My Mind Wanders

Superstition and Programming

2012-02-02T13:00:00.000-08:00

So much of my thinking was shaped by programming. People who do not program extensively are missing out on some uniquely valuable mental training. Now that I am back into it, I am noticing my habits of thinking that I owe to programming.

Today's efforts provide one example. I decided to tackle an issue with accessing the correct directory for jinja2 templates. When I switched over from django to jinja2, I could not get it to work without putting template htmls in the main directory. This is an ugly place for them to be. You want them in their own nice little directory. So this need to put them in the main directory - this is like a "superstition". Your brain thinks of it the same way as a superstition. You don't know why it works, but you know it does and you are afraid to change it. What I learned from programming is that this is faulty thinking. There is a real reason. And if you just try, try, try, you will understand it. The world of the program is complex enough to mimic real life, but still simplified enough that complete understanding is possible. You just have to push on through the fear. Don't give up.

So, I pushed on through and now I understand what jinja2 is doing much better. My templates are in the subdirectory where I want them to be. My directory is all cleared out of miscellaneous files and the little test application is working.

After I moved files around and reran the app, the chat was broken. My first "superstition" was that a moved file was needed. I moved them all back! Still broken. So, I pushed on through and figured out what must be broken. After staring at the code long enough, I remembered I had made a change to it last night as an experiment. Obviously, a failed experiment that, once backed out, repaired the function. Same thing with looking at the user profile. My mind jumped to the file move as the cause. But it turned out to be a django/jinja incompatibility.

Programming has made be very non-superstitious in general. I assume that there are explanations for everything. That quirks are just accidents. That superstition is really just a lack of understanding.

A Persistent Browser-Based Games Capability for Psychology, Sociology and Economics Research

2011-12-11T09:53:00.001-08:00

A Proposal

Persistent browser-based games (PBBGs) are a popular form of entertainment. Multi-player strategy PBBGs have great potential for research applications. This type of game includes elements of leadership, conflict, planning, cooperation, competition, comparative metrics, and economics. Games can represent real-world systems on a scale that can be studied and instrumented. By changing the parameters of the system the game embodies, and adding and eliminating system features, the effects of real-world policies and systems could be inferred.

These games are not prohibitively expensive to build or operate. Many have very limited graphics and animation and yet are still popular. Typical popular version of this type of game are Eve, Evony, Grepolis and Battledawn. With limited advertising, these games have attracted many thousands of users. The population required for study need not be thousands either. My experience of playing a game that is exceptionally well-designed to model social interaction on cooperation and competition, Kings of Babylon, has convinced me that a player population of 250-500 is more than adequate.

How could these games be developed and used? A partnership between Computer Science, Graphics Arts, and social science departments could be used to develop a game-based capability for use by social scientists. The game technology itself has limited research potential, and could be developed and maintained by undergraduates as part of a game development curricula. But the resulting game platform could be a very powerful tool for social scientists. The features and parameters of the game platform could be used to instantiate game sessions that focus on particular social research questions. By varying them, the effects of different real-world policies could be inferred. The games could be used for a single short game session. But, many of these games have sessions that last weeks, months and even indefinitely. Changes could be introduced mid-session or between sessions. Demographics of the player population could be controlled and, if they are made open to the public, could be very diverse. Most of these games are played internationally, so cultural differences could be studied as well.

What would a representative research project look like? An economics researcher desiring to study the impact of taxation could create a session that included a taxation component in group economies. A one month session could be played with tax set at 10% and be followed by a session with the tax set at 40%. This could be reversed and repeated as often as needed to get a representative sample of behavior. The game would be instrumented to provide metrics on the player behaviors.

Just on taxation alone, it is easy to envision many experimental designs:
1) Effect of lowering and raising the tax rate
2) The effect of who controls the spending of the taxes: leader, leaders, highly-taxed, everyone
3) The effect of graduated taxation vs flat tax
4) The effect of income taxes vs consumption tax

2011-03-30T15:25:00.000-07:00

Why I Play Games

Throughout my adult life, I have played various computer-based games. Since I retired, I have spent a lot of time - maybe too much - playing Kings of Babylon, a persistent browser-based game. Family members might say it is an unhealthy amount of time. I am getting burned out on it now. The game is not being maintained and has lots of problems. I have started playing Battledawn instead. Unless I can come up with a relatively low-key way to play that one, I probably will burn out on that one too. But, it is probably time to move on to some other activities.

During this period, I have often reflected on what the game is doing for me. Because if it was not doing something for me, I wouldn't be playing it. I have played single player games and multi-player games. Both have value for me. So, here are my thoughts:

1) I learn to take risks and compete aggressively in a safe environment. Risk taking and competition don't come very easily to me - because of my gender and personality. Compared to the average woman, I am quite competitive and a risk taker. Compared to the average man, I am not. This has been a hindrance to me in my life and something I have to work at. Now that I am retired and my children are grown, there is no reason not to take risks. I need to get into a risk-taking mindset. The games sharpen competitive skills very effectively. They get you comfortable with competing and risk taking. I will say, that in the team games, I tend to take on a supportive feminine role - nonetheless competitive and risk-friendly. I have come to call this my inner Athena. As Athena, I am a warrior. I am fierce for my team, but I am also clever and generous. It is a good feeling.

2) Learning and mastery is fun. These games present a challenge that requires learning a non-trivial simulation environment. The environment resembles reality enough that you feel like you are mastering some little corner of the universe. It is gratifying to be ranked #1 in this little universe. There is a feeling of accomplishment. That said, when the game gets too easy, it gets boring and this aspect goes away. Multi-player games have less of this problem, because real people are involved. You can never really master real people, can you? Regardless, games will challenge you mind and make you learn strategic and planning skills. I am constantly impressed with their potential for teaching young people these skills. Parents don't realize how valuable this experience can be for a teen. I would encourage parents to play one of these games with their teen. It would be an amazing experience. I plan to play with my 10 year old grandson when he is 12 or 13 and ready to play with adults. Even for me, with twenty years of management experience, I learned some new things.

3) Nothing is quite as rewarding as being part of a successful team, is it? When you play a combat game with a team of people, you bond in the same way that athletes and soldiers bond. You are attacking and defending together. People sacrifice themselves for the team. There is something very precious and heartwarming about this. I have encountered this in real life several times and these are peak experiences for me. In multi-player games, this is much easier to come by. You know the people on your team in ways that you don't even know some of your family. There is a bond formed there. This restores your faith in humanity and makes you appreciate human beings - if you manage to do it. Many players never go there. I feel sorry for them.

4) When you play multi-player games you meet people of many different background, ages, and nationalities. This is pretty interesting, especially if you are someone like me who has lived most of my adult life in a highly educated professional bubble. Sure, it is probably 80 or 90% male. And maybe mostly 15-35 year olds. But they seem to come from everywhere and every possible background. Since I worked in engineering, I enjoy teaming with men. Young men make fun teammates. It has helped me keep a young outlook and get used to the attitudes of that generation in a way I would never have otherwise. I am sure it is interesting for them to find out they can be friends with a 57 year old woman. Don't let anyone tell you that people playing these game are not interacting!! This is very challenging human interaction - beyond what you might encounter in real life.

5) Of course, games are great for relieving boredom or loneliness. Hanging out with twenty people just shooting the breeze and talking smack can be pretty entertaining.

6) Gameplay can be reaffirming. It can make you feel valued and like you are accomplishing something. I missed that feeling of being valued as a manager. I missed the daily, weekly, monthly, yearly accomplishments. There are risks to getting this from games, since games are not real, really. This is the biggest worry I have for myself and other people who are too involved in games. You might miss real life. I don't have the same concern about social interaction. The social interaction in games is very real. But the accomplishment is not. A teen who is failing in school, but ranked number 1 in a game is a disaster in the making!

