Feb 18 2008
Reverse Engineering the Brain
The annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) concludes today in Boston. Unfortunately my schedule did not allow me to attend, but the press releases and news reports are flowing from Beantown. Among the announcements were the 24 greatest scientific challenges facing humanity in the 21st century (produced by a panel of experts put together by the National Academy of Engineering). On the list was the task of reverse engineering the human brain. (You can see the full list in this article.)
To me it seems highly likely that this is a goal we will achieve in the 21st century – 92 years seems like more than enough time. We have already begun, in fact, to reverse engineer the brain. If we separate this task into two broad categories – hardware and software – both have progressed very far but still have a long way to go. By “hardware” I mean how the neurons and other brain cells work together to create memory, information processing, and sensory perception – how does the brain physically work. By “software” I mean what information is actually in the brain and how that information and different processing areas work together to produce the net effects of mood, thought, and behavior.
Our understanding of the hardware of the brain is already highly detailed, but it is also clear that there is at least a layer of complexity that we have not yet drilled down to. We know how neurons conduct signals, how those signals affect the firing of other neurons, how neurotransmitters work, how neuronal function is modulated by other neurons and other brain cells (like astrocytes), and how the strength of neuronal connections relate to memory. However, the more we look the more layers of complexity to all of these things we find. And we have only begun to explore how patterns of neuronal activity relate to specific cognitive functions.
Understanding the software of the brain is a harder nut to crack, but recent progress has been accelerating, due largely to improved technology, like functional MRI scanning. How, exactly, do our brains store the number 3 or the word “pterodactyl”? How does it process different types of information, and how do the different parts of the brain interact with each other? Progress on all these fronts is steady, but neuroscientists today are like astronomers who just recently turned their telescopes to the sky and are trying to make sense of all the complexity of the universe.
Already we have learned a great deal, as fMRI studies are showing which parts of the brain do what. We are actually well on our way to reverse engineering the brain.
We are also at the relative beginning of another avenue to reverse engineering the brain, and that is using computers to model the brain. Ray Kurzweil, author of The Singularity and an expert on artificial intelligence and future technology, who was one of the experts on the NAE panel, believes that we will succeed in creating human-level artificial intelligence by 2029 – 21 years from now. He extrapolates from current progress that we will have both powerful enough computers and sophisticated enough software to create artificial intelligence in about two decades. Kurzweil has clearly thought in great detail about this question – the 2029 figure is not a casual guess. But even if we assume that his estimates are off by half, that means that we will achieve this goal by 2050, still only halfway through the 21st century.
The hardware extrapolation seems to be the easier of the two – computer technology has been progressing at a very steady and predictable rate for decades (a phenomenon known as Moore’s Law). Extending this for another couple of decades does not seem like much of a stretch. Sure, we may run into unexpected technological hurdles, but so far we have been able to develop new approaches to computing technology to keep blasting through all hurdles and keep Moore’s Law on track. So while there is always uncertainty in predicting future technology, predicting this level of computer advancement at the least can be considered highly probable.
The software extrapolation I think is more difficult to do, as conceptual hurdles may be more difficult to solve and may stall progress for a undetermined amount of time. So I am less confident with this prediction, but I still give it a high probability based upon the steady progress that has been made so far. Also, I cannot think of any theoretical reason why artificial intelligence should not become a reality.
MIT researcher Tomaso Poggio’s research is at the core of this question. He has been engaged in two parallel lines of research – using computer software to model brain function and using our understanding of brain function to improve computer software. At the AAAS meeting this past weekend he explained how he is now combining these two lines of research into one. He came to this conclusion after a computer model of the human visual system he was working on was actually able to function as an artificially intelligent visual recognition system superior to previous such computer systems. He is quoted as saying:
“My perspective changed in a dramatic way. It meant that we may be closer to understanding how the visual cortex recognizes objects and scenes than I ever thought possible.”
Computers are now powerful enough that we can run virtual simulations of our current models of brain organization and function. This is therefore a new tool to test our hypotheses about brain function. And at the same time, as a bonus, these computer models can actually function on their own as computer systems. This is similar to using a computer to model how a grandmaster plays chess and in so doing creating a computer program that can actually play chess.
Fast forward 21 years and (Ray Kurzweil predicts) we will have accurate computer models of brain structure and function that will not only simulate brain function – they will be functional artificial brains. Reverse engineering the brain and creating human-level artificial intelligence are tasks that will progress in parallel – each playing off the other. In fact (as with Poggio’s research) these two tasks will be one and the same research program.
This is all very exciting stuff. But so far I have only been discussing the basic science – creating the computer models. What about the applications? This is a topic for another day.
75 Responses to “Reverse Engineering the Brain”
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(Ray Kurzweil predicts)
I was hoping for a more sceptical approach towards the umpteenth prediction of Kurzweil’s.
Have you read his earlier ones?
Quite frankly, this guy sounds like a glorified sooth-sayer to me.
He might be a brilliant inventor, but his extrapolations are so far-fetched, yet delivered with such an uncanny precision as to when the most incredible advancements should occur, that my baloney-detection kit goes off-scale each time he opens his mouth.
Not to mention the logical fallacies which plague his reasoning, such as the unstated major premise that all progress, across the technological and scientific spectrum of disciplines, should proceed steadily and at the same accelerating pace, in secula seculorum, amen.
How has he become to be so widely and unsceptically accepted?
Actually I think Kurzweil is quite controversial, I don’t see a lack of skepticism. I agree that his prognostications regarding the continued exponential increase in technology is maximally optimistic and I have expressed skepticism toward it in the past.
But to be clear – he claims this for all information-based technology, not all technology. Although he also claims that technology in general is becoming more information-based.
For the purposes of this entry – there are two claims: that computer power will increase at about its current rate, and that AI progress will achieve human-level effects in 21 years. As I said, the first prediction is highly reliable. The second is far more speculative, and may take significantly longer than he predicts but I see no reason why we will not eventually achieve this. We also may achieve this surprisingly fast by reverse engineering the brain (rather than reinventing the wheel, as it were). We will see.
You have to take claims on their own merits, regardless of who makes them.
“I cannot think of any theoretical reason why artificial intelligence should not become a reality.”
According to your philosophy it must be possible. So you are putting philosophy before science. Make up your mind, then investigate. I thought it was the other way around.
You seem to think Kurzweil is an infallible prophet. Who cares what he predicts? Prophets of AI have been making fools of themselves from the beginning.
Technology does accelerate, and we can expect that to continue. Scientific understanding, on the other hand, progresses in some areas but not in others. And even in areas where detailed information increases, understanding can be stalled.
