Update: Someone has created a more genuine version of the Google Goggles project video.

So, what the current story about counting tells us is that we have to work our way into counting in order to open up a world of relationships between our numbers and how they can interact, a world called Mathematics. But mathematics is so useful, why doesn’t it line up with the way that individuals appear to naturally count or perceive quantity? Well, while we may learn a different way to count, it turns out that our more innate sense of number may be a very rational adaptation to a natural world that tends more to behave logarithmically. While the digits we count with (i.e. 1, 2, 3 on through 9) might seem uniformly distributed—that is, they would seem to all show up equally as often—there is an interesting mathematical law that should disabuse us of that “common sense” notion.

That neat mathematical law is called Benford’s Law and it dictates that if you take a collection of numbers, say the heights of the 1000 tallest buildings in the world or the Fibonacci sequence, and you count the first digits of the collection, you will find that there are more 1′s than 2′s, more 3′s than 4′s, etc. It might sound like numerology at first blush, but it can actually be used very accurately in forensic accounting to check and see if a company has cooked its books. Given Benford’s Law and how much it can describe the natural occurrence of numbers, that our numerosity sense would seem to be susceptible to logarithmic distinctions strikes me as a rational adaptation.

Crucially, none of these experiments force participants to project predictions terribly far into the future, nor are any of them “temporal” in nature. By that, I mean to say that while there is order to the stimulus, one would expect real precognition to have a component of time. Participants are guessing the next stimulus regardless of how long it takes to guess. Suppose instead that If a computer were randomly running through images on a screen, could a participant say what image would be on the screen at, say 2:00pm? Could they simply name a time and image? That’s a fairly different task than foreseeing a stimulus arriving in the order dictated by some underlying pattern. That’s a task that the brain has to accomplish all the time. Jeff Hawkins likes to use the example of the nefarious door handle mover (see his TED talk for more on prediction in the mind). You are so used to the process of opening your door to your home that you no longer consciously think about it. This lack of consciousness is in large part due to the fact that the brain possesses a wrote procedure that no longer requires regular observation. But if I were to move your doorknob an inch to the right, you would miss reaching for it. Alarms would go off and your brain would need to re-observe the situation to see what had changed about what it expected.

“Quantum healing is healing the bodymind from a quantum level. That means from a level which is not manifest at a sensory level. Our bodies ultimately are fields of information, intelligence and energy.”

I think we all have to look at men and women who make these kinds of (outrageous) claims—who offer no evidence but their own opinions and magical powers—in one of two lights. They are either so arrogant as to believe that their is no virtue in presenting evidence for their claims to fellow humans, in which case they think you are an idiot. Or they know (or suspect) that they are full of it and they are cynical enough to believe that you will listen to whatever they say, in which case they think you are an idiot.

You know what? I know you’re not an idiot.

The general (colloquial) understanding of the free speech principle in the United States is that you can say what you want so long as it doesn’t endanger others; that is to say, you cannot yell “Fire!” in a crowded theater when there isn’t a fire. So what about yelling “Fire!” on television or in email? Or instead of yelling fire, what about spreading malicious lies that inspire riot? Fox News Commentator, Glenn Beck, consistently tells lies on his “news” program. And they are just the kind of lies that would upset his viewers. The worst of it is, I don’t think Beck cares all that much about these issues or sees anything wrong with bending the truth, because his primary concern (as with most TV personalities—not just the conservative ones) is his television program’s ratings and whether he is selling well with advertisers. His a cynic and the worst kind.

I can’t help but feel that the airwaves are too powerful to be put in the hands of men and women who mean to manipulate the public for commercial gain and not use them for establishing facts and educating the public. I’m not at all adverse to a diversity of opinion. You have every right to say that the bills before congress on health care are “scary” or that you believe they represent socialism—such statements constitute opinion. But there should be a limit for the number of blatantly false statements you make on the air. We have to have licenses to own cars because they are dangerous, doctors need licenses to practice because they can do damage—shouldn’t hosts on television shows have licenses as well? The FAA certainly regulates the use of cursing and anything they deem indecent; why is falsehood ignored? And if you want to complain that licensing “news” organizations could potentially shut people out, well, there’s always the internet.

