Cognitive Kaleidoscope

Baloney as Delicacy

2010-01-09T23:48:00.000-08:00

It seems that sometimes false beliefs are effectively treated as luxury items. Many adults feel that they are depriving their children of childhood if they do not teach them that some fanciful story is in fact true, at least for a while. There have been several explanations proposed for this practice. One is that it teaches the children by experience that not everything that they are told is true. This tactic seems unnecessary since young children will generally readily believe anything an authority figure tells them is true, and if this is the case it would follow that the need for skepticism could be taught in a more honest and informative way by direct explanation. Another is that it is good to let children enjoy some "magic" before these notions are ripped away by cold reality, and such enjoyment is somehow valuable in itself. I believe this kind of thinking has troubling implications. We begin developing causal models of the world in infancy. Viewing the ability to hold false beliefs with little consequence as valuable seems to be a learned behavior. Perhaps this is related to sense of nostalgia in adults looking back on what they recollect as a care-free time of little responsibility (and relatively little freedom and influence). If we are tempted to indulge this kind of urge in other ways we may neglect making the effort to develop accurate judgments. If holding to falsehoods is a luxury does this not imply that the truth is burdensome? We can not assess the costs of ignorance in a state of ignorance, and only in truth can we know genuine wonder.

Where I've Been

2009-12-31T18:55:00.000-08:00

I apologize for the unannounced hiatus from new posts. It's been mainly due to lack of time because of work and school, concerns about quality, and akrasia. I'll have several posts up in the next few days, and I hope to post sporadically until May, when I graduate. From that point on my time will be more at my discretion and I hope to be updating regularly. I would like to thank my readers for their patience and I hope I've provided some food for thought. By the way, donations to SIAI are being matched until February 28. Please consider donating. I wish everyone a happy and rational 2010.

The Escalating Consequences of Local Failures and the Possibly Bright Future

2008-06-19T01:14:00.000-07:00

As scientific research advances, so has our ability to improve many aspects of the human condition. The past century has seen dramatic increases in life expectancy, food production, standards of living, and literacy rates, along with decreases in violence and per capita deaths from warfare and improvements in areas such as civil rights and technology, among many others. There is still much work to be done, but we have a rapidly expanding set of tools with which to tackle the challenges we face. Unfortunately, these tools also present new dangers. It is commonly stated that technology is neutral. The larger the potential benefits of a given technology are, the larger the corresponding risks of misuse of that technology. A consequence of this is that the dangers of relatively small scale misuses of powerful technologies, whether accidental or intentional, are magnified. Even normally effecive management strategies can be fundamentally vulnerable to certain types of black swan events. If such technologies pose existential risks, the harm done by "minor" faults can be irreparable. If we act wisely, we can continue solving problems on many fronts. There is no "story arch" to the future beyond our own choices, and it must be emphasized that it does not follow from the existance of positive historical trends that existential risks will take care of themselves.

Meta-Emotions

2008-06-01T00:57:00.000-07:00

"One death is a tragedy. A million is a statistic."
-Josef Stalin

It is often assumed that in order to be rational, a person must repress their emotions. Although our initial impulses will often lead us to unwise actions, in many situations we are actually unable to feel to a degree that is appropriate to the scale of a circumstance. Our emotions basically arise from a complex mixture of neurotransmitters in our brains, of which there are only a fixed amount available at any time. For example, the death of a loved one can cause deep and lasting pain, but a person's response to hearing of the deaths of ten thousand in a distant country is usually transitive, if they respond at all. We are physically unable to scale up our emotions to that level, to even glimpse what means for ten thousand people to lose their best friends, compared to what we would feel if we lost ours. This limitation also robs us of the ability to appreciate much of the beauty around us. The motions of the planets through the sky once mystified humanity for millenia, and now we have the explanation for this and many other phenomena at our local libraries, if not at our fingertips. Throughout history this property of our minds has been adaptive as people would simply go insane if their emotions could accurately reflect the magnitude of such events. Also, it was often beyond human power to do anything about tragedies like disease and starvation until recent times. Today, we are at the threshold of developing technologies that could alleviate so much of the suffering in the world. We have to rely on our intellects to develop these technologies quickly and safely without motivation appropriate to the scale of what's at stake from our emotions. I can not feel what the fact that 150,000 people die every day really means. It's not my fault that I can't, yet it bothers me anyway.