In subatomic physics, for example, knowledge increases but so does confusion. This is probably the case in genetics also. And I think it is also true in neuroscience.
Kurzweil is a fanatical believer in the unlimited power of materialist science. He thinks we can use technology to become immortal. This is closer to religion than science.
Whenever someone extrapolates scientific and technological advances by decades, I take what they project with large boulders of salt. Until something has actually been accomplished, it can be very difficult to know how difficult it actually is. Not because of any non-material aspects of reality but because that is how reality is.
Mr. Kurzweil has far more expertise than I do in computers and AI. He has the same expertise that I do in the technology of 2030 (that would be none). He has reached his conclusions by extrapolating a curve with exponential growth. Linear extrapolations are problematic and are to be avoided (even when the underlying phenomena are understood and understood to be linear). What are the underlying phenomena which caused the exponential growth of Moore’s Law? Are there valid reasons to expect that those phenomena can continue to increase at exponential levels? That they can continue to double 15 or 20 more times? There are many non-linear factors that are coupled and which have combined to achieve the exponential growth (in some parameters only) that has been observed post hoc. Coupled non-linear systems are essentially impossible to model even when completely known in complete detail. Such systems are inherently chaotic and unpredictable beyond a certain point. Weather is a simple one where the non-linear interactions of fluid flow produce what is known as the “butterfly effect”. Physiology is a much more complicated example.
Mr. Kurzweil uses non-linear extrapolation to posit a future event, a “singularity” beyond which technology and technology advancement cannot be extrapolated, but then he proceeds to extrapolate as to what those technology and technological advancements will be.
As a scientist I don’t have a way of showing that what Mr Kurzweil suggests is impossible. As an engineer I know there is no known path to reach the destination that Mr Kurzweil suggests is achievable. Is there such a path? Right now no one knows. We will only know after such achievements have been achieved. Then it will be obvious that it is achievable. That is the nature of scientific and technological advancement; once it is achieved it becomes obvious (except to the denialists who cling to disproven ideas).
pec, there is not increased confusion in sub-atomic physics. There is the realization that it is not as easy or as simple as it was once thought. When people have false conceptions and then realize those conceptions are false, the result is not “confusion”, the result is understanding. Abandoning wrong ideas does not result in “confusion”. It results in clarity. Reality is much easier to understand when wrong ideas are discarded.
Kurzweil claims that man’s merger with machine is inevitable, because the pace of evolution has been increasing exponentially – when we reach the edge of biological evolution, we must transition into artificial substrates so that can continue traveling up that exponential curve into binary godliness. This, he predicts, is inevitable. That’s at least a misreading of the theory of evolution; I’d argue it’s also a bit kooky.
However, the cool thing about Kurzweil’s predictions is that they’re specific and printed in books published over decades, so we can see how well he does. For example, in The Age of Spiritual Machines (1999) he predicts that by 2009 – less than a year from now – books will be replaced by electronic reading devices, children will be taught to read predominately with computers, most text will be produced with voice recognition software, phones will translate between languages in real time (“where you speak in English and your Japanese friends hears you in Japanese”), the last decade will have been a period of constant economic prosperity, artists will create paintings and music with the active collaboration of robot artists, the deaf will hear and the blind will see. Here he is on war: “The security of computation and communication is the primary focus of the U.S. Department of Defense . . . Humans are generally far removed from the scene of battle. Warfare is dominated by unmanned intelligent airborne devices.” There’s a pattern here: Kurzweil predicted the voice recognition technology in which he specializes will transform society by the end of the decade. I can’t really blame him for being optimistic about his own field, but his bias is evident.
He did qualify these predictions – he implied they were conservative.
I’m not saying it’s not useful to think about where technology will take us in the future, but we should be clear that even our best guesses will probably be wrong.
I agree that it is extremely difficult to extrapolate technological and scientific advances into the future – and I have said so many times. However, to be clear there is a difference between projecting that certain kinds of improvements will be made over time and predicting exactly what path and what form those improvements will take.
I think it is reasonable to extrapolate from decades of steady progress that continued progress is likely (likely – not guaranteed) to occur. This is not making “predictions” in the prophetic sense so much as making probability statements, which is OK as long as they are appropriately qualified. And again, these are estimates of how much progress is likely in terms of the net effect, not the details about how the progress will be made. There is a difference.
Regarding computing power – I think if anything the industry has been holding back for marketing reasons – keeping to Moore’s Law and not jumping ahead. There are already designs in the works to keep Moore’s law going – holographic memory, light-based computing, 3-D processors, massively parallel processors, etc. This is not even counting quantum computing – which is still highly speculative at this time.
As far as applications of this technology go, I’m certainly looking forward to the day when my email client has a sapient spam filter.
Kurzweil’s attempts to anchor his “Law of Accelerating Returns” in geological deep time have been downright laughable. I also find the “singularity” an unfortunate misnomer: if the innovations of this century happen anything like the innovations of those past, we’re going to see different bits and pieces of technology, produced perhaps by reverse-engineering different aspects of the brain, each of which change our lives in their own way, and which are recombined by other inventors like pieces of a mad jigsaw. . . Strong AI won’t pop into being like a cartoon lightbulb over a mad scientist’s head — even lightbulbs themselves didn’t happen that way.
Sciolist:
You make me LOL! It’s been about eight years since I read The Age of Spiritual Machines, so I’d forgotten just how much we were supposed to have done by, er, right now.
I agree with you Steven, I just think that Kurzweil gives his statements about the future a weight and precision that’s unwarranted. He fully intends to live forever and be absorbed into a computer that will comprise all the matter and energy in the universe – he’s pinning his predictions to specific dates because he’s relying on them to keep him alive until the Singularity grants him immortality.
I agree with the distinction you make between reasonable extrapolation and soothsaying – I’m just pointing out that Kurzweil falls on the side of soothsaying in many ways.
Blake Stacey:
Yeah, I’m glad I kept my copy. It’ll be interesting to take it off the shelf every few years to see how his predictions track with reality.
Incidentally, just seven more years until we have hoverboards – so sayeth Back To The Future Part II : )
Steve, thanks for your reply.
I agree with you that claims should be taken on their own merit, I wasn’t attempting to poison the well.
I am also aware that, in the past, you spoke somehow sceptically about Kurzweil in your excellent podcast. My gripe was more with the way Kurzweil’s ideas are received by the academic world at large. Yet, I don’t find this particular claim any more convincing than previous ones and I was surprised that you did.