People have been complaining about the polarization of politics in the country for a while and they often cite the beginning for that in the early to late eighties. According to Matthew Dowd on ABC’s “This Week,” Justice Antonin Scalia—who now firmly represents the right side of the court—was still approved by the Senate by a vote of 98. Is it any coincidence that the consolidation of radio stations and the introduction of cable television in this country coincides with this enormous uptick in our polarization? The media has towerized and the public’s views have become polarized. There is simply less information out in the system and less room for pragmatists, who, while not ratings-grabbers, are nonetheless central to reasonable debate in our country.

On the one hand, I’m almost happy to sit on the sidelines of a debate such as this, since it could easily be one that fades away with time. Murdoch and Co. will never monetize the internet the way they intend to, and the world audience for anything is balkanizing. Even Glenn Beck, at his best, nets only 2.2 million viewers. It may seem like a lot, but in a country of 304 million people, it’s seven-tenths of a percent. And I, for one, would rather see fact-checking come from public and academic institutions like FactCheck. But can they handle all the muck that’s out there? As television’s audience numbers wane and internet site popularity grows, we’ll just have the same old problem all over again. You can just make up facts to suit your argument.

Good lord! I’m being so sarcastic at this point, I can’t even sense what my position on this is from what I just wrote. So, okay, this all really does have the taste of an alternate dimension, whether it’s happening or not. Making sense of it would be essentially impossible for me, so I’m just going to ask one basic questions, after a brief disclaimer.

Disclaimer

I really see nothing wrong with the behavior of former Senator David Vitter or “Stormy” Daniels, the adult entertainer being courted to run for the open senate position. That is to say, I have no problem with women making pornographic movies and men hiring prostitutes. It’s sex and it is ridiculous that we have decided that it’s only proper usage (usage?) is for the purpose of breeding. So, I’m not here to judge anybody’s “moral” positions vis-á-vis sex. It’s the same reason why I keep putting all these words (family values, questionable and moral) in quotes; you really do misunderstand the human psyche when you are assured that you understand a “completely correct” position on matters of morality.²

“Stormy” Daniels, as near as I can tell, is doing what she is doing because it has brought her success, notoriety and probably wealth. Do I think that she’s been kidded into believing that this is a life that will make her happy and bring meaning to her existence? Absolutely. Do I think that she has the right to peruse her own happiness in her own right? You bet. As for former Senator Vitter, the only thing that I can figure he did wrong was that he had to have lied to his wife somewhere along the way. If he didn’t, props to him for having an honest relationship. That he is a hypocrite is just not a problem for me. Our society will do better by itself when we realize that hypocrite and politician are synonymous by necessity. You will do better by a politician who is fighting for you when he or she believes in what they are fighting for, but there just aren’t that many people with integrity in our government. Many of them engage in what is convienient. Get over it. Lying is not great either, but it’s forgivable. She did see fit to forgive him, after all.

No, the irony here is that both of these individuals, on the outs with different segments of society, are on essentially the same side of an issue—that appearances are really all that matters in our culture. Fame is more important than power or wealth. Selling millions of copies of superfluous work is more important than works of care and patience. (Now a world different from what I just described actually was a Sliders episode.) The story of the porn star running for Senate and the story of the Senator’s fall from grace continue represent the blatant illusion (or mass delusion) of conformity and opinion that our media pushes on us as relevant information.³ Meanwhile, the truth, that these stories are both wildly irrelevant, goes unnoticed. There is, of course, the even greater illusion that we are not animals. If we, for a second, insisted on applying our embarrassment about our physical form to the other creatures of nature, the results would be absurd. Not really the point here, although we should try to get over it. Nakedness ain’t that big of a deal.

