Free Will #5 – The “Decision Neuron”

          In my previous entry on the topic of free will, I ended by saying that free will happens at the level of the neuron.  It’s probably more correct to say that free will should be apparent at the level of the neuron.  Anyway, that statement is surely worth further consideration.

          First, let me acknowledge a statement I made that I don’t think I can prove.  I said that “there is no thinking without neurons firing.”  I make that statement because I don’t know of any alternative hypothesis and there is no other physiological candidate for thought.  Therefore, I think it is a pretty good assumption, but I would be open to other alternatives.

          Second, what I want to consider here are the implications of free will with respect to the neuron.  The implications are important to someone like me, because I believe there is more to a person than material stuff.  I believe every human has a mind/soul/spirit[1] that is the ultimate source of decision-making, moral responsibility, and probably even consciousness and imagination.  But my belief – assertion even – has very important implications when it comes to physiology and I’ve never heard anyone address the issue.  So, I’m about to dive right in.

          As I have stated before, I think that free will is real and not just a figment of our imagination.  For the purposes of discussion, I use the term “mind” to refer to that entity where decisions involving free will are made (or at least initiated).  How does that happen?  Let’s start with an example.  I know I previously used the example of moving your hand to the left or right, but, to be honest, that’s a pretty lame example.  I’m not sure that kind of “decision” even requires a will of any sort.  Let’s use a more human example:  you go to an ATM outside a bank to withdraw money.  You type in a withdrawal of $60 and you hear the machine clunking as it counts out the $20 bills and you hear a lot more clunks than there should be.  When the drawer opens there is over $200 in there!  You take the money, complete the transaction and look at your receipt.  It states plainly that you withdrew only $60.  Bank error in your favor – collect $140!  This really happened to me – it happened to me back when I was a very poor graduate student.  In fact, it happened about two months after I ran out of money at the end of my first month in Cleveland and had to live on lemonade crystals for a few days before the next paycheck.  So, what do you do with the money?  Keep it?  Give it back to the back?  Leave it in the drawer?  This is a decision of the will.  This involves your mind.  Your character.  This is uniquely human, isn’t it?  I mean, what would a cow do in this situation?[2]

          For our purposes, we are not concerned with what is right or wrong here.  What I want to do is consider how a decision is made and carried out.  Let’s boil it down to an action.  When you pull out of the ATM spot after collecting the money, you can either turn right and into a parking spot so you can go into the bank, or you can turn left and on to the street to go on to whatever is next in your day.  How do you physically make that happen?  Well, your arms move across the steering wheel in either a clockwise or counterclockwise direction.  How does that happen from a physiological standpoint?  Neurons fire in your brain to direct other neurons to fire the muscles in your arms in the correct coordinated pattern.  It is quite complex, and involves the sensations your hands and arms feel from the steering wheel.  Some of the movement is modified in your spinal cord and in your cerebellum and, for the most part, you are not really conscious of all of those details.  Most of that movement is orchestrated by motor pattern generators in the brain – neurons that store information about the millions of times you’ve made that same motion before.  You push the button for “steering wheel motor pattern turn left” and the program runs without much conscious effort on your part, unless you decide to alter the pattern midstream.

          The point is, lots of neurons fire to make that action happen.  But notice the phrase “you push the button.”  Who pushes the button?  Somewhere in the brain, a decision has to be made to initiate either the left turning or right turning motor pattern.  I do not know whether that “decision signal” resides in a single neuron or in a network of neurons, but I do know this:  ultimately the decision has to be encoded in neuronal firing because that is the only way that the signal can be communicated to the motor pattern to your brain and eventually to the muscles in your arms. 

          My assertion is that the decision as to whether to go back into the bank or drive away is made by your will.  I say further that your “will” is “free” in the sense that it is ultimately up to the unique “you”.  You are responsible for the decision.  Lots of things factor into that decision, such as how poor you are at the moment and so on, but that does not change the fact that it is a decision nonetheless.  We can assign a moral value to your decision because it is truly a decision.  It is not random and it is not inevitable.

          What it all means from a physiological standpoint is that there must be at least one neuron in your brain that is influenced by your will (your mind).  As we have established before, neurons respond to the various inputs they get in one of two ways:  they either fire an action potential or they do nothing.  Let’s say in your brain that there is one neuron whose output initiates the “left turning motor pattern” and another neuron that initiates the “right turning motor pattern”.  These two neurons are mutually inhibitory, which means that when one fires, the other is inhibited.  This keeps your arms from fighting against each other and causing you not to be able to turn either way, and so you would drive straight ahead into the curb (you could kind of see how that might happen in this case, as you struggled to make a decision).  These two neurons have many different inputs from other neurons in the brain.  But when it comes right down to it, the tendency of one neuron to fire is enhanced by your will and the tendency of the other neuron to fire is not-enhanced by your will.  The decision is encoded in the two neurons.  It has to be.

          If you could zoom down onto those two single neurons and measure the inputs to each neuron, you would find that the firing of at least one of those neurons is not directly related only to its inputs.  The same set of inputs, given over and over again to that neuron, produces different results, and those results are not random.  This can only happen if there is another input to the neuron – an input that you can’t measure.  That “other” input is the mind.  At least that’s what belief in a mind comes down to. 

          In summary, our decisions are ultimately encoded in the neuron.  So, the connection between the material (physical body) and non-material (mind) has to occur in the neuron.  That’s why I called the neuron the “center” of the universe.

          I know my assertion is hard to accept at first.  For those who subscribe to a purely material universe, you laugh and say “I’m glad I don’t have to accept that idea.”  Instead, you are happier accepting the premise that free will is a figment of our imagination.  I can’t do that – I can’t accept that the most compelling thing that I observe in myself at every moment of every day – that sense that I can decide things – is a figment of my imagination.  For those who, like me, subscribe to some concept of a “mind” or “will” or “soul” or “spirit”…you probably haven’t thought much about the practical implications at the physiological level, so you’re probably saying “hmmm – that seems a bit crazy.”