I have to disagree when you say that Kurzweil, in general, limits his claims to information-based technology. He actually throws in a plethora of parallel assumptions which span from nanotechnology to medicine, from math to neuroscience, from space-flight engineering to biotechnology, from economy to linguistic, etc.
Having said that, a pattern has emerged in earnest in Kurzweil’s predictions, and it seems to me that here we are witnessing more of the same.
Namely, he will indicate a very precise date for a certain prognostication to come true, while being very nebulous about the actual breakthroughs needed for it to happen.
If you examine carefully what he has said here, you won’t fail to notice that he didn’t indicate a clear methodology for reverse-engineering the brain. He over-simplistically delegates the machines to solve the problem and nowhere does he address the fact that even mapping a quadrillion synaptic connections won’t probably be sufficient.
All he does is depicting overly optimistic scenarios, whatever the topic.
Also, you will probably concur that we are still lacking a unified and agreed-upon definition of intelligence. Therefore, replicating something which we can’t even properly describe, is somewhat of a red herring.
For instance, will artistic creativity be replicated if it hasn’t yet found its place within the common definition of intelligence?
And if not, how could AI truly be deemed superior to human intelligence?
Kurzweil doesn’t help us here either.
One final consideration: I certainly hope that he is right, even in his wildest speculation , but I wouldn’t want my wish-thinking to cloud my analysis.
All the best
P.S. I hadn’t read your second comment, which preempts part of what I said. Apologies.
To clarify – I did not say that Kurzweil limits himself to claims about information technology – just that his claim of exponential growth is not for all technologies but just for information-based technology. But he links this to the claim that all technologies are becoming increasingly information-based. I had to read Singularity most of the way through to really get this. He may contradict himself elsewhere – I have not read most of his writings, but that is his Singularity claim.
Also – it is ironic that Kurzweil falls into his own trap. He (and others) warn that there is a tendency to overestimate short term progress and underestimate long term progress. Then, Kurzweil goes ahead and overestimates short term progress.
Also – I think this is a crucial point – specific prognostications are all but impossible. But general trends can be reliably extrapolated. Kurzweil’s specific predictions about specific technologies have not faired well. But we have been talking about Moore’s law for decades and it still holds up.
In other words – I think we can very reliably say about how powerful desktop computers will be in 2020, but I don’t think we can say that they will have 128 cores vs holographic memory, etc. We cannot predict the specifics, but we can make reliable statements about general trends. (This is exactly like the difference between climate and weather.)
On a different point – I agree that we lack good definitions for things like intelligence and we don’t know a lot of the how in terms of brain function. However, we don’t have to if we create AI by essentially making a digital copy of the brain – if we use the brain as a template. We may get to the point where we create AI that we don’t fully understand.
We also may find ways to evolve AI from the bottom up – rather than designing AI from the top down. Your limitations only apply to top-down design.
Imagine if we evolve or duplicate AI that we don’t really understand – then that AI designs the next generation of AI. Ack. Then we are into Matrix, Battlestar Galactica, Terminator territory. Asimov’s laws of robotics assumed top-down design, but that may not be the path we follow.
daedalus2u, you said, “When people have false conceptions and then realize those conceptions are false, the result is not “confusion”, the result is understanding.”
I think this may be the fundamental problem with creationism. When we fill in a gap in the fossil record, scientists see that as eliminating a gap. Creationists see it as replacing one gap with two.
Ultimately, scientists know that revealing more precisely what you don’t know is the beginning of knowledge, not the heart of confusion.
On the AI front, we also have this perception that once we have a computer that is architected to be as smart as humans, then we’ll have that creature at that moment. Our brains take decades to fill themselves with data, learn to prune some sensory input, make correlations, reject others, etc. Wouldn’t we expect some kind of analogous lag once we create a learning machine.
Also, Sciolist says, “[Kurzweil] fully intends to live forever and be absorbed into a computer that will comprise all the matter and energy in the universe ”
He can save himself some mental effort if he just looks around and recognizes that he already an integrated portion of a computer than comprises all the matter and energy int eh universe.
It’s all fantasy and science fiction, and it has become a kind of religion.
Computers are great at certain things and lousy at others, and this has not changed since the 1950s. Computers are ONLY good at things that can be automated, where you can spell out the steps in complete detail. You have to tell a computer exactly what to do and this limitation has not changed, for practical purposes, since the beginning of AI.
Computers are not good at learning, creating or taking initiative. Any prediction that they will be is pure fantasy.
As I see it, computers are extensions of our minds. They can never BE minds themselves. Of course that is my philosophical perspective and I can’t prove it. But decade after decade of no progress in something can be taken as a clue that it will not ever happen.
Natural language is an example of something computers have never been good at and, in my opinion, never will be. AI researchers in the 1960s expected it to be easy, but a half century later most of the problems are unsolved.
Science and technology progress rapidly in some areas but you cannot conclude that therefore all areas will progress rapidly, or at all. Physics has not progressed in understanding the basic components of matter. Psychiatry and neuroscience have not progressed in understanding or curing most types of mental illness. Medical science has progressed little, if at all, in understanding or curing most types of cancer. And AI research has progressed little, if at all, in simulating human intelligence.
This sort of prediction is often entirely fantasy, based on the invalid assumption that all areas of science and technology must progress, and at similar rates.
Making computers smaller and faster is a great success story, and is likely to continue. But computers work about the same way as they always did, according to specified algorithms. They are absolutely great at this, and they will only get better, smaller and faster.
It is completely wrong to assume that the nature of computers will change. We have seen no evidence that they will so this kind of speculation is completely meaningless. It is wrong to think you can win arguments by making meaningless predictions that have no basis in reality.
pec, so why are you getting a PhD in cognitive science? According to you, that is a dead-end field that will never be successful.
Unless you are trying to make those computers smaller and faster, but without understanding physics (including conservation of mass/energy), you are not going to get very far in that direction.
So is the brain Touring equivalent?
“Physics has not progressed in understanding the basic components of matter.”
Since when?
“Medical science has progressed little, if at all, in understanding or curing most types of cancer.”
This is patently false unless you’re measuring progress in the last three weeks. From The National Cancer Institute’s website in their 2004 annual report (http://www.cancer.gov/newscenter/pressreleases/ReportNation2004release):
“The percentage of patients who have survived more than five years after being diagnosed with cancer has increased over the past two decades….
“Death rates from all cancers combined have been decreasing since the early 1990s. Death rates decreased for 11 of the top 15 cancers in men, and eight of the top 15 cancers in women….
“This year’s report highlights trends in cancer survival by comparing five-year survival rates of cancer patients diagnosed in two time periods: 1975-1979 and 1995-2000. Between those time periods, survival substantially improved for most of the top 15 cancers in both men and women, and the top ten sites in children.”
