importantly) through empathy, could be fairly seen as costly behaviour. Who currently pays this cost?

So what of the total "entropic footprint" for an individual? Perhaps more fairly called an "entropic-rate footprint". We can't measure such a thing at present, and the very nature of entropy means that we probably never could have an accurate measure. But if we accept, as we now apparently do, that individual detrimental impacts on a system can be measured and taxed, then we must accept that there are a myriad measures exist and a myriad ways to measure them.

Confessions of a Justified Brain-freezer

2010-01-12T18:15:00.007Z

And so to cryonics.

I have posted about this before but now I think I am ready expand on that. Cryonics is emotive because it is to do with death and all things to do with death are emotive. Death-denial is perhaps the greatest (and most important) psychological game we play with ourselves throughout our short lives.

Once you get past religion (unless you wish to fool yourself) you are faced with the prospect of your own eventual non-existence in all its cold-gleaming, gut-wrenching starkness. Allow yourself to feel it for a while and then stop. Because there is nowhere to go. You can't rationalise it because there is no rationale to death for sentient beings like us. Your brain will cease to function and some well-meaning (but ultimately complicit) loved-one will put the remains of your unique molecular structure into the ground to rot, or burn them to ashes in a purpose-built oven.

Getting past religion (which happened to me around age 5) and much later discovering something of my physical composition, is not enough. The realisation that death is the end, is not the end of the realisation. Why be in such a hurry for your full-stop? Everything is made of atoms. When you die your body does not immediately fall into a heap of stinking slurry. You have a structure and there is some time available to store the most important part of that structure - your brain. You are your structure - your emotions, your memories, your personality - is all made of atomic structures. Why denegrate those who chose not to have it summarily burnt to ashes?

The more I think about this the more I feel that humanity is making a terrible mistake in the way it deals with death. How often have you heard "it's about those that are left behind"? No. Your death is about you. Granted, you are going to cause them some inconvenience in their time of greatest distress, by insisting that your remains be treated differently when you die. But those you leave behind will still exist as sentient beings in the universe, you will not. If they don't understand what that means then they still have the luxury of time to learn.

What we need are practical measures. Organ donation is now a well-established practice. We treat donated hearts and kidneys with the utmost respect. What about brains? You can't transplant them but does that imply that they should just be left to turn to soup? Why not cool all dead bodies, where possible? This could be implemented in hospitals. There would be a cool-room where all dead bodies would be taken. The cooling would help to delay the degradation of all organs, making more of them available and viable for transplantation. Those seeking cryonic preservation (neuropreservation) of their heads (and bodies if necessary) could be readily catered for. Organisations such as Alcor could collect from the hospitals and put the heads into long-term liquid nitrogen storage.

The above may sound unpalatable to you but what do you care? You will be dead. Does this process lack dignity? What could one possibly mean by that? How about some dignity of structure? Some respect for beautiful cellular architecture?

But this costs money, right? It is expensive because it is a relatively new idea and novelty costs money. Even now cryonics is not prohibitively expensive and it is likely that the price will come down rapidly as more people request it. Remember that when cryonics first appeared in the 1960s most people still had no idea that the entirety of their "self" was composed of physical structures within their brains. We now know this to be true and more people will realise it over time, so it is logical to assume that more and more people will choose cryonics as a result of this.

Do I expect to be 'woken up' from death at some point? No, of course I don't expect it. The chances of it happening are infinitesimally small. But those of us who are used to reading about science and technology quickly develop an ability to 'project forward'. We are cynical about bad science, and bad reporting of science, but also optimistic about the possibilities. We can look at the endless possibilities in terms of probabilities. Is it probable that future civilisations will consider death to be an inconvenience? Is it probable that they will try to do something about it? Is it probable that they would be interested that others before them had tried to do something about it? Is it probable that they might be interested in using their advanced medical knowledge to tinker around with some vitrified heads in canisters in Arizona? Is it probable that, at some point, they might succeed in reviving one? The probabilities get smaller the further down this line of reasoning you go, but they never reach zero.

My thought processes simply don't allow me to think of death in the way that I used to. That will be uncomfortable for some people. I'm not interested in 'moral' arguments against cryonics, as I have never heard one with any substance. I am interested in the scientific arguments, as they are healthy and useful. The distaste for cryonics within religious circles is obvious and to be expected. That is satisfying to know. But, for those of us able to think clearly about death there is no excuse for summarily dismissing the idea.

I have never met anyone who truly accepts the notion of their own eventual death. I have met plenty of people who just shut the subject down, or dismiss it as inevitable and unchangeable.

That is probably true. But only probably.

Do Not Switch Me Off (DNSMO)

2009-12-02T10:26:00.006Z

Where can I obtain a legal 'Do Not Switch Me Off' (DNSMO) order? It is extremely difficult to detect consciousness in coma and PVS patients so how can anyone have the right to decide to terminate their lives?

The unfortunate (or fortunate depending on how you look at it) tale of Rom Houben, classed as Persistent Vegetative State (PVS) and stuck with that label for over 20 years, demonstrates our current lamentable lack of knowledge about how to detect 'conscious' activity in the brain. I would have thought, given this situation, that the default position would be to leave all such cases connected to all necessary life support until we have the knowledge to deal with them correctly. But is this the default position?

I very much hope that current scientific studies and brain imaging techniques such as fMRI are forcing neurologists and neurophysiologists to move away from some of the prevailing opinions of ten years ago, such as those of the American Medical Association (AMA), whose conclusions on the subject are cited in 'The End of Life: Medical Considerations - Persistent Vegetative State'.

The terminology here is confusing because the brain is a massively complex organ but medical specialists in the field have to have a way of classifying the presence or absence (or degree) of consciousness in their patients, so they have come up with a system of labelling. So terms such as PVS, MCS and coma are often used. There are many problems with this labelling system. The problem for Rom Houben was that he got stuck with a label which meant that there was, for two decades, minimal intervention to find out what was really happening in his brain.

It seems to me that the labels are really about the legal classification of the presence or absence of consciousness, so that specialists and lawyers can feel comfortable giving advice to the families and advocating decisions about withdrawal of life support (or non-intervention in secondary complications etc). This all becomes horribly financial. The cost of maintaining a PVS patient on life support is expensive and could be estimated in the region of £100,000 per year. No wonder there is so much pressure to make a decision on withdrawal.

There will certainly be many cases of brain damage where it is obvious to a neurologist that conscious thought has been wiped out. Cases where little is left intact but 'old brain' structures providing autonomic functions, can be clear cut. But often there will be some degree of uncertainty about whether the patient has lost all consciousness. Here's another obvious terminology problem: what constitutes consciousness anyway?

I'm not approaching this from an ethical or financial standpoint. How about looking at it from the point of view of probabilities? There is a high probability that technological discoveries in the field of brain scanning will mean that some PVS-classed patients, such as Mr Houben, once re-evaluated are found to be in a 'locked in' state, conscious but unable to communicate. Others will be found to be in a dreamlike state - living an internal life but unlikely ever to return to the 'real' world. Yet others will be found to be teetering on the border, just requiring the correct delicate intervention to bring them back. There is also a high probability that the appropriate 'delicate intervention' techniques and technologies will become available.