          I will stop here for the moment, but I want to make two final statements that will be the topics of future entries.  First, note that in the scenario I’ve put forth, the mind is not the only thing that influences a particular neuron – it’s just one of many influences.  As a result, most of what we do – even our “decisions” – don’t require the will or are hardly influenced by the will.  Things we have done in the past, our environment, etc. etc. all have strong influences on neurons because these things are all stored or sensed by other neurons.  If anything, the will is a “weak force”.  This has a lot of implications when we observe human behavior.  Second, it would seem that my hypothesis should be testable since we have the technology to record signals from single neurons.  In the future I’ll talk about why such a test would be really really really difficult to do, if not impossible.

          OK – you can return to your originally scheduled thoughts!  Let those neurons fire away!

          P.S.  Oh – to complete the story – yes, I did take the money back to the bank.  The teller looked at me like I was an alien!

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[1] For now, I am lumping these terms together to represent one concept.  Specifically, they represent the concept that there is something non-material that is part of every human being.  It’s easier, for the moment, to just use the term “mind”, but I’m sure I will have to come back to this topic at some later date.

[2] Well, I know for a fact that cows can’t count, so they would have no clue they got extra money.

My Favorite Quotes - Entry #3

 “If we submit everything to reason, our religion will have no mysterious and supernatural element. If we offend the principles of reason, our religion will be absurd and ridiculous.”

Blaise Pascal, Pensées, 1669

          I thought I would pick a quote from the book I just recommended – Pascal’s Pensées.  Blaise Pascal lived in the 17^th century (1623 – 1662) and was a French mathematician, physicist, inventor, writer and philosopher.  The quote above is one of many from his book that I could have picked, and I’m sure there will be more from this book in the future.

          I’ve had friends who would say “make sure you don’t check your brains at the door” when you enter a church.  They were making the point that you should use your brain when it comes to your beliefs.  They didn’t want to be swayed by some fast-talking or manipulative preacher.  I agree with them and I’ve always felt that it was important to keep your mind and reasoning abilities as a Christian.  I never wanted to be tricked or hood-winked into believing something that wasn’t true.  When someone sends me a story on the internet, I immediately check it on Snopes.  Then I try to check up on Snopes to see if they can be trusted.  Then, if it passes all of those tests, I put it in the bin marked “probably not true” – that’s the best I’ll give it.  So I agree:  to have faith doesn’t mean that you dump out your brains.  Believe only what is reasonable. 

          But the great thing about Pascal’s statement is the recognition that there are two sides to this issue.  I believe that Christianity is reasonable, but that does not mean that “reason” is the whole sum of my beliefs.  If your beliefs are against reason, then they are “absurd and ridiculous” as Pascal states.  But the balance to this is that there are some aspects of faith that go beyond reason.  They are supernatural.  If absolutely everything you believe is totally explained by reason, then what does God do?  Why do you even need God in that case?[1]

          You can’t prove Christianity through reason alone.  The best you can hope to do is show that it is reasonable.   I do believe you can show that it is reasonable.  However, having done that, it doesn’t get you to the true meaning of Christianity.  You have to go beyond where reason alone can take you.  Don’t give up on reason.  Follow it as far as you can.  But just don’t stop there.  [By the way, if you want to see where I go with that, check out the #1 Crazy Thing Christians Believe.]

Miracles fit perfectly into this kind of thinking.  A miracle is not “reasonable”, necessarily, but it is also not unreasonable.  I think Paul shows an excellent combination of reason and miracle when he says that Christ’s resurrection is the central point of Christian faith, and if Christ has not been raised from the dead, then faith in Christ is “in vain” (I Cor 15).  There is a logical aspect to this belief.  The historical aspects of Christ’s resurrection can be subjected to reason.  The centrality of Christ’s resurrection to Christianity can be subjected to reason.  But the resurrection itself is a miracle.  It is beyond reason.  You can’t sit in the corner of a room and reason your way to the resurrection.  It has to be revealed to you.

Don’t believe anything that offends reason.  That’s not smart.  But don’t confine your beliefs to reason alone.  That is dry and boring.  There’s more to life than that.  Not everything can be explained by science.  Music and art are not arrived at through reason alone.  There is a beauty to nature that is surely beyond reason.  Human emotions are surely real, and just as surely they are not always based on reason!  Allow yourself the opportunity to wonder and marvel.

I know that many will say “you don’t have to bring in the supernatural to experience wonder and awe at nature.”  That is true, and there are plenty of examples to support that.  All I am suggesting is that we not require of the supernatural something that we do not require of the natural:  that it must all bow to reason, and reason alone.  If the supernatural is there, do not miss the opportunity to experience it because you artificially confined it to a box that it can never fit in. 

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[1] Some of course will say “exactly – why do you need God?”  But this particular quote from Pascal is written to those who already have a belief in God.  There will be more to come from Pascal for those who have already put belief aside.

Book Reviews and Recommendations - Entry #2

          You should read Pensées by Blaise Pascal.

          Yes, I am recommending a book written in the 1600s.  A book that isn’t even finished and wasn’t even completely assembled by its author.  A book that has never been on a bestseller list anywhere.  But if you have any interest in the discussion of science and belief, you should read this book.

          If you were like me, you might probably say that the name Pascal sounds vaguely familiar, but that is about all you could say about him.  Actually, for me, the name Pascal only meant one thing:  the Pascal programming language.  I spent a couple of years working primarily as a programmer during my PhD studies, and I programmed entirely in Pascal during that time.  It is still my favorite language by far – certainly better than BASIC or FORTRAN and, in my opinion, easier than C.  But my programming days are distant in my past and the only thing I remember from them is the name:  Pascal.

          Some would have heard of “Pascal’s Wager.”  The line of thinking described as Pascal’s Wager has to do with the probability trade-offs regarding belief and unbelief.  I won’t describe it here – it comes from Pensées – so if you read the book, you’ll read the passage about the wager in context, which makes much more sense.  Pascal’s Wager has made it into many popular works even today, but taken out of context it is easy to argue against.  When you read it in context, you find that Pascal already dealt with all the arguments that have been lifted against it.  You’ll also find that it is not the culmination of his thinking nor his most important contribution to the discussion of belief.  He has much more to offer.

          Pascal lived in the mid-1600s and died at the age of 39.  He was a French mathematician and philosopher.  Pascal might be more famous than Descartes, in my opinion, if only Pascal had lived longer (and if he would have been able to come up with some easily memorable phrase!).  Also, Pascal as a person and as a thinker can’t quite be categorized into a neat compartment.  Therefore, at some point in the book, just about everyone will come across something that they don’t agree with.  The scientists will say he is too religious.  The philosophers will say he is too much of a scientist and too practical.  The Catholics will say he is too Protestant.  The Protestants will say he is too Catholic.  Don’t get hung up on those things – just read it for its overall impact.