At least think about looking stuff up before you opine.
From mattdick:
‘Also, Sciolist says, “[Kurzweil] fully intends to live forever and be absorbed into a computer that will comprise all the matter and energy in the universe ”
He can save himself some mental effort if he just looks around and recognizes that he already an integrated portion of a computer than comprises all the matter and energy int eh universe.’
Would that computer be self-programmed? Was some sort of spontaneous creation involved?
There is no obligation to respond. On this blog, I am primarily seen as a rhetorical device.
“pec, so why are you getting a PhD in cognitive science? ”
I AM NOT GETTING IT; I GOT IT. You do not have to be a materialist to love science. You don’t have to believe we will soon have all the answers to be interested in the questions!
How did we ever get to this point, where materialism and all its associated dogma have become identified with scientific inquiry?
“The percentage of patients who have survived more than five years after being diagnosed with cancer has increased over the past two decades..”
“Death rates from all cancers combined have been decreasing since the early 1990s.”
You are so gullible. Earlier diagnosis means 5 year survival HAS to increase.
Death rates must decrease — earlier diagnosis means more cases are diagnosed, most of them non-fatal.
The ACS is a very big and successful fraud.
Rhetorical questions for pec: Have you ever proposed any answers to any of these questions? You know, hypothesized? Isn’t that what y’all do?
And cancer incidence rates declined because smoking rates declined! You’re actually giving medical science credit for that?
“Limited survival improvement was noted for the most fatal forms of cancer ”
I love the way they “frame” their messages. What does “limited survival improvement” mean, exactly? Patients live two weeks longer?
If you have a PhD in cognitive science then you must be able to talk about whether the brain is a Touring equivalent.
So is it?
Oh I must? (I guess you meant Turing?) Who the heck knows — cognitive scientists sure don’t.
“Have you ever proposed any answers to any of these questions? ”
Anyone philosophical person speculates and wonders. There is nothing unscientific or wrong about being curious and looking for answers. Of course I speculate, and I don’t apologize for it.
What I am complaining about here is Steve Novella presenting his speculations and science fiction fantasies as if they were scientifically established truths. And he thinks anyone not on his materialist fantasy wavelength must be stupid, ignorant and unscientific.
And he is just one representative of a growing herd mentality that I have been watching for several decades. That’s fine with me if they want to have religious faith in a materialist worldview — everyone needs some kind of faith. But I don’t especially like their smug certainty and judgmentalism. They’re almost as bad as fundamentalist Christians.
“And he thinks anyone not on his materialist fantasy wavelength must be stupid, ignorant and unscientific.”
I suspect it’s only two out of three in most cases.
Anyway, thanks for sharing.
need to distinguish, define, the difference between “consciousness” and “awareness” to be able to make some subtle but necessary points…
in advaita vedanta, consciousness is impersonal, undivided, another name for god or life or being, while awareness implies individuality… in that tradition, duality refers to an apparent separation of knower and object of knowledge, while non-duality is
used to describe a higher order of knowledge, in which there is only undifferentiated knowing, no separation between knower and reality…
those guys in the east have been studying consciousness for thousands of years, and have developed a very sophisticated understanding…. as a serious neuro-whatever in the western tradition, one could well benefit from embracing some of the concepts or perceptions arrived at in other traditions….
you will find you will ask better questions, and remove some limiting belief structures that block larger understanding
Gregory: isn’t it more to the point that the modern world requires an expansion of our understanding that has in fact been blocked by the dogmatic assertions of those ancient traditions? The sophisticated understanding that you make reference to can only be that which has adapted itself to an ever changing world.
Read the book that I suggested to you earlier. It’s nothing if not sophisticated.
Pec: Comfort yourself with these thoughts:
It’s a truism that those who are able to judge the extent of another’s ignorance are only found among those others on that same scale.
And according to Darwin, ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge
“And there is no need for a codified definition of consciousness. This unjustified yet oft-supposed requirement is the actual red herring, because the fact is, if it seems conscious, it is conscious.”
Whoever really believes this has spent a bit too much time in that Chinese room.
Skidoo wrote:
And then Roy Niles wrote:
This is a meaningless insult, and makes no attempt to address the argument. Just thought I’d point that out.
Gregory wrote:
Yes, this is commonly referred to in THIS part of the world as the homunculus argument. And there’s no scientific reason to suspect the little man inside there will prove to be anything more than a conspiracy of interconnected brain regions.
Gregory also wrote:
An example of the unfalsifiable nonsense that is so typical of ancient “traditions.”
Gregory also wrote:
Uh-huh. I take offense at your assumption that I’m not intimately familiar with Eastern philosophy, Gregory Yogi. Or is it swami? :rolleyes:
Sorry, Skidoo, but I thought the “insult” was a lot more meaningful, as if you really knew anything about the Chinese Room argument, the truth of my comment would have been self-evident. Also my man Searle is a fellow Berkeleyite, and one of the few contemporary philosophers that doesn’t speak in 23 tongues.
And then you tell poor Gregory that his comment was: ‘An example of the unfalsifiable nonsense that is so typical of ancient “traditions.”‘
Just how is that NOT a meaningless insult? He apparently came here to learn and mistakenly felt he could impart some knowledge in the bargain. How does telling him his cultural beliefs are nonsense suddenly turn on his self-evidentiary signaling switch?
Just thought I’d point out that he who giveth must expect to taketh in return.
hey, skidoo, being so familiar with eastern philosophy, how could you take offense at anything? or, maybe, it is book knowledge that you have, as opposed to practice?
the “unfalsifiable nonesense” pov guarantees there is nothing possible to learn from the “east”, and that is ok, i am just offering the opposite possiblity…
there does seem to be something in the concepts of subtle energy, and subtler aspects of consciousness, at least to me
it means allowing something beyond a mechanistic view of life to have possibility, but that could be threatening, i know. quantitative is so much safer than qualitative… but might miss a bit, is my suggestion…
what is knowing, anyway? just meat in action? so then, it is completely impersonal, no problem…. just not satisfying, and answers nothing
enjoy, gregory
dogma is a good point, roy skiles, and difficult to avoid in almost all disciplines, not only old “eastern” traditions…
there is a phrase i like, “knowing that by which all else is known”, and to me it has implications both practical, useful in the daily struggle, and “philosophical”, in the sense that it suggests the possibility the consciousness can be apprehended in and of itself, consciousness without object.
i am aware that this is not “scientific” but it is certainly the experience of many mystics east and west. the athlete’s concept of being in the zone is equivalent.
i do think there are some possibilities of integrating the so-called east and west points of view… to the benefit of us all, without sinking into superstition or dogma or being trapped in the coffin of beliefs… and i do find it useful to discuss what appear to be limitations in the scientific mindset, as practiced up until now…
would love to drop back onto this planet in a few hundred years, and see how it all plays out
thanks for you time, gregory
and, roy, am looking for “the geography of thought” in bangalore, it may be available.. amazon doesn’t deliver here
“ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge”
Exactly what I have been trying to tell you.