2010-03-28T13:54:00.001-07:00

Nice video with natural manifestations of Fibonacci Series, etc.

2010-03-28T09:11:00.000-07:00

Education

Doesn't it seem obvious that any class that needs computers should just let students bring their own? It's not clear why they even need to be in the room to me. They could all just watch a lecture video and sign on to a chat room to have the class discussion. Wouldn't this save lots of real estate and energy?

It's just a matter of time before we all quit visiting in RL 3D space and have nice media rooms for doing this online in our houses instead.

2010-03-27T08:46:00.000-07:00

Social Fad?

I noticed this trend when my youngest child was in grade school. It all seemed silly to me and I let him be "free range". Lots of other mothers were dragging their kids around to activities all day long. I would have hated that, so I just wouldn't buy into it. My daughter apparently holds it against me that I was not doing this 35 years ago with her - when no one was. I think it is mostly female social competition that is really being exploited as a consumer trend. It is also part of the mythology being pushed that mothers have a huge influence on how their children turn out - part of "blank slate" psychology and the push to get women back in the home by conservatives.

We'll see how these spoiled and pushed children all turn out, won't we?

2010-03-27T08:24:00.000-07:00

New Puritanism

A prediction: We will enter a new era of Puritanism. All that sex in the media will go away.
This is because cognitive science is finding out that porn and fantasies screw up your sex life big time. The idea that these things seriously affect performance and the pleasure you get out of it are bound to filter down to the masses. Not only that, but the fixes are pretty simple - stop doing it and you will go back to normal in months if not weeks. Maybe all those veils are erotic?

2006-09-23T06:44:00.000-07:00

Brainstorming

I am reading a book on how to make great marketing presentations that puts forth the idea that when alone we are good at left brain structuring, but that coming up with insights and ideas - and getting to the heart of things - really is done best brainstorming out loud with a group.

This seems right to me -but, why had I not heard this before. This is an area that would be good to study. Perhaps there is psychological research on it. I've always felt inept or lacking somehow, since I depend on those whiteboard conversations with my colleagues to "get my thoughts straight". I worry that when I retire I will lose this resource and not be able to function as well. I've come up with strategies for obtaining "whiteboard" resources to compensate. But, this makes me think that maybe this is normal and just human - not a personal flaw.

2006-09-23T06:23:00.000-07:00

Faulty Causation

A nice blog entry about a study on how easy it is to induce faulty causation over at Scienceblogs. Of course, this isn't news. I would certainly update Hume's notion that "causation is a figment of our imagination" to something like "causation is a cognitive model constructed by the human brain to explain and anticipate events". Saying it is imagination implies that it is invalid - a figment. The blog entry seems to be entirely negative about causation - like it's really invalid. Causation is what keeps us from sticking our finger in the fire and petting a lion. It's the more subtle edges of causation where we get carried away. Things that take a long time to play out. Things that we don't understand.

2006-06-01T16:30:00.000-07:00

The Soundtrack In Your Head

My son gave me Paul Simon's new album Surprise! for Mother's Day. It's a wonderful album, now one of my favorites, with poetic lyrics, great melody, and fabulous performances. I listen to it often. As a result, it is currently the soundtrack in my head and plays all the time. The songs from the album are "stuck in my head". I get to listen to the songs, abeit in a degraded form while I sit in meetings and take a shower. I seem not to control which song is playing and sometimes the same song plays over and over. I often have a mental soundtrack playing, which does not interfere with my thoughts otherwise.

It would be interesting to study mental soundtracks. Does everyone have this capability? My son claims he does not think he has this. I suspect he does and just hasn't paid attention to it. I would posit that this capability is what makes movie soundtracks seem normal. Why else would it seem plausible that music would be playing while the hero kisses the girl or the car chase is underway?

Music, in general, is a very interesting cognitive mystery. Just what does it do for us? Where did it come from? We enjoy it, but that is an effect, not a cause. I suspect the current uses of music are not the original purpose or purposes. It's probably an artifact. It does not seem to be related to speech - there are people with brain damage that can no longer speak, but who can sing and play music. People with excellent music skills are often better at math than English. It does seem to have social uses - synchronizing group activities. It's also romantic - relating to mating. This would be the same purpose that music has for birds, who sing to attract mates. Of course, sex would be a strong driver for the evolution of a capability. If good singers were more successful at attracting mates, singing would be highly selected for.

2006-05-24T17:29:00.000-07:00

Simulating Life

Why are people so fascinated with computer games? Novels? TV shows? Stories? Gossip? What can these all have in common? All these pursuits provide a person with a compact simulation of life. "What happened to person X when they did such and such? Why, they lived happily ever after or were miserable failures." They provide valuable information to you on how other people fared when they tried particular strategies.

I personally prefer games, novels and gossip. They have different, but related value to me. I like to play strategy games - like Civilization, Pharoah and Age of Empires. These games have taught me many strategies that I use in every day life. From Civ, I learned that democracies don't tolerate long, unsuccessful wars. True, isn't it? I've learned that you have to address problems early, or they will bite you later. I've learned to balance my attention. I've learned that you have to have a strong advantage over your rival before you take them on and that you need to have good defenses to stay at peace.

I've read at least a 1000 books of fiction. I treasure many of these and appreciate all of them on one level. The author has shared a life with me in the pages of each book. In many cases, many lives. From these I have learned the wisdom of many lives. It's hard to imagine what kind of person I would be without reading.

From gossip, I learn more near term information. What are the people around me likely to do? Where can I get a good dinner? What strategies work in motivating your children?

In all cases, these are examples of "living life more fully" - experiencing life experiences in a compressed way. This would give a person an advantage over someone living a singular life.

People can get fooled into thinking that these simulations are real life and forget to live their own. Sure, watching TV or reading a book provides you a compact form of a life probably more interesting than your own. But, it is still not real life.

One thing I have learned over the years is that you have to be brave about living. It is important not to put things off due to indecision - or fear that things might go wrong. Life goes by more quickly than you think. People that put off marriage, career changes, or having children may find that life has passed them by. If there is something that you really want to do, do it. Don't live vicariously. Take your chances and do your best.

2006-05-18T15:45:00.000-07:00

The Change Function

Since I am perenially interested in scientific evolutions/revolutions and seek to understand them better, change is a topic I am always thinking about - specifically changes to human behavior and concepts. One of my observations is that some of us love change far more than others. I am a change lover. I live for the thrill of the paradigm shift. I love them and collect them, somewhat like stamps or baseball cards. They feel good to me. I am painfully aware that others do not share my love of change.

My current theory on this is that there is actually a brain structure feature at play here. Some of us have better restructuring capabilities than others, somehow. For most people, the resistance to changing the way they think about something is directly proportional to how much that something is networked to other concepts in their brain. If a concept is far out on the edge of a network of concepts in the brain, it is far easier to change than something at the center of a lot of related concepts.

I ran across a review of a book today in MIT Technology Review. The book is The Change Function: Why Some New Technologies Take Off and Others Crash and Burn, by Pip Coburn. Pip seems to agree with me completely. He says technologists are all like me - change junkies. They love complicated new things that make them adapt. They just don't understand that most of their potential customers don't. He has an equation for the non-technologists:

The Change Function = f(perceived crisis vs. total perceived pain of adoption)

and there is the techie version:

Supplier-centric adoption model = f(Grove's law of 10x disruptive technology x Moore's law).

The supplier-centric model basically means that techies think people want things that are "way cool" and "much better".

I like Coburn's change function. It captures my concept succinctly. People won't change their way of thinking about things unless their current way of thinking is in such a failure mode that the problems with continuing to think that way would be more trouble than changing. This is true in all kinds of situations - not just scientific evolution/revolution or technology adoption.