Exaggerated Uncertainty

2008-05-17T16:20:00.000-07:00

It is often said that science has a PR problem. Scientific knowledge can obviously benefit society in many ways. Popularizers of science attempt to provide laypersons with a basic understanding and appreciation for the power and scope of rational inquiry. Their task is an important one. A technique used to do this is to present unexpected discoveries as exciting. This leads to the tendency of popular works to focus on historical scientific revolutions, periods of development where old paradigms were dramatically superceded. The classic examples of this are Einstein's work on the theory of relativity and the development of quantum mechanics. There is a downside to this approach, I think. This causes some people to believe that large bodies of evidence can be invalidated at any time by a new discovery. In other words, the need to update scientific models is not due to verifiable progress towards truth, but because the scientific method has weak epistemilogical foundations. In recent times this problem has been worsened by the acceleration of scientific progress and the shoddy journalism of the mass media that reports on these discoveries. In reality, scientific theories are updated because of incremental refinements to the body of knowledge in light of new evidence. This process of refinement is where the power of science lies. It is a widespread misconception that Einstein demonstrated that Newton was wrong. Newtonian mechanics is just as true for the size range and velocities that he observed in the seventeenth century as it is today. Einstein extended Newton's work to sizes and velocities that the progress in mathematics, physics, and technology during the subsequent two centuries allowed him to describe. Later scientists always have an unfair advantage over earlier ones because the incremental changes that survive rigorous testing are reliable. I think it would be helpful if popular science writers emphasized the reliability of incremental refinement and the beautiful concepts it illuminates. Much of the technology we use everyday without thinking about it requires a large number of facts uncovered by science to be true in order for it to work properly. Maybe if people understand how accurate the scientific process must be to give us modern conveniences, they will be more willing to accept its less tangible conclusions and value it more highly.

Conceptual Inertia

2008-02-29T20:25:00.000-08:00

"The most merciful thing in the world, I think, is the inability of the human mind to correlate all its contents."

- "The Call of Cthulhu", H. P. Lovecraft

The capacity of our short-term memory can constrain us as we evaluate our choices and beliefs. It is known that humans can only hold about 7 items in their minds simultaneously. As our attention turns to new items, we will almost invariably forget one or more of the items we were considering previously. As for knowledge that is stored more permanently, such as facts accumulated during a four month long university course, the way in which our memory of facts learned at the beginning of the course as opposed to recently decays is similar to a first in, first out stack. This effect can encumber our ability to change our beliefs, especially when we are faced with obstacles such as confirmation bias or emotional attachment. As a way of overcoming this, I often take note of facts or viewpoints that I am surprised by or disagree with to consider at a later time when my reaction has cooled. I also try to read about many different fields. I usually can't predict when I will have opportunities to update my beliefs. Contrary to Mr. Lovecraft's opinion, I believe that the world would be a better place if we could more efficiently discern truth and change our minds.

On that note

2008-01-24T20:57:00.000-08:00

I just found this related link.

H/T: Michael Graham Richard

Words I try to live by

2008-01-24T19:14:00.000-08:00

"Do not ask permission to understand.
Do not wait for the word of authority.
Seize reason in your own hand.
With your own teeth savor the fruit."

-Robert S. Strichartz, "The Way of Analysis"

Declining Violence

2008-01-24T17:42:00.000-08:00

It is often stated that people's behavior is growing worse and worse over time. A possible implication of this claim is that the collective rottenness of the human race absolves the speaker of the responsibility to work towards positive change, but we don't hear that very often, do we? So, is it really true that Americans are becoming increasingly violent? Statistics from the Department of Justice answer with a resounding no. There has been an especially sharp decline in violent crimes since the early 1990s. The murder rate is currently approaching levels not seen since the middle of the last century.
As an example of these trends, the murder rate of New York City is currently at its lowest point since reliable records began being taken. Contributing factors for this perception of increasing violence may be availability bias, the tendency to assign a high probability to events that one remembers occurring. In the not-too-distant past, there were only a handful of major television networks broadcasting news less than two hours per day. There are currently many television channels carrying news broadcasts, and some are dedicated, 24/7 news channels. Even local news broadcasts are longer, requiring more crime reports to fill the time. This does not even take into account similar material available online. Also, during the period from the early 1940's to the early 1960's, the time that the populous baby boomer generation was being born and raised, the murder rate seems to have been slightly lower than today. For a significant portion of their adult lives, baby boomers did indeed observe increased crime, and many are not yet aware that these trends have reversed dramatically. The uptick in crime during the 1960's seems to have been a local anomaly. Steven Pinker has presented a case that violence has been in decline for thousands of years. I do not argue that we should simply congratulate ourselves and resign to the many injustices that still persist. We obviously must continue making progress. In my view, we should not regard violence in our society as a measure of how much we have degenerated, but as behavior incongruent with the kind of society we wish to be.