Mattdick: Thanks (I think) for the validation.
Gregory: My great grandfather was with the British in India and he said he learned two important things that he later found were true all over the world:
When in a three story or higher structure, do not piss from the second story.
And when you track dung into the house, you may be the only one there who can’t smell it.
Special pleading is apropos in circumstances where the rules of the game are enforced only by the participants. And especially for general beggings of the question. And fallacies often depend on whether or not the premise was wrong to begin with. Searle would call my error an over-assumption of the obvious.
And gee, I did say sorry.
And I realize I could simply say your original contention was also
unfalsifiable, but that would be no improvement on what you said to poor old greg (or maybe rich young greg if in Bangalore).
So I may have to cut and paste to give a better answer. Only Vishnu knows how long that will take.
Missed you at the meeting. How could you pass up all that free stuff?
Cancer survival rates take into account earlier diagnosis. pec was corrected on this on a different thread on the SBM blog, but seems to be impervious to facts.
Hi,
I’m an informatics student doing my thesis on improving speech recognition through topic spotting. I thought you guys might be interested in the current status speech recognition:
The best speech systems are based on statistical methods. They generate a series of hypotheses, whereby the probability of recognizing a word is depends on the previous n words.
The hypotheses are scored and the one with the best score is returned.
The performance is best when:
- language and vocabulary database corresponds well to the input
- small variance in the expected input
- good input, no nonspeech sounds
- no pauses and breaks like, hmm or äh
- single speaker
- known domain (topic)
- a fast computer
these problems are slowly but surely being solved. Our system for example ignores hmms and ähs quiet well. Some problems currently can’t be solved in real time on a desktop computer so faster computers will help.
more later
“Cancer survival rates take into account earlier diagnosis. pec was corrected on this”
No actually, my objections were not answered by David Gorski. No one has explained how to estimate how many diagnosed cancers would have progressed, how many would have been destroyed by the immune system, and how many would never have caused symptoms. The article Gorski linked says that most cancers do not ever cause sickness.
When cancer statistics are proudly displayed, none of these facts are mentioned. If they are taken into account, why are they never mentioned? And if they are mentioned, where is an example? Gorski did not answer me. He said it was addressed in the article he linked, but the article only gave reasons to be skeptical of the statistics. Which I already was, but am now moreso.
http://jama.ama-assn.org/cgi/content/abstract/283/22/2975
“Increased 5-year survival for cancer patients is generally inferred to mean that cancer treatment has improved and that fewer patients die of cancer. Increased 5-year survival, however, may also reflect changes in diagnosis: finding more people with early-stage cancer, including some who would never have become symptomatic from their cancer.”
“Conclusion Although 5-year survival is a valid measure for comparing cancer therapies in a randomized trial, our analysis shows that changes in 5-year survival over time bear little relationship to changes in cancer mortality. Instead, they appear primarily related to changing patterns of diagnosis.”
So why is the ACS still bragging about 5-year survival rates?
Mattdick; Vishnu invoked Searle, who has perfected the technique of asking a question in such a way that all will discover the answer that best fits their preconceptions: His question here is: If everything that seems conscious IS conscious, then is anything that is MADE to seem conscious also in fact conscious?
If your answer is yes, it’s a win-win.
@Roy: “Mattdick; Vishnu invoked Searle,”
Roy, I was not involved in the Vishnu discussion, but if whoever was talking about it said smart stuff, I’ll go ahead and take credit for it…
And Vishnu seems to have channeled a message for gregory as well:
You might want to a leaf from Joseph Campbell’s book(s) and consider all ancient and established religions to be mythological systems. Here is a quote:
“…a mythology is a control system, on the one hand framing its community to accord with an intuited order of nature and, on the other hand, by means of its symbolic pedagogic rites, conducting individuals through the ineluctable psychophysiological stages of transformation of a human lifetime – birth, childhood and adolescence, age, old age, and the release of death – in unbroken accord simultaneously with the requirements of this world and the rapture of participation in a manner of being beyond time.”
Whether he was a dualist or not, I think he shows the value of these systems as more than something that required a belief in some purposeful being to have any useful function. It’s evident that he saw them as adaptive to the times, and any mythical beings involved had to adapt their omnipotency and/or omnisciency accordingly.
I suggest that considering the influences from your cultural heritage in this manner could go a long way toward making use of the benefits of empiricism and the empirical method without experiencing the cognitive dissonance that some here feel a duty to protect you from.
But you will need to read his persuasive material yourself before seeing the benefits of my suggestion. Try: http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1862045984/mythoslogos
As for me, I’m an atheist, and believe in a quasi-mechanical universe – but hey, none of us are yet perfect.
“unfalsifiable” implies one cannot disprove something, and science is limited to the provable… which is a big limit, when investigating something “out of range”… such as radio waves in the 1800′s…. clearly unfalsifiable, cleary real, now… this is what i mean when i say one can ask better questions is one accepts some other points of view than one was conditioned to believe
enjoy, gregory
Gregory, please, you asked in effect how to combine your philosophies with those of the West for a better overall understanding. But if you simply were looking for an argument over who has the better system to expedite technical development and progress, your side will lose.
After all it was our science that developed the equipment to generate those radio waves, so your remarks about falsifiability are not only incorrect but, as already noted by skidoo, somewhat irrelevant.
Science basically is a system to produce reliable information that will lead to implementation of better systems for dealing with the more and more complex problems in a developing world. (I didn’t copy that from anywhere so others have surely said it better.)
But note the key word is RELIABLE. The testability that science requires has been the best way of determining the extent of that reliability than any other system yet devised.
And you might as well not attempt to learn from us if you think you have nothing yet to learn, or that first you have to establish there’s some “balance of ignorance” between the systems.
To admit a lack of knowledge is not an admission of ignorance; in fact it’s exactly the opposite.
Also you may need to know that anything you offer that in any way reminds us of that pain in the ass, Deepak Chopra, will not be well received.
I just realized I addressed a comment to Mattdick when it should have been for skidoo – error #23. It wasn’t all that clever anyway.