In science, you can see this during paradigm shifts. Scientists will not abandon current theories until they are clearly "broken" or dignificantly less useful than a new theory.

This seems like an adaptive mechanism. As long as things are working for you, why change? Expending energy to reorganize your brain should be motivated by a good reason. So, the question is: why are I and my fellow techies so happy to change? Are some people change agents naturally? Do they seek the new ideas, regardless of their value, presenting them to the slow changers to evaluate?

2006-05-07T16:16:00.000-07:00

Models Within Models

This is only a half-baked idea, which needs more thought (a small disclaimer). Political Reasoning and Cognition by Rosenberg at al. categorizes cognitive levels as sequential, linear, and systematic. These are increasingly sophisticated views of the world that they apply to political reasoning. One of their hypotheses is that people operate at different cognitive levels and that this affects their political reasoning. This was (and is, I think) apparently controversial, and in conflict with many social scientists who reject the idea that one person's thinking is more sophisticated than another's. Of course, I am with Rosenberg on that. The egalitarian's odd view, that we are all the same, is the sort of thinking that makes non-academics roll their eyes and gripe about political correctness. It's not science to take a position because it is "nice" and reject reality because it is "unfair".

But, back to the model. The levels are part of the "structural developmental" school of developmental psychology. They are well-developed concepts, with related behaviors. But, to me, they resemble a model that still too high level to be fundamental. I think there is an underlying model that interacts with other capabilities. My hypothesis is that what is really at work here is the level of abstraction of a cognitive modeling capability.

Humans observe patterns in the world and construct a model based on their observations. Their models help them predict the outcome of actions and allow them to make choices and intervene to have a more favorable outcome to themselves. This is not to say that every observation and every instance of model construction is deliberate and consciously intended to improve prediction and help you to survive. This modeling capability is a big part of our cognition and we use it all the time. Creatures that model all the time, building more and more accurate and predictive models, survive better. We are the descendents of those survivors. We model, model, model.

As babies, we start out observing and modeling the physical world. Over time, our models get better at working with longer time frames. People become adept at modeling and become aware of the models themselves - and are able to think about them as if they were physical objects - these are abstract concepts. As we advance in capability, we can observe and model about abstract items, and the processes of abstraction. This is basically a recursive process, builing level on level. On this blog, I am observing and modeling the process of modeling itself. More and more sophisticated thinking require more levels of abstraction.

Put in another way, first people understand the behavior of objects, then they understand rules about them, then the understand how rules are made and how to make them, then they understand which rules are better than others and what constitutes an effective rule making process - they become experts on rulemaking itself.

An example can be made about religion. As babies, religion has no meaning - it is too abstract. A schoolage child can learn the rules of religion and understand how to apply them. A more sophisticated person can understand the morality and value behind the rules and apply them more effectively to special cases. Another level of sophistication beyond that, and a person can change the rules to fit evolving circumstances. Beyond that, a person can create a new religion, defining the rules that its followers would adhere to. There are even more levels of sophistication - as someone could become an expert at religion defning, with a model of how religions work, in general.

2006-05-04T17:36:00.000-07:00

Transhuman Conundrums

A meeting at work today started off with a discussion of Kurzweil and the transhumanists. If you are not familiar with transhumanism, Kurzweil's book is an interesting read. The basic idea of transhumanism is that a time will come in the near future when computers are powerful enough to emulate the human mind. At that point, you could copy the "data" in a person's brain and load it into a computer and start the emulation. "You" would now be alive in the computer.

I was quite taken with this idea and wanted to be the first to volunteer. But, then, my clever son pointed out that the copy would be a copy - like spawning a new process in a computer. Your copy would die - and blink out of consciousness. Sure, your copy would live on as you, but it wouldn't actually be you. This took some of the fun away for me.

I blogged about this on my CR blog once and a clever reader had a solution. He would replace your brain, part by part, with a gradual subsitution. Then, you would continue on indefinitely - wouldn't you? Hmm, maybe that would work. I'd be willing to try it!

We had this discussion at dinner again. This is a great framework for discussing many of the more vexing questions of consciousness. If I lose consciousness and wake up again - is it really the same "process" that was there before - or a new one, that has my memory and my old "hardware"? How would that be any different than the Kurzweil copy? Do we "die" when we go to sleep and wake up a new "consciousness" every day?

Clearly, the me that is thinking now is the active conscious process of the physical me. If I lose conscious and deactivate the physcial me, the newly conscious me that wakes up still thinks it is me. The Kurzweil copy will think it is me. It will be me in a very serious sense. "I" will continue on. But the me that is in this physcial body will die. The copy will be as distinct from that me as you are. So, in some ways, transhumanism will not let you live forever. It will create an entity with consciousness, with your memories and, perhaps, your mental capabilities (or better) that could live forever.

What would be the advantage of this? Really, there is no advantage to you and me. We will no doubt actually die one day. But, we could grant eternal life to our clone. Even then, it is unlikely that a clone will be invented that would last forever. If you shut down one clone and transferred its data to a new improved set of hardware, it would "die" too. In fact, every time you "rebooted" it, or restored a backup of it, it would "die" and be "reborn". Hardware improvements could happen much faster than genes allow. Direct connection to the internet? Much faster clock cycles (like 1000 or 1,000,000 times faster than people), encyclopedic memory, built in macros? It boggles.

In some ways, it hardly matters, doesn't it? Here I am, typing this post, with my lifetime of memories housed in an organic processor. This lifetime of memories creates me every time I awake and the organic processor starts back up. If I copied the whole set to a new physical processor every night and threw the old one away, it would still think it was "itself" when it started back up in the morning. The only reason we care so much is that our brains have a strong instinct for self-preservation. We are wired to struggle mightily to stay alive. We find the notion of the copying to be distressing. Try it on your friends and family. You can become a persona non grata very quickly at a family reunion. I know.

This is related to the paradox of "why me?" I am sure this paradox has a formal name, but I don't know what it is. I call it "why me?" This is the paradox that causes people to exclaim in wonder "Aren't we lucky that we are on the Earth - a planet that is so amenable to human life?" A silly statement indeed, because anyone who is alive would be on an amenable planet, ipso facto. Another example is "I am so lucky to be the only survivor - why me?" Someone has to be the last survivor. They were not chosen, they just are.

You are reading this because you are your brain's consciousness. Your brain's consciousness is all you are. You are not a separate thing that just happened to lodge in your brain - "picking it" in some way. You are your brain's consciousness trying to understand itself. Quite a struggle, isn't it?

2006-05-02T17:47:00.000-07:00

Connecting Piaget, Rosenberg (et al) and Judith Rich Harris

It seemed to me that something was missing in Piaget's concepts, as described by Rosenberg. There was something too idealistic about it all - with the purpose of cognitive development being achievement of cooperation. It's missing competition. I've always enjoyed a good debate about cooperation vs. competition. I've come to understand them as the yin/yang of things. Both are necessary for survival. Neither is "better". But both have their proponents - and their detractors. As if you could eliminate one of them or the other!

In Judith Rich Harris' model, there is a place for both. Cooperation is part of the socialization subsystem, developed to make you function as a group member. But competition is there, too - in the status subsystem.

I am not sure how you would work competition into Piaget's concepts? Perhaps I can make an attempt. Piaget has humans developing ever increasing levels of cognitive capability, going at each stage through a transformation from egocentricity to sociocentricity. Rosenberg at al characterize this as culminating in effective cooperation. But, wouldn't it also culminate in effective competition? The models built at each stage increase both the capacity for cooperation and competition.

