A recent commentary in Nature Communications echoes, I think, a key understanding of animal intelligence, and therefore provides an important lesson for artificial intelligence (AI). The author, Anthony Zador, extends what has been an important paradigm shift in our approach to AI.

Early concepts of AI, as reflected in science fiction at least (which I know does not necessarily track with actual developments in the industry) was that the ultimate goal was to develop a general AI that could master tasks from the top down through abstract understanding – like humans. Actual developers of AI, however, quickly learned that this might not be the best approach, and in any case is decades away at least. I remember reading in the 1980s about approaching AI more from the ground up.

The first analogy I recall is that of walking – how do we program a robot to walk? We don’t need a human cortex to do this. Insects can walk. Also, much of the processing required to walk is in the deeper more primitive parts of our brain, not the more complex cortex. So maybe we should create the technology for a robot to walk by starting with the most basic algorithms similar to those used by the simplest creatures, and then build up from there.

My memory, at least, is that this completely flipped my concept of how we were approaching AI. Don’t build a robot with general intelligence who can do anything and then teach it to walk. You don’t even build algorithms that can walk. You break walking down into its component parts, and then build algorithms that can master and combine each of those parts. This was reinforced by my later study of neuroscience. Yeah – that is exactly how our brains work. We have modules and networks that do very specific things, and they combine together to produce more and more sophisticated behavior.

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Remember that scene at the end of Total Recall when the alien machine melts the polar ice on Mars, and within a minute gives Mars a warm breathable atmosphere? Of course, there was a lot wrong with that scene – not the least of which is that the polar caps on Mars are not composed of anything close to a breathable atmosphere. The northern ice cap is mostly composed of water. There is a thin top layer of carbon dioxide (CO2) ice during the winter that sublimates (turns into gas) in the summer. The southern cap undergoes the same process, and is also made of water ice and CO2 ice, but apparently has more CO2 ice than the northern cap. You will notice there is no oxygen in there.

But could, theoretically, we melt the ice caps as part of a plan to terraform Mars? Elon Musk previously floated the idea of nuking Mars – exploding many nuclear bombs over the ice caps in order to quickly melt them, turning the water and CO2 into vapor and thereby warming the planet and thickening its atmosphere. The result would not be an instantly comfortable and breathable atmosphere, but could take us a long way to making Mars more habitable. Musk’s idea was soundly criticized, but recently he tweeted the idea again (although no one is sure if he is serious or not, or just trying to sell T-shirts), but it has resurrected the discussion about whether nuking Mars is a viable option.

A 2018 paper published in Nature crunched the numbers of what we know about non-atmospheric CO2 reserves on Mars. They counted not just the ice caps, but also the carbon bound in the soil. They concluded:

These results suggest that there is not enough CO2 remaining on Mars to provide significant greenhouse warming were the gas to be emplaced into the atmosphere; in addition, most of the CO2 gas in these reservoirs is not accessible and thus cannot be readily mobilized. As a result, we conclude that terraforming Mars is not possible using present-day technology.

That’s discouraging. There isn’t an atmosphere on Mars waiting to be melted or liberated. There is also the question of whether or not exploding nukes over the poles would even work to melt the ice. By some calculations we would need thousands of nukes per day over weeks to accomplish this. And then, of course, the gases would freeze again, because there is not enough CO2 to sustain warming. So – no “blue skies on Mars” anytime soon.

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There is a common style of journalism, that you are almost certainly very familiar with, in which the report starts with a personal story, then delves into the facts at hand often with reference to the framing story and others like it, and returns at the end to the original personal connection. This format is so common it’s a cliche, and often the desire to connect the actual new information to an emotional story takes over the reporting and undermines the facts.

This format reflects a more general phenomenon – that people are generally more interested in and influenced by a good narrative than by dry facts. Or are we? New research suggests that while the answer is still generally yes, there is some more nuance here (isn’t there always?). The researchers did three studies in which they compared the effects of strong vs weak facts presented either alone or embedded in a story. In the first two studies the information was about a fictitious new phone. The weak fact was that the phone could withstand a fall of 3 feet. The strong fact was that the phone could withstand a fall of 30 feet. What they found in both studies is that the weak fact was more persuasive when presented embedded in a story than along, while the strong fact was less persuasive.