          Pascal was intending to write a book and had collected notes and ideas, but he had poor health and died before he could finish it.  No one really knows exactly how he intended to have it organized, and some of the sections are just bits of statements and unfinished thoughts.  But as such, it makes it kind of like a treasure hunt.  But you never have to read very far before you find another gem.

          One of the things you’ll find as you read this book is that “there is nothing new under the sun.”  The first time I read Pensées, I was amazed at how many contemporary topics were discussed by Pascal, writing almost 400 years ago.  Some of the sections of the book are so relevant that they could have been written yesterday, and, in my opinion, provide more insight on some topics than anything that is being written now!

          At the very least, reading Pensées should cure you of your “chronological snobbery.”  If you don’t know what that is, you’ll have to wait until you read one of my other upcoming book recommendations (hint:  from CS Lewis).  

Finally, Pensées is a book that is freely available – you can get it here:

http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/18269

or here:

http://www.ccel.org/ccel/pascal/pensees.pdf

or you can even get an audio version and listen to it in your car:

https://librivox.org/pensees_by_blaise_pascal/

So you have no excuse not to read it! 

Free Will #4 – The real “God” particle

          My knowledge of quantum physics is pretty weak.  All my training is in biomedical engineering, not physics.  When I learned about electrons, it was to use them, not understand them!  But in my old age I’ve tried to learn a bit more about that area of physics.  I’ve listened to courses on quantum mechanics and read some books.  Well, it’s not working!  All I figured out is that physicists get to come up with some pretty strange names:  quarks…gluons…charms.…those nerds!  That would not happen in medicine.  In medicine, everything is named in Latin and even common items are renamed with some obtuse word so that no one understands it.  But, anyway, even the popular press, in an attempt to understand quantum physics, picked up on the Higgs Boson and called it the “God particle” – although that latter name is certainly not something a physicist would come up with.

          Well, this morning I want to suggest that the real “God particle” is not the Higgs Boson; it is……the neuron.  Of course the neuron is not a particle, it’s a cell.  But I think it is the center of the material universe.  I’d like to make the argument, at least, that everything smaller builds up to the neuron, and everything larger breaks down to the neuron.  How’s that for a thesis?  Well…give me a chance to explain and then you can throw your darts!

          I mentioned the neuron in one of my first entries, because it is such a fascinating cell.  It is a living thing that transmits communication signals throughout the body.  Neurons talk to other neurons, who talk to other neurons, etc. through a complicated network.  If you want to do anything, you can’t do it unless a neuron – or more correctly a whole set of neurons – fire.  By “fire” we mean that the neuron generates an “action potential”, which is the electrical wave that is transmitted along the neuron, encoding information.  A very interesting and important principle of neuron firing is that it is “all or none.”  This means that the neuron can have only two states.  It is either quiet (not transmitting signals), or it is firing an action potential.  There is no such thing as a “half” action potential.  If you exert a more intense effort, it isn’t because the action potential in each neuron is bigger.  Intensity occurs when neurons fire more rapidly (more action potentials) or when more neurons fire, or both.  This “all or none” principle regarding the action potential is very important to my basic thesis about the centrality of the neuron.

          It is fundamental physiology that every movement you make results directly from neurons firing.  Muscles contract because an action potential travels down the neuron to the neuromuscular junction to the muscle fibers, causing them to contract.  When you make a movement, it can all be traced to the firing of specific neurons.  Cause and effect.  The same is true with sensations – neurons fire as a result of some sensory input, and the signal is transmitted to the brain, where more neurons fire and make it into your conscious perception.  If I could block the action potentials in all the neurons in your hand, you won’t feel anything when you touch a hot stove.  If I block all the action potentials to the muscles in your body, you won’t be able to move.  That is very basic neurophysiology.

          OK, simple enough.  Let me stop there for a moment and consider the central role the neuron plays in movement and sensation.  It comes down to the action potential, and the fact that it is “all or none.”  First let me use a sports analogy.  At the end of most games, you either win or lose.  A “1” is placed in the win column or a “1” is placed in the loss column.  Ultimately, there is usually a championship game, and the winner of that game is the champion.  That individual or team is 100% “the champion” and everyone else is 0% “the champion.”  As far as the status of “champion” goes, nothing else with respect to the details of the championship game or any other games matters.  There were lots of things that would have happened during a season.  If we’re talking about baseball, then every game would have had a few hundred pitches.  There would be clutch hits and great catches and a myriad of other plays in between, but in the end, if you ask “were you the champion?”, the answer is either yes or no.  [I live in Cleveland – so the answer is no.]

          How does that apply to the neuron?  I want to make the point that lots of things go on “in the background” that result in a neuron firing an action potential.  Molecules interact with other molecules.  Proteins unfold and fold up again.  Ions bounce around in a seemingly random path, occasionally travelling in and out of the cell.  Electrons move from one place to another.  And if you dig deeper, I guess you will find quarks doing their things and maybe strings playing tunes and maybe even “uncertainty principles” playing dice…and on and on.  My point is this:  everything from the molecule on down culminates in either one of two states for the neuron:  either an action potential fires (“1”) or it does not (“0”).  If an action potential fires, it travels down the axon to the next neuron, and that next neuron has no idea whether the first neuron experienced the movement of 1 electron or a billion electrons in order to make it fire.  All the next neuron knows is either “1” or “0”. 

          One more step back.  If every action in the universe is the result of previous actions, one thing people muse about is this:  if I knew the state of every atom in the universe, could I predict what would happen next?  Well, with respect to the movement of every living thing that has a nervous system, I don’t need to know anything about molecules.  If you tell me the firing status of every neuron, I can predict the movement (ok, yes, technically I can only predict muscle contraction – actual movement depends on additional factors).  That’s why I say everything sums up to the neuron.  And going from the top down, I can break a movement down into the individual muscle contractions, and then to the individual muscle fibers, and ultimately to the neurons firing.  So, therefore, I say that the firing of the neuron is the “center of the universe” when it comes to movements.