The Margolus-Levitin Theorem, the Beckenstein Bound, and Computronium

2007-12-28T19:32:00.000-08:00

Computronium is a proposed form of matter that is optimized for computation. The speed of the fastest possible computer can be calculated by the Margolus-Levitin theorem, which states that that rate is (E * 4) / h, where E is the amount of energy available to the system in joules (the maximum value is E = mc^2, where m is mass in kilograms and c is the speed of light, 3 *10^8 m/s) and h is Planck's constant, which is approximately 6.626 * 10^-34 J * s. The units of the result are operations per second. The maximum possible memory capacity of a computer is related to the Beckenstein bound, which is the maximum amount of information that a given region of space can contain. This equals one bit per 4 square Planck lengths (a Planck length is approximately 1.616 * 10^-35 meters. This means that one kilogram of computronium taking up a volume of one liter could perform 10^51 operations per second and store 10^31 bits. For comparison, the world's fastest computer can currently perform 10^15 operations per second and a typical large hard drive can store one terabyte (approximately 10^13 bits). Processing speeds and memory capacities are currently doubling about every 12 and 15 months, respectively. If these trends continue, the maximum possible storage density will be reached around the year 2080 and the fastest possible computing speed will be reached around 2200. The Margolus-Levitin theorem also implies that computation speed is inversly proportional to entropy. On a tangentially related note, there is an interesting post on the generally obstructive effect of disorder on intelligent processes at Tom McCabe's blog.

Happy Holidays

2007-12-25T20:54:00.000-08:00

For over a century humanity has searched the skies for signs of other intelligent civilizations. In fact, Nikola Tesla designed an early radio for specifically this purpose. That search has found nothing but a black silence spanning 13.7 billion lights years in every direction. No other known place in this inconceivably huge expanse is there creatures that we can call friends. I hope that everyone, myself included, keeps this fact in mind as we interact with others. Life and mind seem to be vanishingly scarce resources. May we be grateful for every day that we experience them.

A Summary of Social Biases

2007-12-05T13:49:00.000-08:00

Here's a non-exhaustive list of social biases and some thoughts on how they interact.

Biases related to self estimation

egocentric bias- The tendency to give ourselves more credit for positive outcomes than a neutral observer would when engaging in an activity with others.

self-serving bias- Then tendency to credit ourselves for successes and attribute failures to outside causes, or in other words, having an external locus of control. This is often combined with egocentric bias.

over-confidence bias- The tendency to over-estimate our own competence. More specifically, the Dunning-Kruger effect is when someone believes that they are making valid choices even after experiencing negative outcomes. For reasons I can't easily comprehend Dunning and Kruger won a 2000 Ig Noble for a paper they published on this topic, especially in light of the fact that winners that year included a comparative study of the tastiness of Costa Rican tad poles.

illusion of control- The tendency for individuals to believe that they can control events which are in fact beyond their control.

Group biases

Reactance- The tendency to do the opposite of what one is instructed to do by others because of the perception that they are trying to restrict one's freedom. Clever marketers have created an industry tailored to non-conformist teenagers by exploiting this bias i.e. "the rebel sell".

deformation professionnelle- the tendency to examine issues from the viewpoint of one's profession only and neglect other perspectives.

bandwagon effect- the tendency to hold beliefs simply because they are popular.

notional bias- the belief that the views of one's culture are natural law.

status quo bias- the tendency to favor certain circumstances simply because they are familiar.

system justification- defending current circumstances to the point of being detrimental to one's own interests. This can act in tandem with status quo bias and the bandwagon effect.

ingroup bias- the tendency to behave more favorably to people who are perceived to be members of one's own group.

stereotyping- the tendency to attribute traits to someone simply because they are a member of a certain group.

outgroup homogeneity bias- The belief that the members of one's own group are more varied than members of other groups. "All [insert ethnic group that the speaker is not a member of here] look alike." Stereotyping, ingroup bias, and outgroup homogeneity bias are contributing factors in racist beliefs.