Nobody knows how many patients are in the above-mentioned states. That's the point - the brain is too complex for specialists to know for sure. The classifications don't take account of that, or what 'might' be possible for these patients in future. My point is that they are still alive and they can wait to find out what will be discovered and what will be possible for them. Just don't switch them off.

There's a societal attitude problem here also. This one is the 'death with dignity' meme. I have absolutely no idea what that's all about. Death is the most undignified proposition you can't imagine. If their brains are gone they won't care about dignity. If they are still alive then give them the dignified chance to let you know. If they are in pain give them massive but non-lethal quantities of pain-relief medication. If you don't know which of these situations pertain then don't use death as the default position. The 'dignity' that loved ones 'seek' for the PVS patient is imposed by them.

Perhaps cases such as that of Rom Houben will spur an almost instantaneous rethink on the treatment of such patients, with DNSMO stickers appearing on beds and wheelchairs in hospitals across the globe. But perhaps not. Deathism runs deep.

'The Fallen' are just plain dead

2009-11-25T09:52:00.004Z

Despite the techno-warfare predictions of countless sci-fi novels and questionable computer games, militarism has no place in the future of humanity. Why not? Because if warfare survives then we won't. Militarism will become increasingly old-hat, and so will its language.

It is not logical to posit a medium to distant future of nanotech-based weaponry with soldiers clad in robotic exoskeletons blasting each other to smithereens by disrupting each others bodies at the molecular level, or other exotic and hideous means. This is an example of the lack of scope in much of science fiction, and part of the tacit assumption that the future will be just like now - only more so. Civilian technologies have emerged from death-tech in the past but if we are to survive then it will be partly as a result of the availability of technology to all rendering militarism redundant.

Nanotech could be taken as a case in point. Let's assume that some sizable percentage of all wars fought are over some kind of resource. What would be the point of fighting a war about oil, for example, if molecular manufacturing means that any citizen can make whatever they need from the comfort of their own home?

On a wider scale the planet will increasingly face existential risks. Troublemakers could easily construct world-killing devices in small and secret labs. We would never know what hit us. Not even time to get one of your exoskeletal socks on.

Every advance affects every other advance and the effect is exponential. Either you find a way to arrest war at the root, even memetic, level or there is no future to flounce about in with your implausible gun.

I find war euphemisms incredibly ugly. I hear much of 'The Fallen'. What happens if we deconstruct this particular euphemism? Let's find out:

It is likely that I am a person of limited financial means. I may not have done particularly well at school and, if tested, it is likely that my IQ is average to low. I may have a family member in the military, a brother perhaps, who I look up to. I do my training for warfare and quickly become institutionalised. I fit in here. During my second month in Afghanistan a bullet fired from a Type 56 rifle enters the back of my cranium, at the occipital bone, causing it to explode due to hydrostatic shock. When the headless body arrives back in the motherland it appears that it has 'fallen'. The type of falling involved is unclear but unquestioned. Most do not surmise that it is the type of falling where, after a short twitching delay, a headless body slumps into the sand. Most assume that it is a more poetic type of 'falling', where a valiant and idealistic young man sacrifices his short life for his country and, sort of, 'falls' from life into gallant death.

Just to say that he is dead would, surely, be less of an insult. His consciousness no longer exists but how can his family bear this sickly verbiage?

This is just one example of many I could choose. Deconstruct away at your leisure but do deconstruct. The 'Fallen' euphemism is an example of an insidious class of 'heroic death' memes which abound in militarised societies like ours. The general populace are infected with the meme via the vector of easily accessible and highly-compliant media channels. The pomp, the ceremony, the ageing and complicit royalty. All very predictable, and very very familiar.

But it's not just about bad judgement of the hierarchies and the complicity of the citizenry. It's the soldiers themselves. They are the most complicit. They are the most infected with the meme, and it will ultimately kill some proportion of them. We also have to face the ugly truth that some percentage of them, it would be interesting but tricky to found out how high a percentage, go to war because they want to be involved in chaos and carnage. This being the case it means that their brains are malfunctioning.

This is where we are now but I'm an optimist and I don't think that this can persist. I'd like to use language to de-glamorise war. We'd have to input this language early in the life of a child. The language would be clear and stark. Wars kill people. Guns and tanks are tedious. Soldiering is for failures.

War is about as un-futuristic as it gets.

My Placebo

2009-11-18T13:09:00.003Z

The effects of placebo are fascinating. But are they really that surprising?

If we accept the highly plastic properties of the brain then it seems to follow that a patient's brain structure can be physically altered by the perception that they are taking something that is good for them. The effect is heightened by the fact that the pill is being prescribed by a professional in the field of medicine, who must know what he/she is doing.

The placebo effect gets a bad press. The beneficial effects of placebo appear to be treated as a negative because the patient was 'fooled' into getting better. Does this actually matter? This is just semantics. If it is the case that your mind 'fools' your body into getting better then there must be a myriad ways in which your mind does this all the time without placebo. Is this 'conned' wellness inferior to 'real' wellness?

I have also come across this attitude from people who have used placebo-centred treatment such as homeopathy. Obviously they think that homeopathy is not placebo but when I explain that it is, and why it is, they can feel embarrassed. Why should they feel that way? If they went to see a nice person who listened to them and who spoke sympathetically about their condition, then gave them some harmless pills, and then they got better, surely they should be delighted. I would be. This is a wonderful beneficial effect of neurobiological processes, not a cause for embarrassment.

I have read that the placebo effect can work even in cases where the patient is told that he/she is being given a placebo in the form of a sugar pill. The doctor speaks calmly and sympathetically to the patient, explaining that there is scientific evidence which shows that these pills can have a beneficial effect in some cases. Why would this work? How can the patient be fooled if the sham is revealed to them before they even start the treatment? Well, all the other elements of the system are still in place - the sympathetic health professional, the thrice daily pill-taking ritual, the follow-up visits to the professional to talk about the condition, and so on. I would venture that, as a result of this, other crucial 'hidden' elements are still in place - the health professional as de-facto psychotherapist, the pill ritual as regular trigger for mood, appetite and sleep-affecting neurotransmitters such as serotonin, the ongoing care as a longer-term enabler/consolidator of neuroplastic change via increased levels of plastic change associated (speculative) neuromodulators such as oxytocin.

Maybe we should be more positive and up-front about the placebo effect. Towards this end I have made up my own placebo, Abcepol (made by Hedmed), and put it up for sale on Ebay. It's just a bit of fun really but there is a serious point. I want to see if people are prepared to pay for a placebo when it clearly states that that's exactly what it is. If anyone buys it I'll give the proceeds to a neuroscience-related charity.

Psychological Continuity

2009-11-04T09:43:00.004Z

If you were to be duplicated just before you died and the duplicate survived, would it be you?

This can be seen as a deep philosophical question with a myriad differently nuanced answers. But I'm not much of a philosopher so my answer is simply "no". A duplicate of your entire person or a perfect molecular copy of your brain, could be just like you for some period time but it would not be you.

The soul-mongers may be rubbing their hands with glee at this point but this has nothing to do with them or their fantastical constructs. Their agenda is to promote the notion of a unique ethereal part that "lives on" somehow after you die. By their definition the duplicate person would have no soul - one person one soul - that's all that God hands out (then takes back). What a quaint and morbid idea.