They then did a third study about a fictitious flu medicine, and asked subjects if they would give their e-mail address for further information. People are generally reluctant to give away their e-mail address unless it’s worth it, so this was a good test of how persuasive the information was. When a strong fact about the medicine was given alone, 34% of the participants were willing to provide their e-mail. When embedded in a story, only 18% provided their e-mail.

So, what is responsible for this reversal of the normal effect that stories are generally more persuasive than dry facts? The authors suggest that stories may impair our ability to evaluate factual information. This is not unreasonable, and is suggested by other research as well. To a much greater extent than you might think, cognition is a zero-sum game. When you allocate resources to one task, those resources are taken away from other mental tasks (this basic process is called “interference” by psychologists). Further, adding complexity to brain processing, even if this leads to more sophisticated analysis of information, tends to slow down the whole process. And also, parts of the brain can directly suppress the functioning of other parts of the brain. This inhibitory function is actually a critical part of how the brain works together.

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Remember the “Solar Freakin’ Roadways?” The idea was to pave roads with solar cells that would produce electricity for the grid. The power could also be used for LEDs that could serve as traffic lights and warning signals, and the power could melt snow and ice to boot. I wrote about this in 2014 and at the time I was not impressed with the arguments that were being made.

As many people pointed out – there are huge practical problems with this concept. The main problem is that you would have to engineer the solar cells to withstand traffic and all the abuse that roads take. This would likely degrade their efficiency over time, and also make upkeep very expensive. For the money you would be far better off simply installing solar panels on rooftops, or even suspending them over roads or wherever that might make sense.

I wasn’t entirely negative. I liked the idea in theory, just thought there were serious practical hurdles and we need some real-world testing. I also said this:

“It’s also possible that such panels might find a niche use, but not be cost effective for our entire highway infrastructure. For example, they may find a market for private driveways. I would like not to have to plow or shovel my driveway, and it may reduce my energy bills a bit. Also, a driveway takes a lot less abuse than a highway.

Or perhaps parking lots, bike paths, or playgrounds may find a use. Perhaps they will be better for small back roads than highways, or the other way around, or they will be perfect for cities or sidewalks. Maybe airport runways might justify the cost.”

Well now it’s 5 years later, and we have some real-world testing. The largest test was in France, which two years ago installed a 1 kilometer stretch of solar roadway. Le Monde reports that the experiment was a complete failure. The roadway is deteriorating rapidly. A large section had to be completely demolished. Panels come loose and then are broken or dislodged by traffic. Leaves and other debris cover the surface. Also:

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This is a great example of the unintended consequences that can result from making decisions based on scientific conjecture and preliminary hypotheses. In this case, the hypothesis was never a good one. If you are a pet owner, you may have noticed the recent trend toward grain-free dog or cat food. The justification for this trend is the notion that since dogs are essentially wolves, and wolves are pure carnivores, then we should not be feeding our dogs grains. This is basically the paleo diet for dogs.

It should be noted, however, that many carnivores do need to get some plant matter in their diet. They may get this from the stomachs of the herbivores they eat. Wolves will also occasionally eat berries as a minor supplement to their diet. But sure, wolves don’t generally eat grains. But that is not the problematic premise here.

The problem with the grain-free diet claim is that while modern dogs are closely related to wolves, they are not wild wolves. They evolutionarily split from wild wolves 15-40,000 years ago. Over that time their diet has shifted significantly. They no longer hunt in packs, but live off the scraps of human civilization. And they have adapted.

So the grain-free theory is flawed, and we should not base dietary recommendations on theory alone anyway, but actually gather evidence to test those theories. Perhaps we already have, in an unintended ecological experiment. In 2018 the FDA noticed a spike in reported cases of dilated cardiomyopathy (DCM) in dogs. Previous years had 1-3 reported cases per year, in 2018 there were 320, and 2019 is on track to exceed this. This is still a small number compared to the millions of pet dogs in the US, but is likely massive underreporting. There is also likely some reporting bias here – one article on social media might explain the spike, rather than a true increase. But the FDA had to investigate the increase to see if it were real and what the cause might be.