I am still in the middle of Political Reasoning and Cognition, and it's raised another question - actually several. The authors cite studies by Ward and Lane - in interviewing subjects to determine their cognitive level and its effect on their political beliefs. The levels seems to be discrete, rather than continuous. You are at the "low" level or the "high" one. This is an interesting idea, and seems possible to me. I am sure Piagetians have an opinion on this.

This book was written in 1988. The ideas seem promising, but it's not clear that they've had a major impact on political science. Rosenberg's current program is a very interesting one, a cross-disciplinary political science and psychology program. He describes the issues:

Interdisciplinary programs are difficult to design. Crossing intellectual
boundaries creates unusual demands both with regard to the theoretical
definition of the subject matter and the empirical methods which may be used
to examine it. Typically graduate programs adopt the perspective of either
political science or psychology. Within this context they then tend to
emphasize either theoretical issues or empirical ones.

Somewhat daunting from my persepective and exactly the reason I shyed away from academia. Crossing intellectual boundaries seems necessary to me.

2006-05-01T17:56:00.000-07:00

The Stuff of Science

One of my fantasy project ideas - one that could keep a small army of graduate students busy - and potentially be a tool for the human race - is what I've been calling CLEW - the causal logic evidence web. This would be a internet-based sort of scientific hypothesis wikipedia thing. A networked hypothesis space that links to the evidence behind each hypothesis. I've thought about this a fair amount. For a while, I thought I had figured out how to do this. But, then, I began to wonder if science and hypotheses were really so interchangeable. This is when I began to think I needed to do more groundwork.

Here's the question: What is the stuff of science? In 5th grade, they taught you all about hypotheses, evidence, double-blind experiments and such. If you are a scientist, you might have listened. If not, you probably were annoyed and daydreamed.

I think hypotheses are an artifact of the human brain - and not the real stuff of science. Humans don't think in "systems" - they think more simply. Science is really a model of the system of the world. If we make the mistake of limiting science to techniques that are easy for humans to think about, then we will really limit our understanding and exploration.

Most science is posed in one of two forms: mathematical or cause/effect relationships. Both are pretty compact and easily communicated to someone who understands math or the vocabulary of their field. But, systems require more than math or cause/effect to describe them effectively. For example, a car is a system of sorts. You can describe many things about a car with math and cause/effect relationships. Acceleration is math. Gas mileage is math. "Turning the key starts the engine" is cause/effect. You will know a lot about a car from these descriptions. But, it's not enough. Physics, astronomy, and chemistry lean heavily on math. But biology is big on cause/effect. My CLEW idea was born out of medicine - so, I was thinking cause/effect.

Now, rumbling around in the back of my mind is all my experience as a computer scientist - especially a computer language specialist. I invented languages in my early career. It was lots of fun and I understand a lot about computer languages at a theoretical level. There are very sparse ways to describe computational capability, like Turing's. But, in practice people program with some more descriptive and powerful tools. If I want to specify a system - like the system of the world - I can do this the most effectively with a slightly larger toolbox. Functions are there - the math. Cause/effect forms are there - conditional execution like "if.. then .. else". But there is also sequence and iteration. There are also objects, attributes, and inheritance. There are variables and constants - the "x" of algebra and the numbers that the "x" can really be. The "mother" of "mother knows best" and your actual mother. I've programmed in languages that are mostly math (APL) and languages that are mostly cause/effect (CLIPS, Prolog). These languages are pretty limited at describing things. All commonly used languages have all the features. You need them to effectively simulate the real world. And you must understand that almost all programming has an element of simulation or description. Even a banking system is simulating the physical banking process. You have a logical account - that is ultimately little magnetized spots on a hard drive platter somewhere - and can withdraw abstracted money from it and deposit abstracted money to it. These operations are really simulations that mimic the processes of putting money is a box and taking it out - the action that would have happened 300 years ago.

So, I am thinking about whether science is better described with a richer language - one that has all the features of a good programming language. A good test of this would be the Piagetian concepts that are described in the book I am reading (Political Reasoning and Cognition: A Piagetian View). There is sequence there - the four levels. There is iteration over each conceptual focus as it is transitioned to the new level. There are "objects" - the concepts. Could you describe Piaget's concepts with a "science language"?

Interestingly, I suspect a major objection to this approach is its complexity. This seems funny to me to even think about. If I could describe Piaget's ideas succinctly in 3 or 4 pages of formal language - this is far more succinct that hundreds of pages of text - the form it is in at this time. If a system is complex, then it cannot be described with a few equations. Simplicity would be misleading - and ultimately not very useful at predicting behavior. No point in pretending that the simple view is adequate. So, if science is going to scale up, and address complex systems, like living things, maybe we need better tools.

2006-04-30T13:28:00.000-07:00

Mind and Body

I am reading a carefully written and well considered book - Political Reasoning and Cognition - A Piagetian view. In completing the chapter where the authors describe Piaget's theories, they make the statement that his theories begin with the assumption that "The life of the mind is at one with the life of the organism." Such a simple statement, phrased elegantly. But, the statement is really a very important and profound one and is at the heart of many of the deeper intellectual, moral and spiritual conflicts of our day.

The mind and body are one. A materialist viewpoint - and one I share. There is no mind without the body. Learning, thinking and feeling are all physical processes. In fact, learning requires a physical change - neurons to be connected in a different way to other neurons. To a biologist, this may seem obvious. But non-biologists exist in many states of confusion on this very issue.

The alternative to this view is to believe that there is some magical and intangible other thing - your spirit or your soul or even your mind - that is not physcial. It was not long ago that even the greatest thinkers assumed that such a thing existed. The mind seemed far to complex and mysterious to be a physical phenomenon. It had to come from some other realm - an abstract place rather than a physcial one - the spiritual realm.

Being a computer scientist, as well as an amateur cognitive scientist, I have a good feel for the possibility of the mind being physical. I know from my experience in making little pieces of "mind" by programming, that the size of the brain and the number of neurons is enough to be responsible for our thoughts and feelings. This may still seem counterintuitive to most. To me, it seems very plausible. I can guess how it is done - it seems tantalizingly possible to understand.

There are many notions that people embrace commonly that are tied to a non-physical mind. The soul is one. The idea of the soul was conceived to explain the complexities of our thoughts, feelings and behavior, in absence of the understanding of the complexities of the brain. Ghosts and spirits - non-corporeal beings - make no sense to a materialists. These are illusions - fantasies. Dead people are gone. An afterlife seems implausible.

And, if the mind makes us human, and without it we are not, then many ethical questions arise. The potential for a future human existence of an embryo or fetus could still make abortion unethical - but it is not the same as killing a human with a functioning mind. But then - is abortion less ethical than birth control, since birth control also prevents a potential human from reaching humanity? This takes the question to an extreme that now seems less reasonable. If there is no soul, then an embryo does not have one - and abortion does not destroy a "human", just a potential human. The idea of the soul makes abortion an obvious crime. Without it, things are not so clear at all.

What about the brain-damaged, the severely retarded, and the profoundly senile? They are less human, too, by my definition. To me, if there is a reason to protect them, then it is not to prevent murder, but to exercise compassion. Society should be soft-hearted whenever it can - to create an environment that is nurturing. This generosity is best whenever it can afford to be exercised, so that people are not hardened and cruel. But, in a different situation, where resources were scarce, if I had to choose between the survival of a brain-damaged person and a normal one, I would choose the normal one. And, I suspect even people who would say that they couldn't do that, actually would do it, without a lot of hesitation. We do pull the plug, even now. I think we treat all retarded people as "human" to avoid drawing the bright line where one more IQ point makes you human and one less makes you not. This would be a hard line to draw, an uncomfortable line.