          Next I’m going to make a leap in logic that I will probably need to come back to at some point.  The leap is this:  consciousness, thinking, deciding, etc. share the same “neuron is central” property that movement does.  When we are awake and aware, we experience ourselves as ourselves.  We can think and decide.  We can daydream.  If those things are real, then they somehow represent the firing of neurons in the brain.  As I say elsewhere:  if a neuron doesn’t fire, does it happen?  There is no thinking without neurons firing.  There is no consciousness without neurons firing.  When all your neurons stop firing, you are dead.

          In summary, every sensation, every movement, every thought, every decision…boils down to the firing of the neuron.  And, with respect to all the things that make us uniquely human, those things are based on neurons firing and it is not necessary to know what goes on “below” that. 

          I told all that to tell you this:  if my assertion is true; and if there is such a thing as free will, then free will happens at the level of the neuron.

          And with that, I will leave you to your own thoughts - let those neurons fire away!

Free Will #3 Turing Test with Numbers - Part II

“Turing Test with Numbers – Part II”

Note: You should read Free Will #2 before you read this!

          In my previous entry, I proposed the following test to illustrate something uniquely human that computers cannot do (and I suggest, will never be able to do).  I wondered if it would be possible to create a series of numbers – digits – that are uniquely human?  I came up with a series that I thought might fit the bill.  I listed six series of digits, twenty digits each series, and one of the six series I claim is uniquely human.  Could you figure it out?

Here are the number series:

A.  34123034323639550691

B.  12345678901234567890

C.  98832863158718824883

D.  14916253649648110012

E.  71828182845904523536

F.  04656464621583251630

          What’s the answer?  Well, first let’s eliminate the two easy ones:

B – That just the digits 0-9 in order, starting with 1.  If you struggled with that one, then you really are human!!

          Before I go on to the rest, did you try “googling” these number series?  I’m assuming that most advanced computers would do just that.  The amount of information you might gain is astounding and, at least to some extent, quite decipherable by a computer with an intelligently (i.e. by a human!) programmed algorithm.  Well, if you did google these, you’d find the following (at least this is what I found…of course if this blog gets indexed, then when you search, you might find this blog and be able to go directly to the answer.  This is a major problem that I discuss later in this entry.):

A.  No match found for this number.

B.  Lots of hits.  Not sure that this would be helpful to a computer or a human.  But again, this one was really obvious.  If you can’t pick out this pattern, what pattern can you pick out?  Again, the inability to identify this one would certainly be uniquely human.

C.  Google identified this as a possible Fedex package tracking number.  It is not.  Looks like no real matches were found.

D.  I found one matching page when I searched this.  That’s hard to do.  I remember there used to be a game where you tried to come up with a term that only matched on a single page.  The problem is that as soon as you post it, it is no longer on just one page!  Anyway, if you could read Japanese…or was it Chinese (?) … it might have helped you.  But again, this should have been a pretty simple series (like B).

E.  Of all the entries, googling this one should have provided some help in figuring it out.  This is one you either know immediately because you are a real math geek, or you would have a really hard time figuring it out without the assistance of google (or a friendly math geek to ask).

F.  No entries found.

          OK, what do we learn?

D.  Maybe not quite as easy as B, but this one would have been simple for any computer, and I think if you thought about it for a bit, you would get it.  1, 4, 9, 16, 25…it’s just the square of the digits starting with 1.  And, since these series only have 20 digits, the square of 11 is truncated in this series.  I wonder if that would throw off a computer?  Probably not.

E.  Well, maybe google helped you out here.  Or maybe you took the hint from the body of my previous entry when I talked about pi.  Now do you know it?  These are the first twenty decimal digits of the value of “e”.  If you don’t know what e is, don’t worry about it – you probably learned about it in algebra, but you have long forgotten.  Computers don’t forget.  I think this would be easy for a computer to identify.  If you are a real math geek, and decided that memorizing the digits of pi was too blasé, then you probably memorized this sometime in your past and you picked it up faster than even the computer could!  As for me, my memory never allowed me to memorize pi or e.  I would never have figured it out without google (except, of course, that I made up the test so I already knew).

          This leaves A, C, and F.  Google wasn’t much help for any of these, except that C happens to start with digits that must look like a FedEx number.  Are FedEx numbers random?  They must not be.

          I told you that two of the series are random, so you know that two of A, C, and F are random and the remaining one must be the “uniquely human” series.  Oddly, I will tell you that one of the random number sequences was taken directly from a random number table published on some website, so I was expecting that google would find it, but when I searched for those 20 digits, it did not come up.  There are probably more sophisticated searches that would find it.  For the other random number series, I just used a random number generator and came up with one number at a time and wrote it down, so that particular series would not necessarily be anywhere on the internet.  I couldn’t find it.  But you kind of wonder – at some point in the future, will every random series of 20 digits be on the internet and identified as being random?  Maybe – it’s feasible.

          You might be tempted to say that since C might be a FedEx package number, that would qualify as the “uniquely human” number.  Well, FedEx has nothing to do with it being right, but you would have a lucky guess.  Being lucky might also be uniquely human!  But, for the record, A and F are random number sequences, and unless I accidentally hit the one-in-whatever-astronomical-odds lottery, it has no pattern that could be identified by either man or computer.  They are both random. 

          So, that leaves C:  98832863158718824883

          C has a human pattern that requires creative thinking to understand.  Actually, for some of you, if I just tell you to “think outside the box”, you might get it rather quickly.  Can a computer think creatively?  If, by “creative thinking”, we mean the idea of coming up with a thought that has never been thought before, or a linkage that has never been made before, then I suggest that computers can’t do that.  I think computers could be programmed to “think outside the box”, as long as some intelligent person programs them to do so, but in that case computers would just be thinking in some bigger box.  I think computers cannot think truly creatively, and I also think that humans can.  Many of you would disagree with me on both counts!

          OK, I guess I have to tell you what C is.  I hate to do it, because doing so will completely void this version of the “Turing Number Test”.  That’s the problem – once the answer is known, then it is no longer uniquely human because of two things:  1) it’s now searchable on google; and 2) it’s now known by any number of programmers, who can easily modify any computer to “think” this way and recognize what C is.