Maxwell showed in 1861 that electromagnetic waves existed and propagated with the velocity of light.
Hey daedalus2u, I was just trying to ease the poor bugger out of his slavish adherence to the imaginary demands of those omnipresent supernatural influences in his part of the world. Dogma is a jealous taskmaster as even some scientists are painfully aware.
daedalus2u said: “I think that isolation is very important in providing the ability to abandon the wrong ideas (which are culturally transmitted) that must be abandoned for a new and better idea to be adopted”
The problem with that is all ideas, good or bad, are in one way or another culturally transmitted. Of course some have hypothesized that “memes’ can transfer ideas in some genetic fashion, but if there ever was a nonfalsifiable assumption, that would be it (colloquial licensed fallacy exemption). What we have called instincts, etc. are possible exceptions to this rule, but whether these qualify as ideas is unclear (at least me).
But if the very nature of an idea is its ability to change and grow, be born and die, etc., then I don’t think we can or need to effect such changes by isolation and elimination of the bad to make way for the birth of the good. That would tend to make the learning process unbelievably complicated.
Roy, you are incorrect. Some ideas are generated de novo. Those would be ideas that no one has ever had before. For them to be adopted by others they must be culturally transmitted (or developed de novo by others).
Many ideas in science are developed that way. Take Evolution for example. There was a time when no one had the idea of Evolution. Darwin is given credit for it now because he was the first one who had the idea and succeeded in culturally transmitting it to others in permanent form. Evolution is a pretty good idea, one that explains virtually everything in biology. Yet there are plenty of people who simply cannot accept Evolution. The reason they cannot accept Evolution is that they are unable to abandon the wrong idea of creationism. It was the same with the heliocentric model of the solar system. People couldn’t accept it because they couldn’t abandon the wrong idea that the Sun went around the Earth. Millikan couldn’t easily abandon his “light is a wave” paradigm and accept Einstein’s quantum theory of light. This is what Thomas Kuhn talks about in his “Structure of Scientific Revolutions”.
In the examples I used, there was a first instance of a human (or human ancestor) using stone tools, making stone tools, using fire, making fire, and so on. We don’t know the details, but 50 million years ago there were no stone tools used, 1 million years ago there were many stone tools used. Sometime during that interval there was a first instance of the use of a stone tool. Before that first use of a stone tool, there was either the absence of the idea that stone tools would work, or the presence of the idea that stone tools would not work.
People have lots of wrong ideas that get in the way of figuring out what is correct. These wrong ideas are all transmitted culturally. Invariably they are transmitted using fallacious arguments, argument from authority being the major one. People are quite susceptible to arguments from authority because “authority figures” are usually to be respected or obeyed.
When authority figures have compelling speaking styles they are said to be charismatic and are more difficult for some people to not obey. A charismatic speaking ability does not make one correct, it simply makes one more difficult to not be respected or obeyed. In deciding factual matters, whether the arguer is charismatic or not is irrelevant. However that is not how most people behave. There have been plenty of charismatic leaders who have been followed to the detriment of the followers. Jim Jones, Hitler, Mao, Ken Lay, Imus, and many of the medical quacks that Dr Novella and Orac talk about. They are charismatic and have many followers, they just happen to not be correct. Orac has a discussion today of how because Obama is a charismatic speaker he is being compared to another charismatic speaker, Hitler. About the only thing they have in common.
Being less susceptible to charismatic leaders (when they are wrong) is a good thing. It is a bad thing when they are correct. I think that when times are good, it is better to go with the crowd and be more susceptible to peer pressure. When times are hard, I think it is better to be more independent and evaluate things on your own.
I think that humans have made these events mythic because non-creative individuals can’t understand how ideas are generated except by being given down from “on high”, by an authority figure. This presents difficulties if people with good ideas are not charismatic. Charisma is likely correlated with success at getting funding. It is likely not correlated with success at evaluating the correctness of ideas but likely is correlated with success at getting wrong ideas accepted by people susceptible to charisma.
One of the problems of charisma is convincing yourself that you are correct. When you use the argument from authority when you are the authority. People do this all the time, give more weight to their own arguments simply because they are their own.
Yes, but give me an example of how you can isolate a bad idea and terminate it without isolating the individual with that idea, and if necessary, terminate him?
I can see terminating someone like Hitler who acted on his ideas, and therefor caused harm, invited retaliation, etc. But when does one decide that the idea is so harmful that the person or persons who have it need that sort of terminal isolation? And who makes the decision as to rightness and wrongness? We long ago gave up the idea that we could have sustainable regimes operated by a succession of philosopher kings, and anything less, that could be trusted to unerringly pick the good ideas from the bad, and from the bad, the worst, has just not been found to work. (Except by the regimes and rogue states that are now doing those very things.)
You talk of evolution, which was developed as an idea by at least two people at the same time, and would not have existed but for a series of other ideas that made its conception possible. So in that sense no idea worth its salt can be completely de novo.
And how or why was evolution NOT culturally transferred? Of course it still meets with resistance today, but what if those who didn’t like it to begin with had had the power to isolate Darwin?
Simply because they didn’t, you are now his cultural descendant thinking in a sort of retrospection by proxy that you either need to rethink this position or make a place for exceptions to these proposed new procedures for accomplishing what would essentially be mind control.
Anyway, I expect we may have to ultimately agree to disagree on this matter
You are talking as if “ideas” are organisms, they are not. Ideas are conceptualizations; they are thought patterns, patterns of neural activity.
My point was that Darwin was able to isolate himself from the wrong idea of creation sufficiently that he was able to conceive of Evolution.
New ideas are (in virtually all cases) generated by individuals. There may be refinement of ideas by multiple individuals with feedback, but each de novo idea is generated by an individual.
At one time I believed that antioxidants were good for you. Now I know they are not because I was able to read the data in the literature interpret that data and decide that the hypothesis that antioxidants are good for you is false.
Similarly homeostasis. I once subscribed to the prevailing (but wrong) consensus that maintaining cellular physiological parameters near constant was a necessary and sufficient condition for cells to stay alive, that cells did this, and that the process was called homeostasis. Now I understand that there is no such thing as homeostasis, cells don’t maintain any physiological parameter constant, and that homeostasis as a concept is fatally flawed and is holding back progress. The idea of homeostasis is similar to the idea of Intelligent Design. It is a myth that is a distortion of reality that makes reality more difficult if not impossible to actually understand.
You are correct, convincing people that their culturally transmitted wrong ideas are actually wrong and need to be abandoned can be extremely difficult. The “difficulty” lies with the person with the wrong idea, not with the idea. Some people can never abandon their wrong ideas but hold them until they do die. That is unfortunate for them. It is not a “fault” of the idea, but rather with the person who is unable to understand that it is correct.