We cannot make such a copy at present so you can think of this as a thought experiment. In the relatively near future we will be able to make such copies and there will be various ways of doing this. The copying will not be the problem, the method of the state/substrate transfer process may be.

Let's say that the scientists doing the copying decide to conceal who is the "original" and whom the "duplicate", even from themselves. Immediately after completion of the copy process both entities would insist that they are the "real" version of the person and both would be correct. If you dispute this then, in what sense would they not both be correct? Let's not get hung up on which of them would be composed of the most recently rearranged atomic material. But that is all it really comes down to. Then divergence sets in.

When does the divergence between the two entities set in? How much do they diverge? Pretty much immediately or somewhat later. A little or vastly. What does it matter? They diverge, they are not the same person. This could be an excellent moral thought experiment for the religious if they were a little more imaginative - they could have a 'soul dilution' construct with each duplicate being, in comparison to the pre-duplication 'original', a kind of watery orange squash in the soul department.

There is, of course, no dilution. Both versions are valid entities ready to go back out into the cosmos on their own divergent paths, no matter how closely they stick together. But weren't we talking about the death of the "original"? This kind of duplication wouldn't save you, so what would? Well, we know that we are constantly in the process of being rebuilt at the molecular level and that, every few years, every atom in our bodies will have been replaced. So in what sense are we the "same person" as a few years previously? The key is that we feel the same because of our memories and the continuous "psychological flow" of our being. When we think back we don't usually detect vast gaps prior to which we suspect that we may have been somebody else. The psychological continuity of the self is an illusion but a very useful one, and one that we feel we must maintain in order for "me" to mean anything. So if there is to be any kind of 'movement' of our 'selves' from one state/substrate to another there must be a transition process which maintains psychological continuity.

I have imagined that this could be done with a future perfected version of a virtual brain akin to the Blue Brain project. A perfect human/virtual brain interface would also be required. The neocortical columns of the dying person are wired to the virtual brain and data communication begins at whatever level of resolution/fidelity is required. At first the 'generic' virtual brain is acting only as a relay so that the patient's columns can adjust to the new environment. Gradually some of the less-active columns in the bio brain could begin to 'share' some thought/memory structures with the virtual, allowing the virtual brain to 'learn' the bio brain's structure and patterns. The virtual columns gradually take on more and more responsibility until the virtual brain is handling entire neocortical areas, and the virtual and bio are operating as one entity. The process continues until only some autonomic functions, such as regulation of blood oxygenation, are being handled by the bio brain. The virtual brain does not strictly require autonomic functions but some simulation of those functions would be required in order to prevent the patient from suffering a kind of ontological shock brought on by the realisation of the substrate transfer. If required the biological body and brain stem can continue to function in tandem with the virtual brain indefinitely but the transfer of the 'self' to the new substrate is now complete.

I don't think it's looking good for teleportation. A teleport would be a kind of duplicator/destroyer device. Let the duplicates live. Anything else would be unthinkable. But this isn't about duplication, it's about transfer. And here's where it does get philosophical. Have you ever felt like you have, even for a short while, become "one" with another person? It can be joyful, unsettling or both. I think it's a realisation that our boundaries are mutable and that we could, ultimately, accept a new substrate as home.

Cognitive Democracy

2009-09-30T11:14:00.006+01:00

It is common, and tedious, to hear people discussing the poor quality of their political representatives. They often think those that represent them are mentally deficient or plain mendacious. They may be right on both counts but how would we know before it was too late?

What attracts people to careers in politics? Why do they appear to abandon deeply held principles once embedded in the system? Why do some turn rotten and steal from the societies that elected them? The structure-centric responses to these questions have been hotly debated for centuries. But, ultimately, the answers must be to do with brains.

When you vote for a representative, particularly when you choose on the basis of what you perceive to be their personality, you should have no reason to believe that you have made a logical choice. What, after all, really formed the basis of your choice? Usually you will not be personally acquainted with the politician in question. You may have seen them on the television a few times. They may represent a Party that you feel an affinity with. He/she may be 'the best of a bad bunch'. It's not much to go on.

People will choose to go into politics for a variety of reasons. Some will be 'conviction' politicians with a real sense of what they believe to be morally correct; others will see politics as a useful (and sometimes easy) career ladder; others will spot an opportunity for power and influence. Their capabilities will vary enormously: some will be from the intellectual elite (although the dearth of scientists in political life makes this less likely); others will struggle to think rationally and coherently. Either could end up running a nation.

It would be useful to have the tools to measure these intentions and capabilities before we cast our vote.

There is, of course, massive debate about how these factors can be reliably measured. For example, IQ tests are often discredited. Emotional intelligence in now given more credence but the markers are hard to identify. Psychometrics of one kind or another are often used as part of job interviews. Intensive psychological evaluations are undertaken on patients in psychiatric institutions. The tools are by no means perfect but perhaps they should utilised on those seeking to be our political representatives, and the results made freely available to us.

'League tables' feature often in the news at present: schools, hospitals (including individual surgeons), police forces and so on. League tables of political performance and consistency, while useful, are not what I am talking about here. If a person chooses to put him/herself forward to represent us and to have a measure of say in our lives at this most intimate level do we not need to know a great deal more about their intentions and capabilities before we are in a position to make a logical choice?

It could be argued that this kind of testing would be invasive or a breach of human rights. I would disagree. Testing would be a voluntary part of the qualification process to stand for elected office. No coercion would be required or involved.

It should be an ambition of an enlightened society to be represented by the right people. Not necessarily the best and brightest but a healthy combination of the brightest, most stable, least corruptible, most logical, most nurturing, least mendacious etc. Good eggs not rotten apples. Effective, understanding and striving voices. Not brutish, memetically infectious demagogues.
Achieving this may require assessment of candidate suitability via the most rigorous scientific testing measures available.

Can we rely on the enlightened intellectual and emotional altruism of the few 'incidentals' to shape our future societies? Or do we need to find a humane and reasoned method of bringing just those candidates to the fore?

Computing with the Multiverse

2009-09-23T13:51:00.003+01:00

Quantum computers are real. Their capabilities may be limited at present but they exist. This may not seem like an extraordinary statement until you fully consider what a quantum computer does.

It does not matter that the practical applications of even an advanced future quantum computer would likely be limited to factoring vast numbers for secure encryption purposes. In many ways conceiving of this potential 'killer app' is just a way to secure the funding to build them in the first place. No, what really matters is that the calculations involved just aren't possible within the bounds of this Universe alone.

So where are the calculations being done? They are being done in tandem with the requisite number of equivalent quantum computers, staffed by the requisite number of equivalent copies of the person/people running the quantum computers, in the requisite number of equivalent universes required to complete the calculation.

As the wonderful John Gribbin points out in his recent book 'In Search of the Multiverse', this is not equivalent to the 'phase spaces' used by mathematicians to undertake complex calculations requiring theoretical extra dimensions. 'Phase spaces' work but you cannot use them to do the kind of calculations a quantum computer can do - because the (to all intents and purposes infinite) computing power of the Multiverse is simply not available without one.