          C is a sentence.  It is the sentence “Neat test of a sweet feat” with no punctuation.  It just uses the first letter of each digit when it is spelled out.  So, the digit “9”, spelled “nine”, is equivalent to the letter “n”.  I then took the further step of saying that if the pronunciation of a letter made the sound of a different letter, then that digit could also stand for the pronounced letter.  Thus, the digit “8” can be “e” (for “eight”) or it can be “a” because it is pronounced starting with the “a” sound (in English).  The digit “1” can therefore be “o” or “w”.  Anyway, if you work all that out, picking the letter associated with each digit as it makes sense, you get “NEATTESTOFASWEETFEAT”.  Actually, the last word is ambiguous, because it could also be “feet”.  But, in the context of the sentence and the test, would that makes sense???  Not to a human, I wouldn’t think.

          So, there you have it.  I don’t think a computer, told to evaluate a number sequence for a pattern (or lack of pattern in the case of a random number) would be able to identify series C as anything but random, whereas a human being can.  Would all humans figure this one out?  No.  And that doesn’t make them non-human.  My proposition is this:  if the entity you are communicating with can identify sequence C as a sentence, then the entity you are dealing with is human.  I would probably further propose that if the entity you are communicating with can’t identify sequence B as a pattern, then the entity you are communicating with is human.  You can’t use this test to confirm a computer, but you can’t use it to deny a computer.  I believe any human could pretend to be a computer, so just stating that C is a random number sequence doesn’t mean you are a computer.  But the point of the Turing Test concept is for a computer to fool a human into thinking it is human.  If a computer figured it out, then that would destroy my proposition, or at least destroy my version of this test.

          This type of thinking is largely what the MENSA testing evaluates.  Creativity.  How is it possible for computers to be truly creative?  I know that a computer could generate art or music and could, in a sense, generate a piece of art that would be unique in the sense that there would be no existing artwork exactly like it.  The same could be said of a two-year old human.  But a computer will generate art that is within a framework of rules and concepts, all introduced by a human.  Can a computer think up a new concept that has never been thought of before?  Can a computer, given knowledge of number sequences, decide to consider the starting letter and sound of the written digits to generate a puzzle?  Well, yes, of course if the human who programmed it gives it that ability.  Or gives it the ability to learn and find examples where humans have done just that sort of thing.  But I don’t consider that the same as original creativity.

You might argue that the first human who thought of the idea of using the first letters of the words of the digits to create a puzzle just based it on some of their past experience, and thus would not be that different from a computer, who would have learned it from the past experience of other humans.  But doesn’t that line of thinking assume then that the idea has always been around since the beginning of time?  Where?  Encoded in what or who?  I guess you would argue that it is an extension of previous things – so the idea itself has not always existed, but it was an extension of previous concepts (such as “thinking out of the box”) that previously existed – those things themselves being extensions of previous thoughts – back to some simple and obvious basic thought that started it all.  To me, that doesn’t solve the problem, it just makes it seem simpler – but if you start with no ideas, then the first idea, no matter how simple, is a huge step change in thinking.  To come up with the first “idea” is true creativity! 

All I can tell you is that somewhere back in history, a human being was the first to think “I could scratch a picture into a rock face, and thus record my experiences for the future.”  That is the ultimate in creativity, in my opinion.  The idea of writing, having never had any concept of writing before, is just mind-boggling.  And, to give you a taste of where I intend to go with this line of thinking:  I consider human creativity to be an “uncaused cause”, which makes them a true act of original creation!  But that is a discussion for the future.

Free Will #2

“Turing Test with Numbers”

          I’ve been working on some new entries related to the issue of free will, and it is really hard to know where to start.  There are so many inter-related issues and so many terms that are difficult to define and rather nebulous.  Yet, it is a ubiquitous human experience.  Even little kids can understand free will in the sense that they experience it themselves.  But, having experienced free will every moment of every day for the last 20,000+ days consecutively, I still have a hard time coming up with any kind of good definition, much less an explanation!

          Well, I thought I’d do something a bit fun with this entry, partly just to help me be able to dive in while I figure out how to structure this discussion.  I’ve always been intrigued with the “Turing Test” – the idea that Alan Turing put forth about machine intelligence.  Could a machine fool a human into thinking that the machine was human?  This issue is not directly in line with free will, but it seems to me that it might be a starting point for consideration.  I believe it is closely related to the issue of free will.

          Of course, first I must make a little editorial comment.  I kind of feel that humans are frequently not that hard to fool!  Machines could certainly fool humans in certain situations.  One of the things that humans tend to do is ascribe human traits to lots of things that really don’t have them.  It’s called anthropomorphism.  I know people who name their cars.  What kind of a thing is that?  Personally, I have no deep feelings for any car I’ve ever owned.  Of course the most obvious example of this is how we interact with our pets.  I think most pet owners ascribe pretty significant and extensive human traits to their pets.  At some point in these entries, I’ll have to address the differences between humans and all other animals, including, yes, even dogs!  But not now.

          Actually, I thought it would be interesting to venture into the middle of the computer’s world (yes – an anthropomorphism).  Specifically, numbers.  Could we create a series of numbers – digits – that are uniquely human?  Just a thought experiment I was trying out.  It’s not very easy, but I’d like to try it out on you.

          OK, my first line of thinking was to consider that computers could generate two types of number sequences.  One is some kind of a pattern calculated by some equation, either simple or complex.  The other would be a random number sequence.  Actually, generating a random number sequence turns out to be more complicated than it might first seem, probably because it seems so simple for us humans to do it[1].  But anyway, I thought “all I need to do now is come up with a sequence of numbers that is neither a pattern related to an equation or a random series, and then I will have something that is uniquely human.”  That seemed pretty cool.  But then I thought about the digits of pi – never repeating, but certainly not random.  I know it can be calculated, so it kind of fits into the first category.  But, anyway, I realized that a uniquely human series of digits would be pretty hard to come by. 

          Well, I had an idea that I’d like to try out.  I think I figured out a series of digits that fits the criteria of uniquely human.  I’m going to show you six series of digits, twenty digits each, and one of the six series I claim is uniquely human.  Can you figure out which one it is?

Turing Test Number Series – each containing 20 digits 0-9

One way to think of this is to ask “can you figure out digit #20 (in red) based on the first 19 digits you are given?”

A.  34123034323639550691

B.  12345678901234567890

C.  98832863158718824883

D.  14916253649648110012

E.  71828182845904523536

F.  04656464621583251630

Also, try to figure out how you would generate a circuit or a computer program to generate each of these series of numbers.