Another uncomfortable aspect of Piaget's theories is that they create a clear hierarchy of cognition. He clearly identifies one set of cognitive abilities as better than another. And he defines a metric, a test, for this superiority that I can easily agree with. If one person's cognitive abilities permit them to more accurately understand the world and predict outcomes, then they are better. This idea goes against much of our current thinking about equality. It's okay to us to say that "Joe is a better athlete than Sam" or "Ellen is prettier that Linda." But, we are somewhat squeamish at saying that "Larry has better cognitive processes than Alan."

I still am only halfway through the book to go on political reasoning, but I am already thinking about the implications. At this point in U.S. history, we are treating everyone's political beliefs as deserving equal respect - sort of. But, those that are formed using an inferior cognitive model are inferior, so this book points out. This, I suspect, is at the heart of all the venom and name calling going on right now. Simplistic thinkers, who are bad predictors and poor problem solvers, are demanding equal respect. Those with better capability put the weaker ideas down.

What a minefield this is. No wonder psychologists have avoided applying their theories to the humanities. So many cherished ideas and beliefs would be discarded. I think this is responsible for the growing gulf between scientists and non-scientists.

2006-04-28T17:48:00.000-07:00

Resisting the Paradigm Shift

In thinking about scientific revolutions - and why they can be slow - you have to examine the phenomenon of change resistance. My first thought was that the more time and effort that a person has expended on building, defending and studying a particular model of the world, the less likely they are to want to let go of it and "remodel". This seems intuitive. Of course, intuitive theories can be wrong.

Thomas Kuhn's book speaks a lot of this resistance. Many other books focus on it. Pinker's The Blank Slate loudly complains about the resistance of the nurture folk to the idea that nature was a big factor after all. Same for The Bell Curve - which whines about resistance to the notion that I.Q. is inherited.

So, the question is "Why the resistance, even in the face of convincing evidence?". Shouldn't cognitive scientists take a cogsci view of this? What's going on in the human mind in this case? It seems quite difficult to study true significant paradigm shifts and the resistance to them. It violates "the prime directive" of non-interference. Who could devise an experiment that would seriously attempt to dislodge a core belief system of real human beings, measuring what's going on there, that would pass an ethics review? And you can't study this in animals easily - they don't seem to form models in the same way that we do.

Some questions that would be interesting to answer are:

Is the resistance to change proportional to the personal investment in the model? (I suspect somewhat)
What techniques are the most effective?
Can you detect the tipping point when the old model breaks?
How long does it take to incorporate a new model? What are the stages?

I suspect the answer to the question about effective techniques is a dangerous one. If you became smarter about how to "change people's mind", it might give you untoward power over people. It actually seems to me that advertising and political consultants already know some of these answers. They use them all the time. I think it would be safer for humanity if this sort of knowledge is out in the open -so that everyone knows and understands their vulnerabilities and limitations.

Some of the answers to this puzzle are related to the understanding of belief. Psychologists who study religion - like Dennett, Atran and Damasio - know something about what it takes to people fervent and devoted believers. There are some interesting aspects of this that support my "effort thesis". The more someone sacrifices for their belief - through tithing, fasting, scorn, etc. - the firmer their belief. It is also very effective to add a "poison pill" to the belief structure - "doubting will damn you to hell". In the academic world of science, the equivalents are the sacrifices of graduate study and the fear of a ruined career.

It seems to me that some scientific disciplines are more doctrinaire than others. And disciplines seem to go through doctrinaire periods and more open periods. What's happening here? This could be studied - as a population study.

Why would you want to understand this better? Is it worthwhile trying to grease the wheels of science? It seems to me that it would be preferable to decrease the resistance to letting go of scientific models that are apparently invalid, especially if they are being propped up for reasons that are unscientific - like fear or greed. Science attempts to overcome the foibles of human nature - the emotional needs of people and logical and perceptual flaws - to develop truer and truer models of the world. This goal has no real room for supporting flawed models once their flaws are exposed.

2006-04-27T16:42:00.000-07:00

Deep Versus Wide

I've always been very interested in science. I had a chemistry set and a telescope when I was 13 - and I really used them all the time. I had my own bunsen burner and a bench in the garage! I read science books when I was even younger. I did those Martin Gardner math puzzle books for fun.

I was an excellent student, winning prizes, with a very high SAT score, graduating summa cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa with a Computer Science degree, completing 4 years of undergraduate college in 2 calendar years. I have a 4.0 in my Masters degree.

You would think I was an ideal candidate for a PhD program. But, I wasn't really interested. I could see that I did not belong. I am not a "depth" person. Thus my blog's name - I am a wanderer. I am ever the multidisciplinarian. I could never devote years of my life to focusing in on some small aspect of science - my mind would wander off to other things that interested me. It's not that I lack discipline - I am a very self-disciplined person. My GPA, my career success, my always being on time, my never turning in anything late, my ability to stick to calorie restriction, my devoted blogging - they all attest to this. It's just that I am an integrator and a synthesizer by nature. I am always tying things together that other people don't see as related. It is my compulsion.

I have the deepest respect and, indeed, gratitude for the scientists all over the world who devote their lives to studying nature and figuring out how things work. We owe them much. But, I can't do what they do. I love science so much, that I have always wanted to contribute to it. But, it has always seemed to me a flaw in our system of academic and research institutions that there is no obvious place for me. Where does a very bright generalist go? My solution so far has been to spend many hours a week studying and thinking about many scientific topics on my own - and to spend my career as a supportive and facilitative manager of scientists and engineers. I understand them well, match them intellectually, and can speak all their languages enough to get by. I can help them formulate approaches and unstick them when they get stuck. I can plan and lead project teams. But, it seems like I could contribute more to science. I have lots of theories and observations that tie things together across disciplines. I see patterns and connections that others don't see.

That's why cognitive science appeals to me so much. It's a very multi-disciplinarian effort. It seems to collect all the folks who do more than one thing. Every so often, I troll around university sites, thinking there is some place there for me. The idea of study always appeals to me and I would like to publish. I've had many ideas over the years - natural language processing, linguistics, nutrition, genetics. But, it seems like their should be somewhere I can synthesize and generalize - formally. Synthesis would be a valuable thing. Science doesn't just progress by working out the details.

This issue arises at my job. We do some R&D, often internally funded, but for the most part do consulting to the government on technical and scientific things that are complicated or difficult. We have a miniculture that is like academia - a set of Fellows that are specialists in various things. Like most academics, they worry about keeping up their credentials. They publish, they focus, they know a lot about their particular topic. But, our clients rarely want to pay for their time - at least very much of it. And they don't like to work on things that are "not their area of expertise". The rest of the company tends to be mostly generalists - systems engineers, physicists turned into computer scientists, computer scientists turned into project management experts, for instance. I am one of these - a very experienced and versatile one of these. My company sometimes struggles to figure out how to make all this hang together well. How do we make the best use of the specialists? Apply their knowledge in all the places it could be used? How do we formalize the ideas and work of the generalists? It's the same problem.

One thought I have had is that I should work on this very problem. Why not try to come up with ways to formalize synthesis? Maybe this should be what Departments of Philosophy should be focused on - love of knowledge, after all. Maybe the Web is the answer. After all, it is the World Wide Web. And wide is my dimension.

2006-04-26T16:23:00.000-07:00

Stepping Up to the ID Challenge

I've been watching the impressive response of the evolutionary biologists to the intelligent design challenge. No one took ID seriously for years - and for seemingly good reason, since it's not serious science. But then, ID has lots of funding behind it and lots of political savvy. Biologists are not politically savvy - or at least they were not until now.

One of the interesting angles of the situation is the difference in the mental models between journalists and scientists. In case you are not aware of it, journalists have been trained aggressively for the last 20 or 30 years to "present both sides of the story". This is a big deal in journalism school. It is a commandment that no one dares to break. This is responsible for the atrocious reporting on politics that we see now. No matter how undeserving, both sides of each story must be presented in "a balanced way". This is all part of the dreaded political correctness thing. Conservatives hate this more than liberals - since the liberals sort of invented the idea. But, conservatives have been using this feature of journalism very well as of late. They've learned how to use it.