If this very real example of how the Multiverse can be used for a practical application leaves you reeling then you are not alone. There is no guarantee that even the operators of these devices are absorbing the full reality of the Multiverse when they talk about 'spin direction' and 'superposition'. If superposition works and can be used for calculation purposes then what does it matter?

At the quantum level - the level of the almost impossibly tiny - 'objects' do not behave as they do at our level. Their position is not fixed but consists of 'clouds' of positional probabilities. They can be in multiple places at the same time. This may seem impossible to us but it is a law of the nature of the quantum level. The property of 'fixedness' only arises at larger scales, including our own. This quantum property can be harnessed for computation by using quantum superpositions to 'represent' binary digits - allowing one to undertake inconceivably large numbers of calculations all at the same time.

My reading of Gribbin's explanation of the process is that the quantum computers in the various universes 'call' for the answer all at the same time. The superpositions allow the calculation to be 'split' and undertaken across the requisite part of the Multiverse. The answer is then instantly 'collapsed' back to the observer in each universe.

Why am I trying to explain this when I don't understand it and do not have the mathematical language to describe it? Because I feel a sense of wonder at this and wish to teach myself a language for describing it to myself.

I want to internalise it and I think it might be enjoyable for others to internalise it too.

How's my RTPJ?

2009-09-16T14:43:00.004+01:00

Have you always been aware of the beliefs of others or did you just grow that way?

With an inhibited Right Temporo-Parietal Junction (RTPJ) would you struggle to understand that others can have beliefs different to yours? Would this inhibition cloud your ability to make moral judgements? Current neuroscientific research using fMRI suggests increased activity in this small brain region when volunteers are tasked with thinking about various situations from the point of view of another human being.

Studies by Rebecca Saxe and others see the RTPJ as being key to the morality aspects central to a cohesive "theory-of-mind". Her studies have found that the abilities of children to reason out and judge scenarios of "people thinking about thinking people" develop markedly and rapidly between the ages of approximately three and seven years old.

An example would be where a child, with the aid of props, was asked to envision a man putting a sandwich down on a box. The man then leaves and the sandwich gets blown off the box by the wind. A second man comes along and puts his sandwich down on the box, not seeing the one on the ground, then leaves. The child, once given the scenario, is asked which sandwich the first man will take when he returns. According to the Saxe studies the children would respond thus:

The 3-year-old says that the first man will take the sandwich on the ground although it is dirty because it is "his". When told that the first man actually takes the one on the box the child expresses surprise - presumably meaning that she cannot understand that the first man would not know that his was the one on the ground, so she thinks it unfair that he took the one on the box.
The 5-year-old says that the first man will take the sandwich on the box. This appears to show a more developed understanding of the thoughts of others because the child understands that the first man would think (albeit mistakenly) that his sandwich was the one on the box. However, the 5-year-old, still says that it is "bad" of the first man to take the sandwich on the box. Is this evidence that the child has not yet developed the moral capacity to know that the first man cannot be blamed for not knowing he was mistaken?
The 7-year-old says that the first man will take the sandwich on the box. Crucially, she also knows that the first man should take no blame for his mistake because it was a simple accident/misunderstanding.

This is a rather wordy explanation and you can see the Saxe talk on ted.com which should make it all clearer. She also brings up the fascinating results of studies, in adult subjects, where the RTPJ is stimulated (through the skull) via electromagnets. This appears to demonstrate a decreased ability in the subjects to make usual moral judgements while the RTPJ's function is being disrupted.

Other work, such as that of JP Mitchell does not appear to directly contradict the Saxe papers but does, again, bring up the issue of "localisation". He appears to be saying there is no current conclusive proof that the RTPJ is solely responsible for this kind of reasoning, despite the fact it lights up under fMRI when these judgement tasks are undertaken.

It must be very tempting for neuroscientists to fit specific cognitive functions to specific brain regions, especially now that fMRI studies seem to corroborate some of these theories. It's also much easier to explain to laypeople than telling them that fMRI studies suggest increased blood flow in areas that might be associated with a particular function when subjects undertake cognitive tasks that might stimulate blood flow to the region in question. While the "localisations" may be broadly correct there seems to be a bit too much "shoehorning" going on in some of these studies.

There are, of course, ethical issues connected to the potential ability to disrupt a person's ability to make reasoned moral judgements; or to actually change their beliefs by electro-mechanical means! This ability doesn't appear to be on the horizon any time soon. I have no fear of and can see a lot of value in this kind of work and, unlike Ms Saxe, I do think that this will help us to understand "the hard problem" of consciousness.

This is me signing off thinking about me thinking about you thinking about your beliefs about how you think about the thoughts of thinking people.

Synthetic Biology

2009-08-27T15:59:00.003+01:00

SynBio is coming. While we have been busy getting in a lather about nanotech, synthetic biology has been creeping up on us at incredible pace.

The field of SynBio combines engineering and biology in pursuit of the creation of novel new forms of synthetic life with customised functions. The idea is not to create some "imitation" of life but genuine functioning cellular forms. A "second genesis". The technology is more advanced than many realise. Some experts in the field state that they are less than a year away from creating the first complete system.

Versions of simpler elements of the jigsaw, such as a cell wall formed from fatty acids, have been around for a while but one company has now created a fully functional ribosome. The protein biosynthesis process undertaken by the ribosome translates mRNA into protein. Ribosomes are like the protein micro-factories of cells. With this incredibly complex part of the problem appearing to have been solved it looks like it won't be long before the synbio kit of parts is complete.

With the ability to make customised microscopic lifeforms, such as bacteria to clean up man-made toxins or specialised antibodies to attack specific types of cancer cells in precise locations, the microscopic world will be open to greater and more direct intervention than ever before. We had perhaps assumed that we would have to wait for the arrival of full-blown nanotech, with its molecular submarines and cutting gear, to see this type of revolution.

But all the while it has not only been the physicists who have been seeing the potential of viewing microscopic objects as potential machine parts. Synthetic biologists can grow the parts they require for their machines. They have realised that biology is also an engineering substrate. This is way beyond transgenics, where genetic material constituting desirable properties from one lifeform are mixed with another. This is about understanding the pre-evolved building blocks of life, classifying them, replicating them and assembling them into new forms. Those new lifeforms can then, if required, be evolved further in the lab.

Synthetic Biology is an exciting new field, the results of which will soon explode into the headlines. All the old arguments about "playing God" with be brought forth with greater vehemence and incomprehension than ever.

We know that all life evolved from one "ancestor" cell. It only had to happen and take hold once to give rise to all life on this planet. We're now on the cusp of seeing a brand new form of life - one created by human beings.

Neuroplasticity and handedness

2009-08-19T14:47:00.003+01:00

I used to be ambidextrous.

When I was a child I had the ability to use either hand for most tasks. It was useful but also confusing. I had a nagging feeling that I should be settling on exactly which hand I should use to draw my pictures with. There wasn't much pressure from the adults around me to settle this internal argument but any suggestions I did receive from outside always favoured the right.

I now wonder if I lost something when I finally settled on using my right hand. Some of the old 'confusion' is still there - when cutting with scissors I use my left hand; when playing pool or darts my left hand dominates.