I will give the “answer” and my thoughts about it in the next entry so that you have to think about this first. 

FIRST HINT…

DON’T READ THIS IF YOU DON’T WANT A FIRST HINT!!!

It’s not a huge hint, but maybe this will help:  three of the series are patterns, two are random number sequences, and one is what I consider uniquely human.

OK – ANY GUESSES FROM YOU HUMANS (or computers) OUT THERE?

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[1] I know, I know – can humans really be random?  Can they really generate a series of random numbers?  Surely a topic for the future!

My Favorite Quotes - Entry #2

 “If I have seen further it is by standing on the shoulders of Giants.”

Isaac Newton, Feb. 5, 1676.

          The quote above is from Isaac Newton.  I think it is important to learn what you can from the past.  Actually, the more I read what has been written in the past, the more I realize how many things have already been well-thought out by people much smarter than I am.  I can’t tell you how many times I think I have come up with a new idea or a new way of thinking, only to find that someone already thought it up decades, centuries, even millennia ago!

I don’t know if it is true that “the past repeats itself”.  I think it is just that we forgot what we learned before and have to re-learn it all over again.  There is no reason for us to repeat what has been done – if we can learn about it and learn from it, then we can build on it and go further.  That is the meaning of the quote above from Isaac Newton.  If we learn from what people have done in the past, we “stand on their shoulders” and therefore we can see farther.  The only way to make significant progress is to build on the past.

          I have found this principle to be true in my own personal and professional life.  In the late 90’s, I began embarking on a new area of research that was related to, but not directly in line, with my previous research.  Therefore I had a lot of learning to do.  Before I did anything else, I spent many many months reading the literature.  I spent many hours at the Allen Library at Case Western Reserve University, up in the dark creaky stacks (it is my favorite place on campus), searching through journal articles from the 1920’s and 30’s.  I read everything I could find, and then eventually went back and began categorizing the results to try to make sense of it all.  Eventually I began to understand what people had already discovered in the past and where they had left off.  I found that a lot of what I thought was unknown had actually been explored pretty extensively about 80 years earlier.  But I was able to understand their results even better because of the many other discoveries since that time.  I could put their work in the context of what we know now.  This allowed me to build directly on what they had discovered.  As a result of that fairly straightforward literature review, a whole new research area was jump-started for me.  It was truly “building on the shoulders of giants.” 

          One of my favorite writers, CS Lewis, talks about how we have a kind of modernity snobbery.  We think that we are smarter than those clueless ignorant people back in the Dark Ages, or the ancient Greeks, or the ancient Egyptians.  We consider them to be full of superstitions and not as smart as us.  That’s snobbery on our part.  Read what they wrote.  They were geniuses!  Learn from them.  We are not smarter than they were.  In fact, we prove ourselves to be much more foolish than any other generation if we think we can move forward without building directly on what they have done!  So…learn your history!  And for those of you who are in research like I am:  read the literature – even the ancient stuff.  Dust off those old journals, crack them open, and read.  Just because you can’t find an electronic copy of the article doesn’t mean that it isn’t important!  Read read read!

My Favorite Quotes - Entry #1

“Men go forth to marvel at the heights of mountains and the huge waves of the sea, the broad flow of the rivers, the vastness of the ocean, the orbits of the stars, and yet they neglect to marvel at themselves.”

Confessions, Augustine, 398 AD

          The quote above is from Augustine, who was a very famous Christian theologian who lived 354 – 430AD in the Roman Empire.  The early part of his book “Confessions” is definitely worth reading – it tells the story of his early life.  I’m sure that will show up in a book review somewhere in the future.

The quote is about the uniqueness of human beings and how we sometimes forget how unique we really are.  I’ve always had a strong interest in the uniqueness of human beings, particularly the uniqueness of the human mind, so this statement by Augustine really stood out to me.

I love looking at huge snow-covered mountains.  I used to ride my bicycle in the mountains in Oregon and there was one particular place along the road in the Cascade mountains that was the most spectacular.  It was a winding road with big trees on either side, going uphill.  On a bicycle you were going pretty slow.  You really couldn’t see anything that was ahead except the next bend in the road, and the tops of trees.  But around one particular bend the trees and hills kind of opened up and all of a sudden you could see a huge mountain right in front of you.  As you rode slowly around the bend in the road, you just kept looking up and up.  And then, there it was, this huge mountain, snow covered, and just majestic!  It was almost like it snuck up and jumped in front of you.

I like the ocean too.  I could sit on the rocky coast in Oregon and just stare at the waves for hours.  There is just something fascinating about them.  I always tried to figure out if you could predict when the biggest waves were coming in by how they swelled up further out, but I never could.

I was never that much into astronomy, but the pictures of faraway galaxies are quite fascinating.  Just to try to imagine how huge they are.  How big is the sun really?  How big is a galaxy?

What Augustine is pointing out is that there are a lot of cool things all around us.  He is not saying that we should not be amazed by everything around us – just that we shouldn’t forget to marvel at how unique we humans are.  The sun is powerful beyond anything we can imagine.  If we got too close to it we would vaporize.  Yet, the sun doesn’t know anything.  The sun doesn’t even know it exists.  The sun can’t learn anything.  The sun can’t have plans.  The sun can’t dream up new ideas.  But we can do all of those things.  We are no match for the sun when it comes to pure power and energy, but in the end, the sun is just a big dumb rock – although a really hot rock - just like all the other big dumb rocks in the universe.  As far as we know, we are the only creatures in the universe who can think and reason and even marvel at the universe.  The universe can’t marvel back at us.  It doesn’t know anything.  We might be puny creatures compared to the vastness of the universe, but we are the most unique and, in many ways, the most powerful. 

This will be the primary theme of my blog (though I will certainly stray from my main topic).  I just think that human beings are more than just bags of chemicals.  We are not just really really really complex rocks (i.e. computers).  I believe there is more to us than that, and I think that any honest unbiased assessment of human beings will come to the same conclusion.  But that’s just my honest highly-biased opinion!  The key difference that I single out in my own observations is that we human beings can make choices about things and then carry them out.  We can get up in the morning and decide to go left or go right…or go back to bed.  The sun can’t do that.  The oceans can’t do that.  Mountains can’t do that.  They are all slaves to the laws of physics.  But we make decisions all the time.  We can create things that didn’t exist before.  For example, we can come up with an idea that has never been thought of before, or a new work of art or music.  To me, that is the real marvel in this universe that we find ourselves in.  The capacity of human beings to think, create, and make choices is something that no one has been able to adequately explain (more to come on that!).