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I confess I have never heard (or at least don’t remember ever hearing) about Weber’s Law (pronouned vayber) until reading about it with this news item. It is the Law of Just Noticeable Differences. It deals with the minimum difference in a stimulus necessary to notice. While clearly established, and there are many hypotheses to explain the phenomenon, there has never been a way to test which hypothesis is correct. The news items relates to new evidence which may provide a mechanism.

Weber’s law applies to all sensory modalities – sight, sound, taste, smell, and tactile sense. For any sensory stimulus there is a minimum difference that a person can notice. For example, if you are visually comparing the length of two lines trying to determine which one is longer, or if you are holding two weights and trying to determine which one is heavier. There is a minimum difference that is necessary to be able to notice. Experimentally this means there is a relationship between the ratio of the difference and the probability of determining the correct answer.

So if you are trying to determine which light is brighter, an experiment may determine that for lights of 100 and 110 lumens there is a 75% chance of correctly detecting which light is brighter. What Weber’s law states is that one this relationship is determined, it holds true no matter what the absolute value of the stimulus is, as long as the ratio is the same. So for lumens of 200 and 220, or 1000 and 1100, there would still be a 75% probability of being correct. The only thing that matters is the ratio.

As you might expect, there is a lot of nuance to the law, such as subtle variations in the math and differences between vertebrates and insects, etc., which I won’t get into. They are not important for the current discussion, but know that they exist.

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This was highly predictable. Of course there are conspiracies surrounding the apparent recent suicide of Jeffrey Epstein while in prison. That’s just background noise now. There are conspiracies about everything. Apparently the two shootings last weekend were false flag operations, because #conspiracies.

Just as predictably, news about the conspiracy theories, how they spread, and how they are treated by the media is itself news. And yes I get the irony that here I am blogging about it. It’s turtles all the way down. I guess in order to have something interesting to say I have to get one level more meta than everyone else – does that do it? Getting meta about being meta?

By now this phenomenon is old news. The traditional editorial filters are no longer in place. They have largely been replaced by algorithms which determine which news items are “trending.” This becomes a self-reinforcing feedback loop that allows the worst information to spread. Of course, this has always happened. Sensationalism and propaganda spread because they are interesting. They break up the mundane monotony of our lives. They are a real-life soap opera.

Jonathan Swift observed in 1710, “Falsehood flies, and the Truth comes limping after it.” There are also several versions of, “A Lie Can Travel Halfway Around the World While the Truth Is Putting On Its Shoes.” The source of this quote, often mistakingly attributed to Mark Twain, is unclear. The point is – the inherent advantage that false but sensational information has in the human mind over prosaic truth has long been observed. And that, of course, is the ultimate medium, the human mind. The external method of spreading false information is incidental to the core phenomenon, but it can influence the speed with which such information spreads and the credibility it is given.

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There is an industry of misinformation fueling climate change denial. It is often fairly sophisticated, and because it is dealing with a highly complex technical area, it’s easy to create an argument that sounds compelling. This results (as if often evidenced right here in the comments) in people who are confident that they are good skeptics and climate fearmongering is all nonsense. Of course they have to simultaneously believe in a rather absurd conspiracy theory regarding the scientific community, but they make that work somehow too.

Here are a couple of recent examples, both of which involve some subtle cherry picking. The first has to do with electric cars, which are frequently opposed by the denialists, in that they oppose subsidies to help bootstrap the market. This involves the “solution aversion” aspect of climate change denial – deniers are really motivated by the proposed solutions to climate change, which goes against either their politics or other interests. The claim that is often made is that producing electric cars has a higher carbon footprint than gasoline cars, and that if you are charging your car off the grid you are probably getting that electricity from fossil fuels. Therefore – electric cars are worse for the environment.

At the very least, I see climate change deniers delight in how stupid this makes the climate change believers appear.  This is a great example of cherry picking, because the two basic facts are correct but they are not the whole picture. Here, for example, is an article posted by Breitbart claiming that batteries are not green, concluding:

One of the authors, Mats-Ola Larsson at IVL, has made a calculation of how long you have to drive a petrol or diesel before it has released as much carbon dioxide as battery manufacturing has caused.