Having now read a fair amount about neuroplasticity - Norman Doidge's "The Brain That Changes Itself" is a particular favourite - I think that my ambidextrous abilities were a result of an earlier and more readily plastic phase of my brain's development. Once settled into a less readily plastic phase the right hand came to dominate. But can that process cause an imbalance?

I would assume that an imbalance would be more likely in an obviously left-handed child forced to use their right. This still happens - the old sinister/dexter nonsense. But when this happens more internally can it be a case of the left brain (right hand) achieving dominance over the right brain (left hand)? The probable answer is that it is much more complicated than that. Left-handed people do not necessarily have a more dominant right brain than right-handed. But I wonder if some of the 'flexibility' of thought and motion from the more plastic and ambidextrous phase would be better retained than lost.

I have started brushing my teeth and sometimes shaving with my left hand. This feels awkward and unnatural at first but it does appear to get easier after a few weeks. A kind of 're-learning' may be happening.

This would seem to tie in somewhat with current neuroplasticity research. There is growing evidence, for example, that stroke victims who lose the use of a limb, can learn to use that limb again by restricting the movement of the good limb. In the case of an arm the good limb could be put in a tight sling so that the non/semi-functional limb is 'forced' into use. Is it so different to try to force a once highly functional hand to undertake some of the tasks now so ably performed by its opposite number in an effort to regain some of its 'lost' function?

Someone I know has, in the fairly recent past, lost a good deal of the function in one leg. He insists the problem is entirely 'physical' and localised to the area of the leg itself, while at the same time talking about how the limb 'won't obey his commands'. It is clear to me that the damage has resulted from a small stroke but the affected person will never agree with this because of the stigma he sees attached to such a brain-associated dysfunction. The physiotherapists he has seen have made no real effort to investigate the root of the problem. I have suggested some kind of restrictive therapy to 'force' the affected limb into better use but he won't hear of it. Meanwhile the leg becomes less functional with each passing day.

Brain plasticity is never lost but it does become harder to 'activate' as the years go by. Exercises, both physical and mental, which re-activate and promote neuroplasticity can be of huge benefit to all. There appears to be resistance in some quarters to the notion of training the brain like a muscle or using it as 'tool' to effect change in itself and in the rest of the body. Some of the methods touted for achieving plastic change are pure hokum but others, such as the software developed by Posit Science, may just have a chance of making a real difference for those struggling with weakening mental agility.

I won't ever be fully ambidextrous again but that doesn't mean I should give up on my left hand. Balance in all things.

Speech Arrest

2009-06-05T18:02:00.006+01:00

I recently watched some fascinating live neurosurgery on Channel 4. The patient was awake throughout most of the process and was capable of answering questions posed by the studio audience and viewers phoning in.

The "speech arrest" phenomenon was particularly interesting to witness. The surgeon was removing a large tumour and wanted to ensure that he was not causing any damage to Broca's Area, an area on the brain particularly concerned with speech. He used and electrode to stimulate the approximate area while the patient counted from 1 to 20. If the electrode intruded into Broca's area the patient would "lose" numbers in the sequence but resume consistent counting when the probe was moved away.

Once Broca's Area had been identified the surgeon was able to work past it and go further down into the brain to remove part of the tumour. Unfortunately the tumour was invasive, with webs spreading out deep into the brain, so could not be removed fully. The patient will undergo chemotherapy to try to mitigate this.

Blue brain

2009-04-26T12:11:00.004+01:00

The Blue Brain project is exciting. The idea of building a cortical simulation up from the molecular level is a massive challenge but, I think, an essential one if we are ever to fully understand the complex thinking machine that is the human brain.

The initial goals of the project were, in comparison to the current aims, fairly modest. In 2005 the goal was to simulate a rat cortical column (or hypercolumn). With that now achieved the scientists involved are heading in the direction of simulation of an entire human neocortex.

There are concerns that this project cannot tell us much new. It may come up with a working simulation that we can observe functioning and making neuronal connections but of which we have no understanding of what it is actually doing. Sounds a lot like a biological neocortex to me.

The current state of the art at the neuronal level of neuroscience is that we can begin to see such hitherto intangible processes as memories being formed. This appears to me to be roughly equivalent to watching our simulated brain making its virtual connections and forming its virtual memories. Of course the simulation allows us to gather comprehensive and accurate data about these events; something we can't do with a biological brain. When it comes to observing exactly what the world looks like to the entity (biological or virtual) as a result of those neuronal events we are still, largely, in the dark.

What I hope the Blue Brain project will do, and what some of its detractors may fear, is to put an end to any notion of duality. Consciousness will be proved, once and for all, to be an emergent property of the structure, connectional diversity and sheer quantity of neurons (supported by glia) forming the human neocortex. But there is no guarantee that the Blue Brain will ever reach human-level neuronal complexity. A huge investment would be required in this research, currently admirably supported by the Swiss government, to bring that possibility to fruition.

This is pure science and the investment is worth it. Understanding the construction and plasticity of our own brains will give us the tools we need to better shape ourselves and to recognise the negative neurobiological effects of bad interactions with other people and environments. Perhaps our future depends on that understanding.

CADIE fool

2009-04-01T22:54:00.002+01:00

I don't normally take much interest in April Fools but I did like Google's CADIE prank. I looked up the CADIE blog after seeing the sky-high stats for it on Alexa.

The high level of interest is possibly borne out of a desire among many to witness the genuine emergence of a human-like artificial intelligence. But who knows whether the intelligence of an AI or 'artilect' would be remotely human-like. We already have an abundance of 'weak AI' around us but many don't even notice it. It's strong AI that holds the fascination.

I sometimes wonder if we would even notice if strong AI were present. If it were to emerge as a non human-like intelligence, perhaps via a fertile medium like the Internet, perhaps it would choose not to communicate with us. Perhaps it wouldn't think to do so. Maybe it would be 'thalient'.

There is a definition on Wikipedia of the concept of 'thalience'. This current definition may or may not have been adopted by the AI community, but from my reading of Karl Schroeder's book this definition is incorrect. To me thalience is to an artilect as intelligence is to a human. In other words thalience would be a way of understanding the environment (medium) and communicating with peers independently of human modes, and values.

'Artificial Intelligence' or at least 'strong AI' could be a complete misnomer. Can intelligence, no matter how generated, ever be artificial? I don't think so. When it emerges it will be as real as ours - but it won't be the same. It will be thalient. That is both fascinating and frightening.

Perhaps that's why we want to believe in CADIE. Because it seems like us and is therefore reassuring.

Spooky Action

2009-03-06T17:15:00.002Z

An experiment has been devised to directly observe the quantum paradox in action.

The quantum paradox is probably not a subject that most of us spend time thinking about. Quantum entanglement, dubbed "spooky action at a distance" by Einstein, goes against the grain of our common sense understanding of our universe. Einstein hated it.

It is exciting to know that the quantum paradox can now be observed in some way, given that it was the act of observation that was both the spanner in the works and the key component of the theory.

Quantum entanglement makes teleportation possible. Lab experiments have demonstrated that photons can be 'teleported' and it won't be long before scientists are able to teleport something as (comparatively) large as a virus. There is no prospect of teleporting people, though. Too much data and the drawback of having to die as part of the process should rule it out for the foreseeable future.