The ID people are masters at this. They are painting this up as a story with two equal sides. In fact, they are trying to portray themselves as legitimate underdog scientists - with a real position - that is being suppressed and trampled by the dogmatic science establishment. They are the rebels! The innovators! Pointing out the flaws in the theories and no one will listen to them. Poor downtrodden IDers.

However, this is not an accurate portayal at all. Instead, they misrepresent the status of evolutionary theory and exaggerate the problems. Yes, there are areas that need more work. But scientists have hypotheses that address these areas - that are just not yet proven. They may not be right, but people are still looking for the answers. The ID folks have no real hypotheses. Magic, aliens or God did it. In their world, science would be meaningless. If there was something that you couldn't explain - it would be God that did it. They don't even really understand or examine all the theories and evidence for evolution - it would make it harder for them to believe. And belief is the most important thing, not truth.

For people who have dedicated their lives to carefully and systematically exploring, postulating and testing theories about how the world works, looking for truth, this is pretty shocking. Just to handwave it all away - God did it. It's a level of incuriousity that astonishes biologists.

But, back to the struggle. Over the last couple of years, the scientific community has awoken to the threat. All over the science blogs and in the journals - in lectures and "debates" - you see them tackling this issue. They are taking it very seriously indeed, since it strikes at the heart of science and invalidates the whole process. They have defense teams for court cases. Arguments against ID are polished and enhanced.

What I am seeing is that it is backfiring on the religious. They shouldn't have tried to take on the science community. They shouldn't have alienated them either and drawn the line in the sand. They can't win in the long run. Science has done so much more for humanity over the last 100 years than religion. I don't care what wonderful things religion has done - science has done much more. Science is trying to model the real world and explain it - and use this understand for the advantage of people - to improve their lives. And it has succeeded wonderfully at this. This very blog is an example. Religion did not help to make this blog possible. Science did. Scientists are not out there trying to get money from little old ladies - there is no scientific equivalent to a televangelist. They are too busy trying to solve real problems. They are not motivated by greed for the most part.

When you put ID up against real science, real science shines. Whenever a real battle has been engaged between a religious proponent and a scientist - whether in court or in debate - the scientists win. The Scopes Monkey Trial experience will be replayed again and again until it once again becomes clear that a lot of religious beliefs are inconsistent, silly and meaningless. Religion will go back to being the thing it has done best for the last 200 years - a moral framework and an inspiration to do good. It will quit trying to regain the ground it lost to science as the way to explain how the world works.

Another deserving victim of this struggle will be "balanced journalism" and relativism. Social sciences, politics, and journalism are all suffering greatly from a lack of belief in objective reality at this time. This has allowed ID to creep in - as well as many other unworkable ideas. We will return to a cognitive model that assumes that the human mind is quite capable of thinking of things that are not real - and that there is reality separate from our ability to conceive of it. Trying hard to create mental models that most accurately reflect reality - and acting on them - is the best path to success. Wishful and fanciful thinking leads to disaster. Scientists are the ultimate realists. Religious folks are the ultimate fantasists. I'm betting on reality - at least in the long run.

2006-04-23T16:40:00.000-07:00

Evolving Political Science

Thomas Kuhn's perspective on science was that of a physicist when he wrote The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. Most physicists - and other physical scientists - that I have known are fairly disdainful of social sciences. They are not certain that they are real sciences at all. I suspect political science would be close to the bottom of the list for validity. As cognitive science develops, social sciences are firming up. There is a likelihood that sometime - certainly within my lifetime - that the social sciences will be much closer to the physical sciences in scientific practice and validity.

For the most part, the social sciences follow the same general practices that the physical sciences do. They suffer from the problem that their object of study is always something that revolves around humans - a very complex system - a system of systems, really. Most of what's been done to date seems to suffer from idealism to me. Social scientists hypothesize the way they wish things were, and then set out to prove that it's true. Not enough objective observation precedes the hypothesis. Too much morality gets involved. It seems very little benefit has been gleaned from social science so far - at least as compared with the astonishing achievements of the physical sciences. This tells me that we haven't really discovered much that's real so far.

Fifteen years ago, I had this "brilliant idea". I was going to become a sociologist and bring the power of computer science to sociology. I would model things. I would collect data and data mine it. Of course, there are commercial companies that do that now and use it for business - mostly advertising. But I was going to do this to prove hypotheses. I took a college class in sociology - my first - The Theory of Society. It was in this class and from that very kind professor that I learned that academic sociologist cared mostly about arguing about what dead people meant when they wrote old books. It was very clear that I would have an uphill battle and would be mostly unwelcome.

I suspect that things have not changed much - just yet. But I suspect they will. I am reading a book right now Political Reasoning and Cognition, A Piagetian View by Rosenberg, Ward, and Chilton. I am only just starting, but already the book is clearly an example of Kuhnian revolution in action - in political science. One quote I think illustrates the experience of the authors on the front lines:

“Empirical research depends on concepts and theory. No matter how careful the methods and sophisticated the statistical analysis, research can be no better than the theory which directs it.… For the most part, reviews of empirical research focus on technical issues of data collection and analysis and ignore larger questions of conceptualization. This is frequently the case even when the results of the research are confusing and the ensuing methodological critique and tinkering fail to yield a satisfactory understanding. As a result, one of the key aims of empirical research, the challenging of a prevalent theory, is blocked.”

They are challenging a dominant mindset of political science - that all individuals come with more or less the same mental modeling capability - and share the same models. This makes political science the study of these models themselves - how they are acquired and interrelate, their effects, etc. Rosenberg, et al, say the evidence does not support his idea. They think it's too simplistic. If people don't have the same modeling capability, then you have to study the cognitive capabilities for political thought to understand politics. Not all people are created equal - cognitively. This is really a pretty obvious, but profound, idea. I am still digesting it. It's one of those paradigm shifts that will cause mental dislocation if you really get it.

In my opinion, all the social sciences are truly suffering from the dogma of equality at this time in history. It is not acceptable to pose any theory that includes inherent differences in mental or interpersonal skills between people. To me, this seems ludicrous - akin to saying the sun must go around the earth. It's wishful thinking. Much as we all wish it were true, it is requires much self-brainwashing to believe it. And it is a belief - not a scientific hypothesis that can stand up to rigorous testing. This idea has only taken hold in any serious way for the last fifty years or so. And very little progress has been made because of it. Cognitive science and genetics are beginning to break it down. It's going down hard, though.

So, what's the prognosis for the social sciences? They will still be a daunting challenge, since humans, human groups and cultural practices are complex, interactive, and evolve very quickly using memes - at least relative to the physical sciences. Nonetheless, I think a lot of progress will have been made fifty years from now. Genetics will lead the way. Better understanding of the brain - especially systems theory views - will also help. It's hard to imagine how this will change the world. We have so little to go by as an example. While the theory has evolved a lot over the last 50 years, and people will argue that progress has been made - we are not seeing tangible results. Crime is not lower. People are not happier. Children are not doing better in school. Marriages are not more successful. We are still blowing each other up. Arguing at each other on talk shows. Hating. Anyone that says they know the "right way" to raise children or manage is lying. Ask for the evidence.

2006-04-21T16:29:00.000-07:00

How Nutrition Research Fumbles

Life Extension Foundation published an aticle in their 2006 Collector's Edition about Vitamin E. They discussed a review article, published in JAMA on August 11, 2004, that "extolled the benefits of gamma tocopherol". I don't have access to this review article, but the basic message in LEF's article is that JAMA validated what LEF has been saying for 8 years. All the studies with negative results for Vitamin E have been testing the wrong form. Alpha tocopherol, especially the artificial form, is not beneficial in large amounts by itself. The gamma form is the better antioxidant. Minimally, you should be taking a mixed form - one that resembles the mix you would find in nuts.