Social interaction biases

halo effect- the tendency to believe that people are generally good or bad because of one observed superficial positive or negative trait. The great importance assigned to first impressions is a result of this bias.

false consensus effect- the belief that others agree with us more than they actually do.

illusion of asymetric insight- the belief that we know others better than they know us.

illusion of transparency- the tendency to over-estimate the ability of others to know us. This results in blaming mis-communications on others rather than believing that we were not clear. This is one that I definitely need to work on.

projection bias- the assumption that other's share our beliefs. This can act in tandem with the illusion of transparency and the false consensus effect.

trait ascription bias- the tendency to believe that we are more unpredictable than others.

actor-observer bias- the tendency to attribute our own actions to our situation and the actions of others to their personalities. This is a particularly nasty one in my opinion. It can cause serious distortions of our moral judgments.

It seems that a recurring theme in social interaction biases is that we tend to believe that we have a richer internal thought life than others. Keeping this error in mind can not only help us behave more rationally, but also help us to be more friendly.

Information Ex Nihilo

2007-11-16T01:39:00.000-08:00

This post is a continuation of "The Universe in Four Easy Operations." I apologize for the long delay everyone.

Qubits

Qubits are quantum mechanical analogs to classical bits discussed in the last post. Nuclear spins are often used as qubits in quantum computation. "Spin up" is conventionally represented by the symbol 0> and "spin down" is represented by 1>. These spins also correspond to waves. A wave moving counterclockwise is conventionally 0> and clockwise waves are 1>. -0> is 180 degrees out of phase from 0>.Superpositions of these waves also exist. 0> + 1> represents rotation around the axis perpendicular to the "up-down" axis. 0> - 1> is rotation around that same axis, except in the opposite direction.

The Double Slit Experiment

The double slit experiment can be performed with an electron beam, a screen with two slits that can be opened and closed, and a photographic plate to detect the impact of incoming electrons. When either of the slits are closed, the electrons behave like classical particles and pass through only the open slit. When both slits are opened an interference pattern appears on the photographic plate, as if the electrons passed through both slits at once, a wave-like behavior. When a photodetector is placed at one or both of the slits the interference pattern disappears, even when the experiment is performed with both slits open. The ability of the environment to remove the wave-like behavior of matter is known as decoherence. Decoherence localizes the position of macroscopic bodies through the many intereactions of such bodies with the environment. As a result, classical behaviour arises. The Heisenberg uncertainty principle applies to the waves-particle duality of quantum particles. The more accurately one can describe the speed of a particle the less can be known about its position, and vice versa. The same is true with the axes of nuclear spin.

Quantum Computation Operations and Entanglement

Applying a magnetic field to a nuclear spin changes the direction of the spin. The longer the field is applied to the spin, the more the direction of the spin is changed. Eventually the spin returns to its originally orientation. Applying the field for half the time it would take to return to the original orientation would displace the orientation of the spin by 180 degrees, applying the field for a quarter of the time would result in a spin 90 degrees out of phase, and so on. Qubit states are reversible in this manner, just as classical bits are reversible. Qubits can be correlated by performing controlled NOT operations just as classical bits can. However, one of the properties of quantum mechanics that would be counterintuitive from a classical perspective is that interacting qubits can create new bits of entropy. Suppose that a qubit is initially in the superposition 0> + 1>. A controlled NOT operation is performed which correlates a second qubit with the control, resulting in 00> + 11>. If the operation is reversed on either component, the qubit will be found to be in a random state. This is a disturbance of a quantum system due to measurement. If the operation is reversed on both components of the correlated superposition, the initial state of the qubit is restored. In other words, when the qubits were in the 00> + 11> superposition, they were in a known state which contained no bits of entropy. But each qubit on its own is in a random state, with one bit of entropy each. This is known as entanglement, and this is how new information is created in the universe. Seth Lloyd's book "Programming the Universe" contains a more detailed discussion of the these topics.

The Universe in Four Easy Operations

2007-11-13T20:48:00.000-08:00

In this post I would like to explain some examples of physical systems performing computation. Any possible logical expression can be formed from four basic operation: AND, OR, NOT, and COPY, a discovery due to George Boole. AND takes a string of input bits and outputs a 1 if and only if all the bits are 1s and outputs 0 otherwise. OR outputs a 0 if and only if all the input bits are 0s and outputs a 1 otherwise. NOT simply transforms the 0s in the input string to 1s and the 1s to 0s, and COPY just reproduces the input string. In principle, any possible computational process could be carried out by these four operations, though creating computer programs in this way would be very impractical.