It would be easy to wax philosophical about quantum entanglement. The fact that an electron in a star in another solar system may be able to tell me the quantum state of its entangled partner in the iris of my eye, is something that I could struggle with. It seems like that should mean something profound. But it doesn't. Just because I currently 'contain' one of the electrons does not imply significance. The entangled partner could just as easily be in a pile of yak faeces.

The quantum paradox is real. That means that it is a tool that can be used. It is fascinating to watch scientists learning to use paradoxical tools. They are already starting to build computers using quantum states. A fully-fledged quantum computer will produce encryption that is truly unbreakable. These devices may become common, they may be used by scientists, governments and individuals. And yet they will still be operating by the power of paradox.

And once it starts to work for them, will anyone care that it is paradoxical?

Fusion

2009-02-23T22:28:00.004Z

I watched an interesting 'Horizon' programme about nuclear fusion.

If we are to become a Kardashev Type 1 civilisation we are going to need fusion. Many would probably ask why we would wish to push through to this level and not just be satisfied with our current Type 0.72. Striving for this staging post could be the death of us but so could trying to stand still.

It is currently fashionable to wear personal energy consumption level as a badge. But the idea of a "carbon footprint" is arbitrary. The result depends on which questions you ask. Inefficient energy consumption is wasteful and counter-productive but so is inefficient energy generation. Wind turbines are strangely beautiful but there can never be enough of them to make a real difference. Such 'green' forms of energy production lull us into a false sense of security. They make us feel that we are doing something. But it will never be enough.

All our energy comes from the sun one way or another. Oil is encapsulated power from long-long dead vegetation which once used photosynthesis to harness solar energy. And so the sun is always the way forward.

Fusion involves learning the lessons from the hearts of stars to make miniature suns here on Earth, using tokamaks or laser fusion. These techniques stand a good chance of success over the next 10-20 years but they are poorly funded, perhaps because of the current fixation with employing primitive wind, tidal, bio fuel and nuclear fission methods.

Evolution has always required energy to make exponential leaps to new levels of complexity. We are part of that process and nuclear fusion is the paradigm shift in energy generation that we require.

Why do we require this? Why didn't we just stay in the primordial soup?

Toolbox

2009-02-04T23:05:00.003Z

Changing my mind is more difficult than I thought. Or am I just telling myself that?

Brain plasticity continues well into adulthood and perhaps, to some extent, throughout our entire lives. This wonderful capacity of the cerebrum is not just for kids. So what is it that makes it feel so difficult to alter our own personality traits and establish new and clearer channels of thinking? Simply telling your brain to change doesn't seem to do the trick and we can find ourselves 'spinning' on our favourite hangups day after day.

Part of the problem may be that we don't know what the 'tools' or 'controls' are to effect the change. We learn throughout our lives that certain results require certain processes but nobody ever explains to us how to self-program. For others, with a more critical mindset, new-age positive thinking and meditation-based 'toolboxes' can appear clumsy and ineffective.

My brother makes musical instruments. I once asked him how he undertook some of the intricate wood planing tasks required to make a guitar fretboard and he explained that he had to make the tiny planing tools before he could make the fretboard. I realise that this analogy is also clumsy but it gets the point across. The only convincing and effective tools for reshaping our own minds must be made by ourselves.

So how to do this? Realising that it can be done is a start. Accepting that it's all physical and that, therefore, the tools are real will also help. We all know the kind of words and situations that make us cringe, so don't use those. Our left hemispheres can be overly clamorous and dominating, so find some space and time to open up to the right. Stop your 'spinning' thoughts in their tracks as often as possible - you can because they are yours.

It's tempting to think that your brain is working at it's best when neuronally 'lit up' like a Christmas tree but that's not the case. Focus is required and that means a certain stillness but does not require psychobabble.

These are the things that I am attempting but all our brains are different. Finding focus and stillness is hard, because that is the story I have told myself throughout my life and therefore that story has become part of my cortical wiring.

Projection

2009-01-22T17:47:00.003Z

So all this may be a hologram. Should this worry you? I don't think so - at least no more than the idea that everything may be composed of tiny vibrating cosmic strings or that all possibilities are actually played out, as in the many worlds interpretation.

The holographic universe idea does not equate to acceptance, tacit or otherwise, of the simulation argument. But the notion of us playing out an ancestor simulation isn't as laughable as it may appear.

To me it's an issue of resolution. How grainy is reality? Of what type of "pixels" is our universe composed? It seems logical that there must be a smallest unit of reality and that that unit may be fiercely insubstantial. But at the same time it feels counter-intuitive because we think of ourselves and our world as solid and not "projected" in the way that pixels are. If you can accept the idea of our being "projected" at any kind of resolution, albeit a mind-bogglingly high one, then you can accept that something might be running the projector.

None of this implies God. Any intelligence capable of running ancestor simulations must have itself evolved from something less intelligent. The very idea of such an intelligence wishing to run the simulations indicates that they are doing so in order to see how they themselves evolved. God never gets to evolve. How dull.

Enough of the wild speculation and back to holograms. We accept that a moving image on a 2-dimensional surface can give us the illusion of 3-dimensional reality. We will soon have to accept holographic "televisions" that sit in the centre of our rooms, so that we can walk around them and do such banal things as looking at the back of the actors heads while they recite their lines. It is a big leap from that point to accepting our universe as a holographic projection but would it make us any less "real" if it were true?

I am a thinking entity utilising synapses, neurons and glia. Beyond that functional level the units of the thinking substrate become markedly less tangible, but that doesn't affect my ability to think. I would like to know how small the units get because that is the kind of thing that brains ponder? But if I eventually come to discover that I am actually living in a kind of Flatland that won't invalidate me as a thinking entity.

Being part of an ancestor simulation wouldn't either.

I am a Strange Loop

2009-01-16T18:14:00.005Z

Some time ago I read 'I am a Strange Loop' by Douglas Hofstadter.

His style can appear pedantic but there is a core of succinct truth in his work. Hofstadter clearly accepts himself as a purely material being. He attempts to put his finger on what "I" means within this context.

The core of his explanation is that the Self must be generated within the atomic structure of the brain. "I" is a "loop" generated by the brain feeding its own output back into its own input. But it's no ordinary type of loop; not one that is constrained to repetitive, mundane processes. The complex and chaotic nature of the feeds creates something unique within the system: that which we call "me".

The unpredictable output of "loopy" systems is demonstrated in video feedback experiments, on which Hofstadter is keen. He gives other examples including Godelian mathematical anomalies and language experiments, which can be made to exhibit a similar type of capricious behaviour.

I picked up an older book in a charity shop some time after I had read "I am a Strange Loop" - "The Creative Loop" by Erich Harth. His theme is similar but perhaps easier to understand and I think he may have been influenced by Hofstadter's earlier work. Harth uses the analogy of a hall of mirrors to describe the Self. We're not always directly responding to the input of our senses, we're responding to our inner reflections of those inputs chaotically mixed with all the other inputs we have ever had, and all of their component reflections.

I like this explanation. All Hail the careenium. I accept my loopiness and revel in it.

Cryonics

2009-01-09T09:57:00.003Z

I have signed up with Alcor to be cryonically stored after my death.