Assuming this is true (still an assumption since the research is not conclusive) this is one illustration of how medical science fumbles. Not that LEF is beyond criticism either - more on that at the end of this post.

Vitamin E research began the way that a lot of medical science begins. Population studies are mined for difference in outcomes. Some examples are the famous "seven countries" study about cholesterol and CHD, the big longitudinal nurses studies - NHANES - for the effects of antioxidants like beta carotene and E, and the lower incidence of CHD in pre-menopausal women.

From this data, a hypothesis is formulated. In all these cases substance "a" prevents disease "b". Because good science - science that will be funded by a review committee and pass muster for publication - prefers double-blind studies that test single substances, these hypotheses often focus on single substances. The bias for single substances also relatest to the drug approval process in the FDA - and patent law. So, a medical researcher will decide to study - and will often announce the finding based on the population studies - whether "a" prevents "b". They will embark on a long series of these studies. Drug companies and food manufacturers will rush to develop products and exploit this. Press interviews and advertising will reinforce this.

Unfortunately, many times it's been found that the single substance doesn't do the advertised job. The hypothesis is apparenly false and the evidence just doesn't hold up.

So, what goes wrong? Perhaps their is no causal relationship - just a correlative one. Maybe the single substance is not responsible for the effect alone. It's part of a complex that is required to have the effect. Sometimes, more is not better. There is a dose dependency - a range of efficacy. Perhaps the testing was often the wrong amounts. And then, the body is a very complex thing, with lots of redundancy and feedback loops.

What harm is done when these hypotheses are interpreted as fact too early? Sometimes, real harm is done when doctors act on the early results, pushed by drug companies eager for profits. HRT is an example. High alpha tocopherol doses increased the incidence of stroke. High beta carotene intake increase lung cancers in smokers.

But another serious casualty is public confidence in science. It makes science look flaky and unreliable. It reinforces the notion that all problems can be cured with a "magic pill". More careful study is needed before acting on these hypotheses.

Why do we do this? Money is one reason. Drug and food companies make money from this. And researchers get funded for these overly simplistic, but conventionally framed hypotheses. And, as Nisbett explains in The Geography of Thought, Westerners prefer the single substance approach to a more Eastern wholistic approach. We tend to ignore the background, the context, the environment. We look for a main character, a hero.

It's this last problem that is the most troubling. If we are always trying to advance medical science by understanding the effects of single substances on health, we may never really understand the system.

So, what's the criticism of LEF? They are all about single substances - focusing on the value of various nutritional supplements. And they encourage you to take lots of these, based on incomplete research testing each of them separately.

2006-04-19T05:03:00.000-07:00

Gene Expression's Impact on Medicine

I don't think you can overestimate the value of microarray testing. It's going to change everything about medicine. It hasn't really begun to have an impact yet. Being given insight into the inner workings of the human cell - which genes are turned off and which are turned on - will provide the keys to understanding how things really work.

There are only something like 20,000 genes in the human cell - each gene coding for a specific protein. These 20,000 proteins are what make you alive and who you are. It's the whole recipe for you. Not just making you in the first place, but for running your body every day of your life. I don't think the simplicity and elegance of this design has really sunk in to the collective conscious of mankind just yet. We are not as mysterious as most of us still think we are. We are on the verge of really understanding what we are.

20,000 is really a small number in some ways. Genes are very understandable to a computer scientist. Each gene is like a little "if statement". Each "if statement" goes something like "if (x) is activated then produce (y)" where x is some molecule and y is a protein. In many (maybe most) cases, the y of one statement is the x of another. So, the 20,000 little programs can produce very complicated results. They are all interacting with each other. It's a system that had been tuned by evolution to stay in balance most of the time, and is very adaptable to a wide range of normal conditions. Even more of a complication, many of the 20,000 little programs are disabled at any one time - being uncopied as RNA to the mitochondria for production. Many of them are copied only during your development and growth - never to be used again. This creates a very, very large number of possible states.

Yet, 20,000 is not a big number in other ways. Each of the 20,000 things can be understood. Even the interactions between them can be mapped. This is not a difficult job with computers to assist us. The function of the genes could be simulated. We can have cell simulations that are pretty accurate in the near future - at least in the next 10-20 years.

Once you can simulate a cell, you will be able to develop and test drugs much more quickly and cheaply. Gene expression testing will let you know what's really wrong with you. We would be able to take a sample of your gene expression and know a lot about what's going on in your body. We will know why I am smart, but not athletic. We will be able to turn off and on genes to improve health and fix things. Cancer will be cured. Life extended. Current medical practices will seem primitive indeed in comparison.

But these are just the initial, obvious first effects of the technology. There will be more dramatic and surprising things that result from fully cracking the code for life. In my lifetime - I expect to live long since I practice calorie restriction and I think life extension will succeed soon enough - we should be able to manufacture life. We will be able to redesign. Perhaps we will be able to create. To make evolution happen. Perhaps I will start a second career as a "life programmer" when I'm say 110 years old, 60 years from now.

2006-04-19T05:02:00.001-07:00

Global Warming and Where Not to Live

The PBS NOVA on global dimming just reinforces the notion to me that I do not want to have any of my net worth tied up in beachfront property. It's not clear where you could live and not be negatively affected by global warming of 10 or 20 degrees F. Coastlines will rise - so the beach is a no brainer. But hot and cold regions will be affected in different ways by changes in currents and weather patterns. The equator is also probably too hot.

2006-04-18T18:15:00.000-07:00

Dimming the Sun

This PBS Nova episode paints a very disturbing picture. Particulates generated by industry have created clouds that reflect sunlight more than normal clouds. This has resulted in a global dimming of sunlight over the last 100 years at a significant level - something like 10%. At the same time greenhouse gases have caused global warming. These two effects counteract each other - causing the temperature to rise more slowly.

The bad news is that greenhouse gases are being produced at an increasing rate. Particulate is being reduced. This will result in an excelerated rate of global warming - as much at 18 degrees Fahrenheit by the end of the century!

Another reason to get going on alternative energy! We need a massive Apollo-like effort, now.
While we can easily create the dimming effect to compensate, there are probably negative climate effects from reducing sunlight, too. Reducing greenhouse gases is incredibly important. If you don't believe this is a real problem, watch the show and see the part about the effect of the suspension of air traffic after 9/11. If that could have such a dramatic effect, imagine what all those power plants are doing.

2006-04-18T16:06:00.000-07:00

Stem Cells are the Key to Cancer

This article in Time magazine provides a layman's view into a new theory of cancer. In this new theory, at the heart of each cancer is a set of stem cells gone awry. Their genome or even just their gene expression dysfunctionally proliferates - creating lots of abberant daughter cells that reproduce too quickly and additional bad stem cells. It's the stem cells that are responsible for mestasisis - the spread of cancer throughout the body.

This discovery is likely to lead, finally, to the cure. It's the stem cells that need to be killed or reformed. The daughter cells are annoying, but not the real problem. It's become apparent that removing the daughter cells - for instance, by shrinking them with radiation - is not enough to cure the cancer. You have to get the stem cells. The Time article predicts a real cure for cancer in 10 years. I would agree with that assessment.

My prediction would be that all cancers are stem cell disorders. Our bodies are sprinkled with stem cells. They are more key to life than people still realize. For instance, until recently, it was believed that all the eggs in a woman's ovaries were there when you were born. They would ripen or die until they ran out and women would go into menopause. Instead, stem cells continually produce eggs throughout a woman's fertile years. They last less than a year. At menopause, the stem cells quit making them and the supply runs out. Do the stem cells die - or just turn off? I don't know. If hormone therapy can cause menopausal women to become fertile again, it would seem that they are just turned off.