So, go create some new idea that the universe has never heard of before – and don’t forget to marvel today at your own uniqueness! 

Top Five Crazy Things That Christians Believe - #5 to #2

Well, I’m probably about to offend almost all of my friends with this post.  I have friends who are strong fundamental Christians and I have friends who consider anything related to religion or spirituality as going back to the dark ages and only useful for Monty Python skits.  I think I’m about to offend all…but, hey, here it goes…

Let’s talk about the crazy things that Christians believe.  I’m talking about Christians who would call themselves “Evangelical” and would generally fit into the category of “Fundamentalists”.  If you like to apply stereotypes, here are some characteristics that come quickly to mind.  Christians in this category are likely to support at least some limits to the broad category of “gay rights”.  They are likely to be, at the very least, uncomfortable with the concept of evolution and, in most cases, opposed to at least some of its tenets.  They probably oppose abortion.  I could go on, but this should suffice to define the group.

I think that if the average person were to be asked “What are the five craziest things that Evangelical Christians believe?”, the list would include things like “opposition to evolution”, “rejection of science”, “overly conservative moral views”, and so on.  But to me, that really misses the whole point.  That’s like saying that the craziest thing that Extraterrestrialists[1] believe is that aliens are green and have big eyes and skinny arms.  Isn’t that completely skipping over the major issue?  The major issue in that case is this:  do aliens exist at all?  Discussing the lack of bulkiness in the arms of aliens (if they have arms!) is total trivia unless the more important discussion, regarding the existence of aliens at all, has already taken place and has reached the conclusion that they do exist.  Until that first discussion is complete, discussing those other issues is a waste of time.

The point is, what happened during in the universe prior to recorded history is way down on the list of crazy things that Christians believe.  Personally, I would not put it in the top five, and probably not even in the top twenty.  Here are my top five things (ok, I only list #2 - #5 here – I’ll put the #1 craziest belief in a separate entry):

#5 – Jesus was born of Mary, who was a virgin.  Further, when Jesus grew up he performed the 500+ miracles recorded about him in the Christian Bible, and those were real miracles in the commonly accepted use of the term “miracle” (i.e. not magical tricks or convenient coincidences).

#4 – There is life after death, and there is a judgement after death with eternal consequences.

#3 - Jesus died and rose again after three days to a real, though unique, body.  He was really dead and didn’t just “swoon”, and he was really alive afterwards, not just an apparition.

#2 - Jesus claimed to be God and really was God, and his death provides a payment for the sins of the whole world, directly impacting the events that might transpire in crazy item #4.

There are libraries full of books on the four topics I have listed.  There are specific theological words for all of these topics, but I will not bring those up now.  The point is, these issues have been debated and discussed and codified and written about for a couple millennia.  But just because they have been around for a long time doesn’t diminish their importance.  These topics are still the pertinent issues for discussion.  They are still the foundation for Christian beliefs.  Everything else grows out of these issues.  To pick at outcomes of some of these beliefs is, in my opinion, pretty much a waste of time.  If the foundational issues are false, then the ideas built on those foundational issues don’t matter and never did.  If the foundational issues are true, then the ideas built on them follow naturally and there’s usually not much discussion required.

Let me give a simple example before I move on, in hopes that it will clarify the point.  Take the first aspect of crazy belief #5 – the virgin birth of Christ.  Can we agree that a virgin birth of a human being is surely more of a complete affront to scientific biological principles than the concept that some things might have been created, not evolved?  Seriously – Christians believe that Jesus stood outside of Lazarus’ tomb and called out to him after he had been dead for about three days, and Lazarus came up alive, was unwrapped from the grave cloths, and went back to being a normal, living human being.  Now that is crazy, and that’s just one part of item #5!

The point is, if the four items I listed above are false, there’s no reason to argue further.  In fact, even the Apostle Paul, clearly a staunch Christian, admitted this and went a bit further, saying that if Jesus didn’t rise from the dead then Christians “are to be pitied” because their whole set of beliefs would be based on a big falsehood.  However, if the four items I listed above are true, then their importance to every human being swamps the discussion regarding anything else.  For example, if there really is some kind of judgement with eternal consequences after you die, then you better get ready for that quickly and not waste time discussing anything else!

Why do we argue about creation vs evolution when there are much bigger issues to tackle?  The reason is simple, but does not invalidate my point.  The reason we argue about these kinds of side issues is because we cannot come to an agreement on the four issues I outlined above.  That split has happened long ago and has only widened over time.  Those discussions have been conducted long ago, without reaching a conclusion.  But that doesn’t invalidate my point:  it is still pointless to give up discussing those fundamental issues and argue over side issues.  That doesn’t solve anything and it is essentially arguing trivia and ignoring the real foundations.  It’s like trying to build a house on thin air because you couldn’t figure out how to build a foundation. 

To my Christian brothers and sisters I say: stop getting drawn into arguments about the side issues!  Or, worse yet, starting such arguments.  It is a waste of time.  If you want to argue your beliefs, argue the beliefs that your patriarchs grappled with, such as the four listed above.  There is a good reason that the early Church Fathers wrote about these things. You can’t accept or reject Christian beliefs based on issues such as the origin of the universe or abortion or gay rights.  If you are going to accept or reject Christian beliefs, it should be on the basis of the big issues above (and maybe a few others).

In light of this, I have no interest in discussing creation vs. evolution or similar topics.  Well, at least not until the four issues above have been addressed and we have all come to a conclusion regarding the truth or falseness of these foundational issues.  And…since a few millennia of discussion hasn’t resulted in a globally accepted conclusion, I don’t anticipate getting past those anytime soon!

OK – there will obviously be many more entries on this topic…including the #1 craziest thing that Christians believe.  Any guesses?

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[1] Extraterrestrialists = those who believe in aliens among us. Yes, I made that word up, but no, I’m not proud of it.

Written Communication - Part II

Previously, I wrote about the importance of writing because, among other things, it allows us to learn from the past.  The great thing about learning from the past is that it allows you to escape from having to learn everything by experience (i.e. the hard way).  I’ve decided that, at least in my life, I prefer to maximize the number of things I learn the easy way (by listening to or reading about others)!