“A new scientific truth does not triumph by convincing its opponents and making them see the light, but rather because its opponents eventually die, and a new generation grow up that is familiar with it.” Max Planck
My point about people being isolated relates to my work on autism spectrum disorders. The major difficulty in many (if not most) innovations is abandoning the wrong notion that the concept isn’t possible or isn’t useful. The history of the computer industry is filled with many examples. At the PARC facility of Xerox they had desktop computers connected in a network with GUIs, mice, laser printers and a whole host of other innovations that management thought didn’t have any value.
There is no denying the long-term impact of PARC’s systems. It took two decades for much of their technology to be equalled or surpassed. The interfaces and technology that PARC pioneered became standards for much of the computing industry, once their merits were widely known.
It is legend that Xerox management consistently failed to see the potential of many of the PARC inventions. While there is some truth to this, it is also an over-simplification. They certainly understood the value of laser printing, and of advances coming from the non-computer-focused part of PARC.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palo_Alto_Research_Center
I can best counter that by asking you to consider this: The idea that other ideas should be free to compete in a market place of ideas was one of our most profound.
Darwin didn’t isolate himself from the wrong ideas of creationism – he was in fact inspired, as we all are, by visceral observations of their inconsistencies.
Ideas are not organisms? That says nothing to help define ideas, since they are indeed an essential part of any organism. You might even say that life itself is the first idea that nature has ever had.
But this subject has really too vast an area to be adequately dealt with in this small space.
Start here and hopefully never stop: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Idea
Ah, but perhaps you have expected both too much and too little from ideas as to their strength and weakness.
Here is something you said earlier:
“Ideas are conceptualizations; they are thought patterns, patterns of neural activity”
That falls woefully short as a way of assessing their function.
You might ponder on this as well:
Ideas are all in one sense interim solutions to problems of survival in both the sort and long term. They are part and parcel of our predictive apparatus.
They are what leads us to assume that everything has a purpose, even when it doesn’t. They are where we get our illusion that we are spiritual beings. They are behind every decision to to do good or do harm, either accidently or on purpose, and they are the conveyors of those decisions. They are behind the illusion that there is a force for good and evil in the universe – but which is, as the great Bard has proposed, not in our stars but in ourselves.
And perhaps he would have said if asked that it is our ideas that are both the cause and the mechanism that dispenses good and evil.
And that at bottom you don’t kill the good or the bad by simply killing the messenger.
There are illusory ideas. I think your idea that ideas are more than thought patterns is one such illusory idea. Ideas are the same “stuff” that the “mind” is, epiphenomena of the brain.
If that’s all they are, and have no power, why do you want to isolate or kill the bad ones?
And just what IS your understanding of their function as thought patterns?
Anyway, I think I’ve done the best I could here, but, to use your own phraseology, I just can’t conceptualize the idea that you will in any way agree that you’re wrong, regardless of how right I may or may not be.
I will try and explain it again. I think you do not understand where I am coming from.
The problem with wrong ideas is that they lead to wrong conclusions. You can’t build an accurate model of reality based on wrong ideas. You can’t make accurate predictions about reality from wrong ideas. If you try to do so, you will make mistakes. If those mistakes are serious enough people will be hurt, and may be killed. Reality is not a “lifestyle” choice. Wrong ideas about autism, mercury and chelation have already killed people. Quack medicines really do hurt people both actively and passively.
I don’t like the concept of the “meme”. That puts the “fault” in the idea and not in the brain of the person who has the idea (which is where it belongs). The problem is with the brains of people who cannot recognize that they have a wrong idea that is leading and will lead them to wrong conclusions. I am not advocating killing people with wrong ideas. But people with wrong ideas should not be in positions where their wrong ideas will hurt people other than themselves.
If you want to build an accurate conceptual model of reality, you need to be able to test ideas that may be a part of that model to see if they are correct or not. This is the essence of the scientific method and of being a skeptic. It is really hard to do. Some (most)people can’t do it.
Most ideas are transmitted culturally. Infants, children, adolescents and even adults learn from others. There is too much information to learn it all first hand. Many ideas must be learned second or multi-hand. Ideas must then be tested to see if they are correct or not. This is where most people, most of who are non-scientists (and many scientists) fail. They are unable to reject ideas they have acquired culturally which are in fact wrong.
Your point was that these wrong ideas needed to be isolated, as they are otherwise next to impossible to change. First, an idea can’t be isolated until it is expressed (unless one is a mind reader) and after that you would have to isolate everyone that heard or read of the idea. Further, many if not most ideas are not wrong per se, it’s the use that they are put to that may turn out to have been wrong, or bad as you once put it. Even further, testing for one use will not predict the consequences that may result from a different use.
And many ideas are not testable for any use even after they are tried – such as political ideas, moral ideas and even economic ideas.
Are medicines that are toxic if used improperly born of a bad idea per se? Are weapons of defense a bad idea simply because their only function is to maim and kill?
Sorry but your position on this is just silly. Ideas CAN be changed, but rarely by force or isolation.
You are not understanding my point. It is that an individual must have the capacity to decide if an idea is wrong in order to replace that idea with a correct idea. For most people, some culturally derived ideas have a special degree of belief, called “faith”, and are not subject to analysis or revision. When those ideas conflict with reality, either the person abandons their “faith” and adopts ideas consistent with reality or their beliefs remain in conflict with reality. The person remains living with a delusional world view.
It is not that the idea must be isolated, rather that the individual trying to go beyond the false idea must be capable of “isolating” themselves from culturally transmitted ideas which are wrong.
Most culturally transmitted ideas are transmitted via an appeal to authority. The “authority” said it was right, therefore it must be right. This is the ultimate source of the “authority” of the Bible. It is written in the Bible, therefore it must be right. Most religions try to foster an absolute belief in the correctness of authority. The reason they do this is because that is the only basis for believing virtually all of the ideas in that religion, they are only “right” because the “authority” says they are “right”. If individuals want to go beyond false ideas being transmitted by an authority, they must be able to isolate themselves from the compulsion to believe an idea that comes from an “authority”.
An individual starts out as a child, and is necessarily dependant on its parents for everything, including as sources of ideas. Parents are authority figures, and a child believes everything that a parent tells them. Some amount of that is good, because a child doesn’t have enough reasoning capacity or access to other data to figure out some things by themselves. Is this plant toxic, are these animals dangerous, will I get burned by fire.