Entropy and Energy

Entropy is a measure of the amount of energy in a system that can not do work, while free energy, or Gibbs energy, is a measure of the amount of useful energy in a system. Entropy can also be defined as the amount of information required to describe the states of atoms in a system. In other words physical systems register information. States of the system where entropy is high and free energy is low are very unorganized or random. A great deal of information is required to describe these states. States of a system where free energy is high and entropy is low are organized. Therefore less information is required to describe them. Entropy tends to increase over time (in fact, this is the physical quantity which gives directionality to the "arrow of time"). Seth Lloyd described the unorganized uncertainty of entropy as "infectious." However, the total energy and total information in a closed system is conserved. This same phenomenon can be observed with bits and logical operations. Consider a string of two bits. The value of the first bit is unknown and the value of the second bit is 0. This system has two possible states: 00 and 10. Now suppose that value of second bit is flipped to 1 if and only if the value of the first bit is 1, and is left alone otherwise. After the operation is applied, the string still has two possible values, either 00 or 11. We cannot predict which state the system will be in before the operation is applied. Although the values of both the first and second bits are now uncertain, the total number of possible system states is conserved. Thus entropy has increased while the total information contained in the system is conserved. I will discuss a quantum system registering information in my next post, "Information Ex Nihilo."

An Example of Newton's Genius

2007-11-11T19:49:00.000-08:00

It's well known the Isaac Newton was among the greatest scientists, but I never truly appreciated the magnitude of his genius until I came across this anecdote in Richards Feynman's book QED. Newton noticed the light did not completely reflect from a glass surface as he expected. The difference was very subtle, as approximately 96% of the light did reflect. He thought of possible explanations for this, and imagined that there may be holes in the glass' surface that allowed light to pass through. He soon dismissed this idea when he realized that he could polish glass and that this did not seem to change the reflection properties of the material. Polishing the glass would smooth any holes on the surface, and Newton was at a loss to explain this phenomenon. This answer would have to wait more than two centuries for the development of quantum electrodynamics. According to Occam's razor, our hypotheses should be as simple as possible while still be a sufficiently detailed as an explanation. Nature does not lend itself to our intuitions, and a small deviation from our expected results can be very profound in any situation.

Some thoughts on the Morality of Human Enhancement

2007-11-07T07:46:00.000-08:00

Following our initial inclinations unfortunately tends to be far from the best course of action in most situations. Many aspects of a wide variety of ethical systems pertain to restraining our base instincts. Indeed, this is one of the major functions of ethics in society. Attempts at human enhancement are often criticized as breaching our natural limits. Any modifications we may become able to make to our bodies and minds entail a complex set of issues, such as ensuring that any such changes are always voluntary and available to as many people as possible. However, efforts toward human enhancement carry a moral argument that is often overlooked. We generally agree that striving to become better versions of ourselves is a good thing. At least in democratic societies, we interact with each other under an implicit assumption that we are unique and valuable individuals, yet we still try to hone our talents, treat others more civilly, learn new skills etc. Would it not be morally valid for us to use our technology as an aid in becoming more the people we wish to be?

The Novelty of Non-Anthropomorphic Reasoning

2007-11-04T01:47:00.000-07:00

The first time I read a basic description of cognitive biases I laughed. Like the jokes of a good observational comic, they pointed out so many of my bad habits, and others that I didn't even know I had. I saw how a subtle change in perspective could instantly clarify some results of my decision-making that I once found baffling, and recognized the ridiculousness of many behaviors that I had always carried out thoughtlessly. On the other hand, part of the amusement I felt was from encountering a fascinating new idea. When I first began noticing the effect of these biases, it was almost as if I was thinking with a part of my mind that I had never used before. I had another similar experience when I first began considering possible artificial intelligences whose cognitive architectures are not based on our own. For example, the instinct to punch back if one is unexpectedly punched is actually a very complex and non-obvious response, however automatic it might seem. It's been said that a function of humor is to help assimilate unusual ideas or events into our minds. Perhaps laughing at yourself might help provide a gentle introduction to the serious business of resisting your own mental biases.

Hello

2007-08-20T11:11:00.000-07:00

Hi everyone. My name is Matt Duing. I'm an college student. I'll be blogging about my general interests, with a focus on science and technology and, in particular, futurism, but also anything else that might be on my mind at the time. I will try to post several times per week. I am new at this, and I intend to post on a near-daily basis once I learn the ropes. Feedback and discussion are welcome. If you believe that anything that I write is in error, please do not hesitate to point it out. I will try to produce the best content I can and I hope that this will be a learning experience for both myself and my readers. I look forword to sharing my thoughts with you all, and I hope you enjoy.