My thought for today is about the somewhat precarious nature of our written record in the 21^st century and beyond.  I might be off-base, but here it goes.  I wonder if our written record might get lost over time.  Specifically, I am talking about the written record of the world that increasingly exists only in an electronic form.  We are encouraged to go paperless in many things, which is great for trees, but maybe not for posterity.  I am one of the last people to adopt new technologies or new ways of doing things, but even in my own life I find that much of what I do and write only exists in an electronic form.  For example, the text in this blog only exists electronically.  Ideas encoded in electrons are hardly the most enduring method of recording history.

Let me give you an example from my own life.  When I wrote my dissertation back in 1991, I wrote it on a “word processor” – I think it was on a DEC Rainbow computer.  It was one of the first things I wrote that was not written entirely on paper and then typed up at the end.  The file for that document was stored on the hard drive of that computer and backed up on a 3.5” floppy disk.  That hard drive is loooong gone, and if I still have the floppy disk (which I doubt), I’d have a hard time finding an old floppy drive that still works so that I could read it.  But, that doesn’t really matter that much, because there are printed hardcopies that still exist of my dissertation – for example there is a copy in the basement of the Kelvin Smith library at CWRU (unless someone checked it out!).  Also, I have a printed copy as well.  But what I find happening more and more is that, even with a student’s dissertation, I am sent an electronic copy after their defense, and not a hardcopy.  I don’t know if a hardcopy exists in the library anymore of the more recent dissertations.  Certainly, it is not unreasonable to think that at some point in the future, people will never print out a copy of their dissertation – it will only exist in electronic versions.  So, I just wonder – how enduring is that?  If I don’t take the time to copy all of my past work onto my next computer and save it to the latest media, eventually it will all probably be lost.  If I store it on the internet, then who knows where it is or how durable that record is.  If Google disappears tomorrow – something I have no control over – then I’m pretty sure all the content of this blog disappears with it.  That’s probably not a great loss!  The point is not about my meaningless drivel – the point is about important documents related to knowledge and history.  For example, is it reasonable to think that there might come a time where scientific journals are never actually published in any physical form, but only published electronically?  I think that time has come already for some journals.  If the journal’s servers and backups go down, what is left of that record?

It’s probably all fine until there is some much larger disaster.  What if someone develops the equivalent of an atomic bomb, but is directed towards electronic storage and communication?  That’s surely a “humane” way to destroy a whole country.  The point is, if all of our electronic information was suddenly wiped out and permanently unavailable to us, what history would we have left?  It seems to me that the loss of knowledge could be much bigger than what was lost by the destruction of the Library of Alexandria in Egypt.  The complete loss of the electronic record is probably not a huge loss right now, in 2015, but what about 50 or 100 years from now when our reliance on electronic storage must surely be complete.  Will there even be libraries with hardcopies of books?

So, I will leave you with this thought.  Maybe someday, after the human race has been wiped out, someone will come upon earth and seek to uncover the history of man.  They will find a few bits of well-preserved hieroglyphics carved in stone, some broken bits of pottery with writing inscribed on it, maybe a chance bit of papyrus and some random stacks of old books.  But they will notice that the history of man seems to end around 2000 AD and they might wonder – what ever happened to them all?  They built all sorts of machines and buildings after that time, but they seemed to have stopped recording their own history!!

Book Reviews and Recommendations - Entry #1

I’ve always loved to read.  I remember really looking forward to first grade because I would be able to learn to read.  Even though I grew up in the 60s and 70s, my family didn’t have a television!  Instead of watching TV, I did other things, which included lots of reading.  I enjoyed the fact that when you read a story, you enter into that world for a time.  The story becomes part of your life for a while.  It’s like entering another dimension – it’s exciting.

When I was younger, I read mostly fiction.  Now I almost never read fiction – I can’t remember the last book I’ve read that wasn’t supposed to be real (I’ve been annoyingly tricked a few times, but that’s for a future entry).  Also, most of my reading is actually listening – I listen to lots of books in the car while I am driving to work or on long trips.  There’ve been a few really good books where I couldn’t wait to get back into my car to listen to the book again.  I figured I would occasionally review and recommend books here.  I’m also looking for good books to read myself, so I’d be interested in any of your recommendations.

I read pretty much any genre outside of fiction.  I am partial to science and philosophy, so I’ll frequently listen to whole courses on specific topics in that area (I’ve spent a lot of money at places like “The Great Courses”).  But I am also very interested in history and I really like to read biographies.  I do some broad reading in religion, but I generally stick to Christian apologetics if I’m going to read something in that genre.  I read at least a bit of the Bible every day, and occasionally I read some from other religious texts (yes, I know some of you would classify some or all of those in the “fictional” category – yet another topic for some future entry!).  I hardly ever read books more than once.  In fact, as far as I recall, there are only three books that I’ve read multiple times:  the Bible, the Lord of the Rings, and Pensees. 

Anyway, I thought I’d start this series of entries with a “recommendation”.  The book is “Finding Me” by Michelle Knight.  Actually, it’s hard to recommend this book – it’s more like suggesting that it is our duty to read it.  Michelle was one of the three girls who were held captive in a home in Cleveland for ten years.  I do not say that it is a story that you will enjoy.  It is sickening and shocking and impossible to imagine.  I still wonder – did it really happen? – but it did.  I actually used to drive within 500 ft of that house almost every day during the entire time those three girls were held there.  Michelle’s story makes you wonder how an individual can be so entirely evil.  But even more shocking and – to me – soul searching is the fact that her captor lived an average everyday life, interacting with society and neighbors and family as if there was nothing wrong.  He went to cookouts.  He was in a band.  He had family.  And no one ever seriously suspected him of anything except being a bit odd.  The capacity of human beings to put on a façade and hide our ugly inner selves is almost beyond belief.  That’s why I recommend this book – I feel it is our duty as human beings to understand how ugly we can be and how well we can hide it from everyone else.  So, the book is more like awful-tasting medicine – you will mostly learn dark things – but it reflects the reality of our situation.  The only positive from the story is Michelle’s resilience.

I haven’t read the recently published book written by the other two girls, but I will.  I’ll probably get it as an audio book.

So, there you go:  book recommendation #1.