A way of looking at “charisma” is as an ability to amplify the “belief in authority” that other individuals have. Charisma can be good to have if you are a leader because it gets people to follow you. It can be very bad if the charismatic leader has wrong ideas that everyone accepts simply because he/she is charismatic. If a person wants to evaluate the ideas of a charismatic leader, they must “isolate” themselves from the charisma (which has nothing to do with the factual aspects of the idea). An ability to be not be swayed by charisma is an ability that is absolutely necessary in order to evaluate the ideas of charismatic individuals. Most people can’t do it.
I think an increased ability to not be swayed by charisma is one of the fundamental “features” of the autism spectrum disorders. Of course those who are swayed by charisma see the ability to not be swayed as a “defect”. As in the “defect” of not having “faith”.
What you are now referring to is a much different phenomenon than simply an idea or set of ideas. Charismatic people that are in effect our natural leaders (and have the top spot in most pecking orders) do so more by manipulation than by the strength of a new idea. They use the set of ideas already ingrained in the particular culture, and in effect put those ideas to uses that were not previously contemplated.
They add a convincing twist here and there and play upon ingrained prejudice, weaknesses, ethnic pride or ethnic grievances, territorial ambitions, ancient feuds, you name it.
They eventually create a power base that the individual who could have resisted the idea is helpless to counter by himself.
And there’s nothing new about an ancient faith, which is of course culturally transmitted – but the faith IS the culture and it’s the culture itself that is transmitted.
The problem all people have who think they are enlightened is to convince others that they even should start to think about any need for their own enlightenment.
I can see that you are coming at this in large part from a personal perspective (as are we all), but I think your perspective needs to be broadened (as need we all).
I doubt that we see the ability not to be swayed by charisma as a defect. The defect is in our general lack of critical thinking abilities.
Charisma exists, it’s a biological construct if you will, and we probably wouldn’t survive as cooperative organisms without it.
The meek alone will not have inherited the earth. Thus have I spoken.
Charismatic leaders and their followers most certainly do see an ability to not be swayed by that leader as a defect. That is what religious wars are fought over. Many other wars too. Most political disagreement too. The source of the sentiment “if you are not with us, you are against us”.
The focus of my statement wasn’t to put a value judgment on a susceptibility to charisma, but rather to point out that it can greatly interfere with scientific progress by preventing people from examining their fundamental beliefs.
I think that when times are good, adherence to peer pressure is good, and a susceptibility to charisma is good and is a reproductive advantage. In the “wild”, I think that usually meant that charismatic males would father more children. A woman benefits by having the father of her child be charismatic, increasing the likelihood that her child will be charismatic and also susceptible to charisma. How many young women have gotten pregnant because they “believed” what ever it was that a young man told her?
When times are hard, having one’s beliefs correspond to reality is more important.
I think these tendencies are epigenetically programmed in the brain in utero (to some extent). At one extreme are the autism spectrum disorders, where non-adherence to a reality world view is actually difficult.
We are all followers to one extent or another of charismatic leaders. That was the “we” I was referring to. The operative defect in the equation is that some charismatics are also sociopaths.
Perhaps there can be some way found to eliminate those from our epigenetic transference capabilities.
But whimsy aside, I do think we’re going to learn a lot about your concerns from studies already in the pipeline from this relatively new discipline.
Actually I think there is an inherent incompatibility between wanting to be a leader and being a good leader. Power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely. I think there are fundamental reasons why there are very few politicians who were once scientists.
Well, some of the most recent ultra-conservative legislators in Washington were doctors.
And how would you devise a system that could consistently choose its leaders from those who least wanted the job? (They claim that’s how Catholics choose a Pope, but a number of those seemed to have abused their powers from the get-go.)
The real problem is that the sociopaths have been able to cover up their unfitness for true leadership by taking up the practice of law before that eventual run for office.
“Well, some of the most recent ultra-conservative legislators in Washington were doctors.”
I believe that to be a completely unfounded statement. I believe there is a single M.D. serving in Congress right now.
I must admit that you’re correct. “Most recent” taken literally does equate to ‘right now.”
I wasn’t meaning to be unfairly dogmatic. Have there been a lot of congresspeople lately who have been doctors? I know Ron Paul is a medical doctor, but I think that’s it, and I don’t recall there being very many others recently. Since you’re bothered by my presumptions on the definition of “recently” go ahead and define the time frame and we’ll look into it.
And of course then we’ll see how ultra conservative they are. I would actually argue the Paul’s Libertarianism is more orthogonal to the liberal/conservative continuum rather than an extreme end.
I wasn’t bothered, I just thought you were joking. And as to Paul, I’d say if he was any further to the right, the angle would be more of a dangle. But Bill Frist was the doctor that first came to mind in response to the discussion with Daedulus2u, which made reference to a lack of scientists in politics, etc.
Whether Frist is or is not ultra conservative may depend also on whether you think that is or is not a good thing.
This is not an argument either of us could win if it comes to that – we are too far out on this particular string.
I read Fantastic Voyage, The Age of Spiritual Machines and The Singularity is Near, and they changed my life. I even found some of his lectures on Itunes and I find myself impatiently awaiting his next book.
Recently read another incredible book that I can’t recommend highly enough, especially to all of you who also love Ray Kurzweil’s work. The book is “”My Stroke of Insight”" by Dr. Jill Bolte Taylor. I had heard Dr Taylor’s talk on the TED dot com site and I have to say, it changed my world. It’s spreading virally all over the internet and the book is now a NYTimes Bestseller, so I’m not the only one, but it is the most amazing talk, and the most impactful book I’ve read in years. (Dr T also was named to Time Magazine’s 100 Most Influential People and Oprah had her on her Soul Series last month and I hear they’re making a movie about her story so you may already have heard of her)
If you haven’t heard Dr Taylor’s TEDTalk, that’s an absolute must. The book is more and deeper and better, but start with the video (it’s 18 minutes). Basically, her story is that she was a 37 yr old Harvard brain scientist who had a massive stroke in the left hemisphere of her brain. Because of her knowledge of how the brain works, and thanks to her amazingly loving and kind mother, she eventually fully recovered (and that part of the book detailing how she did it is inspirational).
There’s a lot of learning and magic in the book, but the reason I so highly recommend My Stroke of Insight to this discussion, is because we have powerfully intelligent left brains that are rational, logical, sequential and grounded in detail and time, and then we have our kinesthetic right brains, where we experience intuition and peace and euphoria. Now that Kurzweil has got us taking all those vitamins and living our best “”Fantastic Voyage”" , the absolute necessity is that we read My Stroke of Insight and learn from Dr Taylor how to achieve balance between our right and left brains. Enjoy!