Of course we don't have the technology to 'wake' a human from death. But everything is made of atoms, so one day the techniques may exist to intervene at the atomic level to fix the massive degradation that happens to a human brain after death and the subsequent storage.

This isn't something I would wish for. It's just practical. Once you reject the concept of an immortal soul you can simply accept your eventual non-existence, or you can take some faltering steps towards retaining something, anything of the unique construct that is you. I have chosen the latter option.

Learning things

2009-01-08T16:36:00.003Z

I have been learning things.

The things that I have learned have changed my mind - physically. That's what happens when you learn. The process alters neuronal connections to create new ones; to strenghten some, to weaken others so that over time the physical structure of the neocortex changes.

Those of us who don't hold any fuzzy Cartesian dualist notions of a mind/body split will not find this surprising. After all, everything is made of atoms. It's difficult to shake the notion of mind being separate though. We have so much ingrained vocabulary that reinforces it. But it's a straightjacket - carrying around this ethereal element which we think of as 'me' but which we cannot explain.

Learning about neuroscience is important. Surely it's an essential grounding for any field of human intellectual endeavour. How can a philospher, for example, opine about the nature of the mind and the human condition if she has no idea where or how her opinions are being generated, stored and reinforced?

Dendrites, the antennae of neurons, are a little like trees - hence the name derived from Greek. Some types of dendrite have 'spines'. The dendrite as a whole and the quality and quantity of the spines are affected by many environmental factors. The 'trees' can grow well or poorly. Their environment may be the cortex of a Downs Syndrome child, in which case many will be stunted and withered, as we would perhaps expect. But a similar 'withering' effect can be observed in the neurons of children with a poor social environment, bereft of proper human interaction and nurturing.

Cartesion dualism is wrong. We are biological and our 'minds' are generated by biochemical processes within our brains. Isn't that liberating.

Time to return

2009-01-08T10:34:00.001Z

A lot has happened since my last post. I will explain some of this in due course.

An end to religion

2006-11-03T18:52:00.000Z

Text of a letter I wrote to the Sunday Herald newspaper in response to an article by Muriel Gray:

Sir
I congratulate Muriel Gray for her Enlightened article on the subject of religion. I, along with many others (probably the silent majority in Scotland) agree that it's time for an end to the "religious garbage" with which we are constantly force fed.

I am exasperated that so many 21st Century humans still cling to such misguided and wholly superstitious notions. Let's take the idea of original sin as an example. This is a favourite of the Free Presbyterian miscreants who have so adeptly scarred the minds of generations of my forebears. Original sin holds that you are damned from birth. I'm actually not quite sure at what specific point the damning begins. Is it from conception or is there an implicit damning of the upstart sperm and egg involved in the foul act? Regardless, what a cruel notion this is. To damn a child from birth. Just think about it. How could a child brought up with this belief live with it? Some choose not to.

I have sat through Free Presbyterian funerals and endured the frothing tirades of the "ministers" against the sinning deceased. The deceased is not even granted a name. This particular strand of religious belief has almost died out. I name it and welcome its passing.

Bringing a child up to believe in any form of god is child abuse because it is morally wrong and mentally damaging. State sanction of this through provision of "faith schools" is abhorrent. We should condemn all political parties that shamelessly curry favour with "faith communities" by promising them more of these institutions.

I actually like the the term "Brights" because it is a label that demands a reaction. The religious believe that they are also "enlightened", whereas a "Bright" knows that religion is a cloak of darkness smothering thought and knowledge.

We don't need schools of "Brightness" or "Enlightenism" or whatever we choose to call it; children have an inbuilt brightness and curiosity which we should cherish and foster. What we need is an end to religion, and we can begin the process in Scotland by ending the breeding grounds of intolerance we call faith schools.

Entropy

2006-10-06T23:01:00.001+01:00

I recently read 'Parallel Worlds' by Michio Kaku. It's a wonderful book which put new and complex images into my head regarding M-theory and multi-dimensional space. I can't comprehend the mathematical side of these subjects but this physicist author has a way of using his words (and a few diagrams) skillfully to create strong mental images of complex scientific ideas.

The book also brought up the subject of entropy, which is a concept I've come across in other books. I find entropy fascinating. It is a measurable variable in physics equations but seems somehow intangible. This is perhaps because it's an idea that people don't really wish to face.

Entropy is a measure of chaos and disorder. Matter can change in ways which increase its entropy. For example burning an old chair turns a functional and 'ordered' piece of matter into a chaotic and disordered cloud of ash and smoke. It's straightforward to accelerate entropy by burning the chair but it's impossible (currently) to reassemble the chair from the resultant ash and smoke. I use the word 'accelerate' rather than 'create' because the chair is already subject to entropy. The current manifestation of the molecules in the chair will degrade over time through 'natural' processes such as rotting but setting fire t0 the chair speeds up the process.

Everyone and everything is subject to entropy, so there can be no absolute 'permanence'. The persistence of a particular material manifestation can only be measured relative to other material manifestations. We don't generally worry too much about our sun using up all its energy, burning Earth to a crisp then fading to a cold cinder, because relative to our short lifespan that era is such a long way off. Relative to the lifespan of the universe our sun's life is an eyeblink.

But entropy doesn't just affect matter. Physics tells us that a measure of entropy is always present. I think that it also affects ideas and relationships. Perhaps there is a kind of memetic entropy where certain memes, even though they have been around for a long time suffering 'natural' wear and tear, reach the threshold point where they can no longer hold their cohesion and seem to dissipate suddenly. Some relationships only last a short time because the individuals involved don't take steps to limit the entropic effects of arguments and discord.

Entropy is a measurable variable within the limits of 'closed' systems. But is hard to define a closed system. There is no doubting the acceleration of entropy caused by the pollution of our planet but our planet may not be a 'closed' system for much longer. That doesn't mean that we should be content to despoil systems beyond our own, just that we are evolving entities that will spread and use ever more energy, accelerating entropy as we go. We will also be increasing intelligence, and we don't know where that will lead us, because we can't conceive it yet.

Memetic evolution

2006-09-02T10:50:00.000+01:00

I'm currently reading 'The Selfish Gene' by Richard Dawkins. It's 30 years since this book was first published but it is as relevant now as it was when first published, perhaps more so. I decided to read the book not because I am particularly interested in genetics but because there are so many references to it in other books I have read.

Eric Drexler frequently refers to Dawkins' 'meme' idea in 'Engines of Creation.' A meme is, essentially, a cultural 'idea' which becomes established within the consciousness of a certain group of individuals or within society as a whole. Memes can be propagated and perpetuated by various means, including of course the media, and now the internet. Before the media they would have been propagated verbally from person to person, group to person, or whatever. Later memes were propagated through writing. They can be the seed or the basis for entire belief systems, or they can be passing fads. Resilient memes survive in the consciousness of large numbers of people. Weak memes die out. Genes can be seen as 'replicators' and so can memes.