“The result was 2.7 years for a battery of the same size as the Nissan Leaf and 8.2 years for a battery of the Tesla-size.”

Truly the enduring mystery of why Tesla is now more highly valued than such non-Potemkin U.S. car manufacturers as Ford and General Motors grows more mysterious by the hour.

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The details of the conspiracy theory itself are not the most interesting thing about QAnon. The core of this particular conspiracy is that Trump is secretly very competent, that he is investigating a world-wide sex-trafficking, demonic pedophilia ring run by the Democrats, and that Robert Mueller is secretly working with him and the whole Russia investigation is just a cover for this. Further, JFK Jr. faked his death in order to join Trump’s efforts, and is now the real person behind Q, the insider who is leaking information to the public in order to summon the faithful in this epic struggle.

This is all transparent nonsense, but it is no more nonsensical than the notion that the entire Apollo program was faked, that 9/11 was an inside job, or that the Earth is actually flat.

Some have argued that what is different about QAnon is that the deep state faction secretly running the government is this fantasy are the good guy, when is most conspiracies they are the bad guys. But this, I think, is a superficial narrative point. In grand conspiracies the conspiracy theorists are part of a small “woke” army of light trying to expose an even deeper malevolence, and QAnon fits that mold perfectly.

What’s different about QAnon is that it appears to be an evolution of the conspiracy theory into a new kind of phenomenon, one that combines elements from social media, video games, and live-action role playing. Like all conspiracy theories, QAnon offers an alternate version of reality. But in this case believers are more actively engaged. They are just reading and talking about the conspiracy, they are actively engaging in it. The mysterious person Q (not sure if it is actually one person at this point) will drop hints to followers about what is going on or what is about to happen. The Q conspiracy theorists then have to decode these secret messages. But further, Q will give tasks to its followers. These are usually small tasks, such as posting something on Facebook or Tweeting a message. But they could be bigger. They could involve action in meat-space, and even involve violence.

This is part of a more general phenomenon, called internet role-play. This is just another form of fantasy role-playing using a new medium. In the 1970s and 80s table-top roleplaying became popular, with five or so people sitting around a table rolling dice. Then live-action roleplaying took off, with tens to hundreds of people gathering at a camp site or other venue, dressed as their characters, for a weekend of immersive roleplaying. Now, you can engage in a roleplaying game without leaving your computer chair.

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Recent mass shootings have once again fueled discussion about the role of video game violence (VGV) and aggressive behavior. This is an enduring controversy, which is a real scientific controversy (not just a political one) because the research is highly complex.

Part of that complexity is that there is just one question, does VGV cause aggressive behavior – there are many subquestions, and many ways to measure outcomes. Research can focus on whether or not VGV is correlated with aggressive attitudes, aggressive behavior, or with diminished prosocial attitudes or behavior, or empathy towards the victims of violence, or normalizing aggressive or violent behavior. If there is a correlation, then research needs to tease apart what is cause and what is effect. Researchers also have to decide how to measure all of these things, and to consider demographic variables as well as duration and intensity of exposure and duration of any potential effects. Finally there is the issue of confounding factors, always an issue with psychological research – how do we establish the true lines of cause and effect.

Right now there appears to be two basic schools of thought. Anderson and colleagues champion the view that there is strong evidence for not only a correlation between VGV and aggressive behavior, experimental studies have shown that VGV causes aggressive ideation and behavior, and reduces empathy and prosocial behavior. A 2018 meta-analysis shows that these correlations are indeed strong, and exist across experimental and observational studies. These effects are greatest for males and for whites, less so for Asians, and not significant for Hispanics.

The other school is championed by Ferguson and others, who argue that these results are spurious and due to poor research designs. Specifically he argues that the effects are inflated by including measures of aggression that are too mild, and not ultimately meaningful. There is only an effect if you include things like aggressive language, but not if you restrict the definition of aggressive behavior to actual violence. Further, he argues, that confounding factors are not adequately controlled for, and when you do, the effect disappears.

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