Here's a case where medicine has struggled for 30 years, spending billions of dollars in a "War on Cancer". Very little progress was made - really - using conventional disease treatment. Now, this new paradigm will revolutionize treatment. At first, they will be looking for conventional therapy methods that more effectively target the stem cells. But, given a better understanding of gene expression, I predict that they will be able to "turn off" cancer by sending it signals or using gene therapy - a gentler approach. Look for the day when cancer is a thing of the past - a wonderful day for medicine.

2006-04-17T17:36:00.000-07:00

What If Parents Don't Matter THAT Much?

Judith Rich Harris - in her two books The Nurture Assumption and No Two Alike - makes the strong case for a minimized role for parents to play in personality development. In her model, genes shape 40% or so of the personality. Most of the rest is shaped by the social environment outside the family. Parents hardly matter at all - as long as they provide you reasonable food, shelter, clothing, and affection. This is adaptive - designed to make sure we survive in the world, not just our nuclear families. It's a natural product of the evolutionary process.

This is a very large paradigm shift for academic psychology. This scientific community has been focused for the last many decades on the overwhelming importance of parents in shaping children. Harris says this is all wishful thinking - yet another example of scientists making a moral judgement and then looking for evidence to support it. One simple thought experiment would be this - if it made such a difference, wouldn't today's children be terribly different from their parents and grandparents. Wouldn't we be different? We're really not, are we - not in the ways that psychologists would have you expect.

So, assuming Harris is right, what does this mean to parents? The nurture proponents are in a panic - thinking that child abuse will become rampant. But here are a few predictions I would make about the real effects.

First of all, people may be more comfortable having children - they may actually have more of them. Now, they really don't need to spend many thousands of dollars "shaping" them with lessons and enrichment. Just letting them play is just as good? So much cheaper. The heavy responsibility for shaping removed from their shoulders, it will become apparent that nature designed parenting for amateurs, not experts. Of course, it must have - or how else could we have survived the eons!

Second, parents will be able to concentrate on providing children a pleasant childhood. Why not enjoy your children? If you relax and realize that your children are part of your life - not the awesome responsibility, requiring a PhD in child development - then you can just enjoy.

Third, since so much of your child's personality is shaped by their social environment and their status in the groups they belong to, you can instead focus on controlling their social milleu and make sure they are put into social contexts that allow them to achieve reasonable status.

Perhaps we would return a little to the parenting style of the past. Parents would live their adult lives and let children be children. They could just play instead of running off to classes, team sports and clubs.

2004-03-31T18:58:00.000-08:00

Time focus as a Personality Trait discriminant

I have this theory that one major "personality" factor is the amount of focus on past, present and future. I myself am very future focused - perhaps to an extreme degree. People that are past focused often seem dysfunctional to me. I had a guy who worked for me that was a Civil War re-enactor. He was barely functional in the present. He was obsessed with the details of things that happened more than 100 years ago. His personal life was a wreck and he was not a great employee. It seems to me that past focus is often manifested as grudge-holding and dissatisfaction.

Conservatives seem generally past-focused. Liberals seem generally future-focused. Perhaps this is too simplistic. I would like to see someone study this.

2004-03-30T15:51:00.000-08:00

The Corner has a discussion going on about liberals. They think engineers must be liberals. They also think it's bad that liberals don't dwell on their "heritage". I sent this letter to Jonah Goldberg.

I've worked with engineers and scientists for 30 years - the last 15 in a management role. Engineers are often conservative. They solve standard problems with standard techniques. They learn rules that are time tested and apply them. Scientists are often liberal. They are trying to push the edge of knowledge, make a difference. I am a scientist by nature. I live for those special moments of cognitive discontinuity - where a new insight allows me to see the world in a new and more meaningful way. Without people that do this, we would still be in caves shivering in the dark.

As we gain knowledge that changes our inherent capabilities: modern medicine that extends lifespans and greatly reduces infant mortality, the atom bomb, manufacturing, information technology - we cannot continue to have social institutions that are designed for earlier capabilities. That is why I am a social liberal. We must change in response to a changed world. We are adaptable creatures by nature.

I am also a woman and would make any sacrifice necessary to ensure that the clock is not turned back for women when my granddaughter and great granddaughter reach adulthood. If I was born 20 years earlier, my life would be a pale shadow of what it has been. I am a happy wife or a fair and loving husband, the mother or 3 bright, caring, successful children. But in addition, I am a successful scientist and manager. I get great pleasure from both roles.

The critique has been made on the Corner that liberals don't care about their heritage. But you miss the point. Liberals live in the future, not the past. I look to the future. I care deeply about the future. Change has no real heritage. Past change is not a harbinger of future change necessarily. Hopefully, responsible liberals learn from failed changes. I think they have. That is why the do not espouse or defend failed liberal concepts of the past. Change agents must move on. Mistakes are something to learn from - they are someone elses mistakes.

2004-03-30T15:29:00.000-08:00

I continue to think about the importance of the reverse dominance hierarchy. I think that Democracy inherently is based on a reverse dominance hierarchy - it is the political embodiment of it. I, for one, am immensely grateful to our founding fathers for taking the risk in setting up a government based on such a radical model. Each time the democracy has been expanded, by including new group - the landless, the blacks, and finally women - it only becomes more true and strong.

2004-03-21T06:04:00.000-08:00

Protectionism and Outsourcing

This article by Ernest Hollings in the Washington Post makes a strong case against free trade. One of the key points is that trade between unequals is not really free. Tariffs are necessary to protect our standard of living. He also makes an interesting historical case for tariffs, showing how they were used to build America's initial manufacturing capability under the guidance of our founding fathers.

He gives the example of a 47-year old factory worker, who's job is sent overseas: "The Washington mantra of "retrain, retrain" comes up short. For example, Oneita Industries closed its T-shirt plant in Andrews, S.C., back in 1999. The plant had 487 employees averaging 47 years of age. Let's assume they were "retrained" and became 487 skilled computer operators. Who is going to hire a 47-year-old operator over a 21-year-old operator? No one is going to take on the retirement and health costs of the 47-year-old. Moreover, that computer job probably just left for Bangalore, India."

Realistically, that factory worker could probably be retrained as an auto repair technician or construction worker. However, he would need some help to relocate, get training and feed his family in the transition. It would seem fair to me that the company moving jobs overseas pay for this.

I expect to see both protective tariffs and legislation that makes corporations pay for retraining over the next several years. It's really inevitable. We can't keep going the way we are or we will be a third world country.

2004-03-20T18:02:00.003-08:00

One way to view the current divisions in American - and perhaps the world - is to see this as a struggle between those who want to maintain "reverse dominance hierarchies" and those who want to reestablish a more typical "alpha male" dominance hierarchy. A reverse dominance hierarchy is a concept espoused by Christopher Boehm in his book Hierarchy in the Forest . In egalitarian societies, which America's democracy strives to be as an ideal, the majority bands together to make sure no individuals achieve real dominance.

This is the basis of "political correctness" and the resentment of it by aggressive men. It's the heart of the conflict between pro-Iraq War advocates and those that oppose the War. Most war opponents are not comfortable with the U.S. becoming a dominant force in the World and want to establish a global reverse dominance hierarchy.

Understanding it in this way makes me even more resolute in opposing the War and supporting an international approach to dealing with terrorism. We do not want to become the bigger bully. This will only set us up as a target until someone else takes us out. If we join with peace-loving peoples all over the world to fight against all bullies, we can create a more peaceful world.