This brings us to the idea of 'memetic evolution'. It can be argued that humans are now beginning to step beyond the bounds of genetic evolution. We can make decisions, using our brains - our genetically evolved thinking apparatus', to defy our genetic programming, by using contraception for example. Memetic evolution allows as to evolve on a different, and much faster, level. We can do this by learning, effectively absorbing knowledge memes. These memes can help to preserve us, as new knowledge in medicine has done, they are 'good' memes and therefore survive and spread. There are also 'bad' memes. For example a meme for group suicide which quickly kills off all carriers of the meme. This would be bad for both the meme and the unfortunate individuals involved. Other bad memes survive and spread because they do not kill their carriers (at least not all of them).

I regard religion as a bad meme. Religion spreads, killing some of its carriers, but keeping plenty more alive to spread the meme. Religion also affects non-carriers by battling good memes containing beneficial information.

Memetic evolution and my definition of extravolution have a lot in common. Memes containing new technological insights spread throughout our planet, bringing us new knowledge which is beneficial to our survival. This process happens within the context of genetic evolution but also beyond it. Extravolution is shaping us at an ever-accelerating rate.

Homeopathy

2006-09-01T08:51:00.000+01:00

I listened to a story on the morning news about homeopathy. Apparently labelling is being changed to make it clearer what homeopathic products are and how they should be used. Unfortunately the new labelling will not state "This does not work."

A 'medicine' diluted to the point where it is unlikely that any molecules of the original medicinal ingredient exist in the substance, cannot qualify as a medicine. Numerous scientific studies have shown that the 'effect' of homeopathic medicine to be no greater than placebo.

The feature also pointed out that sales of homeopathic medicines are on the increase. This doesn't surprise me and indeed confirms the unscientific nature of homeopathy. At a time when trust in certain experts is at a low ebb, many people will have a tendency to reject the advice of scientists and make 'individual' decisions to opt instead for quackery. This is a dangerous and illogical meme. Current scientific understanding is a result of cumulative learning and rigorous testing. To reject that understanding is to reject valuable knowledge.

Superstition

2006-08-30T21:16:00.000+01:00

I have known for a long time now that all superstition is bunk. Many people, however, don't seem to realise that they are superstitious. One cannot have any form of blind faith without being superstitious.

In the past there were reasons for superstitions. The further back in time you go the fewer coherent systems for describing the mysteries of the Earth and sky are available. People invented their own types of descriptive 'systems'. Without a scientific basis for those systems they concocted groups of deities (or individual deities) as primitive ways of explaining their environment and understanding themselves. Most saw their future (and therefore all their actions?) as being governed by 'higher powers'. They were helpless pawns at the mercy of wrathful gods. Do good and you got your reward in the next world. Do ill and you got your punishment. Either way it was out of your control.

Today we have no such excuses. Superstition is infantile. I don't just mean the big stuff like believing in a god but also the small, corrosive superstitions of everyday life. Black cats crossing paths and Friday 13ths, dropped cutlery and subtraversed ladders. All bunk and all inexcusable.

Matter to ponder

2006-08-30T10:00:00.000+01:00

A lot has happened since my last post. Not in the physical world but in the way I perceive things. My current focus is on 'extravolutionary' technologies. Particulary nanotech or 'minting'. I have been engrossed in a book called 'Engines of Creation' by K. Eric Drexler, which has helped to open my eyes to the implications of the molecular nature of matter.

Matter is made up of molecules of varying complexity. So if we can manipulate those molecules directly we open up an extraordinary new form of technology which will change us and our environment in ways we are only just beginning to imagine. The molecules in a brick, along with the 'positional information' which determine its molecular stucture, make it a brick. The same is true of a human brain. For us the precise 'positional information' of the molecules in our brains makes us who we are. The patterns 'grown' in our brains throughout our lives, those that define us as individuals, are not fleeting. Does that not mean that they can be preserved, perhaps indefinitely?

The above is, of course, a vast oversimplification. But the key point is that there does not need to be a magic ingredient which makes particular types of matter, such as brains, special. Brains are special because of the unique structures formed between the molecules within them. They are the most complex cohesive structures in the world, perhaps in our universe.

Other 'volvere' words

2006-04-13T08:30:00.000+01:00

I have been thinking about other words which use the Latin root 'volvere' (as in evolution) which could be used to convey a similar sense to 'extravolution'.

There are various listings on Google for 'transvolution'. In many of these instances it has been used in the sense of spirituality or mind development (biological). 'Trans' can mean beyond or across but doesn't quite capture the sense that I am trying to convey with 'extravolution'. In the case of the now widely used word 'transgender' the word 'trans' conveys the sense of 'in between'. Extravolution has begun and is not 'across' or 'in between'.

There is also about one listing on Google for 'supervolution'. This word is a reasonable alternative. The word 'super' means 'above' or 'over'. It could, however, be considered a little pejorative and perhaps doesn't convey the sense of an ongoing but partially separate process.

It's interesting to see the burgeoning recognition of the extravolution process. I am sure this will snowball as people go from vague recognition to startling familiarity with extravolution (or whichever other word becomes the accepted term).

Killing Joke

2006-04-11T18:29:00.001+01:00

Why do I enjoy the music of Killing Joke so much? It feels visceral, like no other music I know. I suppose there are some sounds/chord progressions/melodies which just fit perfectly with ones own brain patterns. As a friend once asked when I was casting about for something new to listen to, "What do your ears like?"

My ears and my brain enjoy Killing Joke.

Word meets resistance

2006-04-10T21:39:00.000+01:00

'Extravolution' is now getting a hard time on Wiktionary. Now it's even being called a 'protologism'. A word which has existed since 1829 can't be a protologism. My definition of it is certainly new but then so is the phenomenon it now describes. Shall we call it a neologistic nonce word? It is what it is.

I know. Information is not knowledge. Knowledge is of value while information is constantly destroyed. But how does one make knowledge?

Creating a word

2006-04-09T22:17:00.000+01:00

I thought of this word a couple of years ago while standing in the shower in a dwam (Scots word for daydreaming). What's happening to humans now through the development of technology isn't exactly part of biological evolution but it is nevertheless evolution. It's somehow beyond that. As 'extraterrestrial' is to 'beyond/outside of earth', so 'extravolution' is to 'beyond/outside of evolution'.

I recently got round to preparing a definition of the word and put it on Wikipedia. The editors there are rather rule-bound and condemned it to deletion as a neologism. It did survive in Wiktionary.

At that time I found that the word existed on Google in only one other place. In an .rtf file written by a Latin scholar. I emailed him to find out where it came from and he told me that it came from an early edition of the Oxford English dictionary but it seemed only to have been defined as the opposite of 'intravolution'.

The word has sound linguistic roots and I have given it a definition. Some people who I have told about this have said that I can't just create/define words. Why not? Must I be an academic to be able to think? Extravolution is a word. I use it and am understood.

Here we go

2006-04-09T22:00:00.000+01:00

As the dry-witted Highlander calmly stated as he faced imminent death in the form of his car falling off the edge of a cliff. "Here we go," he said. Another journey? No. He was going to die and that would have been that. Death is always a waste.

I was discussing this with a friend's wife this weekend. She was getting emotional about her gran's death. She was rationalising the old woman's death by saying that she had been somehow ready. Is anyone ever really ready to die? Ill people maybe want to die to alleviate the suffering. Same goes for suicidal people. If you're fit and healthy in mind and body the chances are that you want to live. Preferably forever.