The Question

My question is: how much has this very common presentation of outlier-as-mainstream had an effect on our beliefs about the world? During one portion of the multiple interviews with Stormy Daniels, her own director, in a complaint about the difficulty of working with high definition video was that “not everything is as pretty as it should be [emphasis added].” I don’t think I could stress enough what a disturbing comment that should be to you. Put another way, what that comment reveals is that not only is the natural design of our world not something to be cherished, it isn’t good enough for commercialism. And what’s really funny is that one of the unsightly problems that the director notes shows up in his high definition pornos is “razor burn” which is itself an attempt to manipulate the human body into something that it is not—namely hairless.

“It’s not as pretty as it’s supposed to be.” I’m sure the maker of this remark did not realize the insidious nature of what he was saying; however, I can’t think of a more insidious comment when you apply it to the world of media at large. We have arrogantly termed our age on this Earth as the Information Age and failed, utterly, to notice that it is the Noise Age. It is the age of Bullshit and Noise and most of it is very, very pretty—of course, only because the very definition of pretty went down the drain some time ago. So, just for fun, let’s edit the Wikipedia entry on the Information Age:

“The Information Noise Age, also known commonly as the Computer Bullshit Age or Information Irrelevant Era, is an idea that the current age will be characterised by the ability of individuals to transfer information freely, and limited by the bandwidth of their brains, to have instant access to knowledge have limited access to irrelevant garbage that would have previously have been difficult or impossible to find will not assist them with life at all.”

His death (several months ago) raised many frightening questions in me that luckily I was able to pretty much completely ignore. This re-surfacing of his death, though, in all the detail that D. T. Max was able to collect, raised all those terrifying questions again and just as I was about to put them to bed, I ran into a talk by Elizabeth Gilbert at TED. I had heard of the title of her most recent book, “Eat, Pray, Love” somewhere in the ether. It is one of those works that is past its tipping point and is becoming impossible to avoid—not that I would. In fact, after seeing such a genuine sincerity and concern in her talk, I will very likely be counted among her future readers.

In brief: somewhere along the way, as the mass of mostly since silenced humans marched along, we made a dramatic shift in the way that we viewed artists. We began to endow them with the power to create their artwork. Now hear me out, because this idea is so grounded in our current belief structure that the only striking thing about it is its sheer obviousness. And it is in fact hard to imagine that it was any other way, but, in fact, as Gilbert brilliantly observes, it used to be muses and geniuses at work. The artists wasn’t really responsible for truly great works of art—he or she had been touched by divinity. To use Gilbert’s words, “the artist showed up to work.” And she thinks that there was a benefit to this outlook: it acted as a psychological barrier for the artist, to some extent protecting them from the enormous pressures that can mount when one begins to muse (ha!) on the potential impact of a work of art.¹ Gilbert and Wallace both expressed enormous doubts about their ability to do anything worthwhile in the face of their own so-called “genius.”

I have to make an aside here before I continue with Gilbert’s own concern about her point of view. That aside is that I worry that we have to be careful about exaggerating the coincidence of artists who are depressed and commit suicide with those that engage in art without those extreme tendencies. 11% of the population of the United States committed suicide in 2005. That’s more than 1 in 10 people and frankly a larger ratio than the ratio of creative people that I know (something closer to 1 in 100). Maybe artists tend to be melancholy. I get that. But maybe more people are artistic and don’t know it—which in my mind is an equally tragic problem.

At any rate, Gilbert, during her talk, had an obvious concern about her own point of view: it’s magical. It’s a little bit like Daniel Dennett’s Intentional Stance—useful as an instrument but careful study of it reveals that it resembles nothing like the truth.² Now there are philosophical problems with Dennett’s Intentional Stance and there are psychological problems with believing that there are elves in your apartment that are helping you write. There just are not spirits informing this essay. Sorry but there aren’t. But this presents a larger problem here then. Even if there aren’t spirits imbibing the work of an artist, why would we necessarily still hold the artist entirely responsible?

I’ve been thinking a lot—a lot—about a different formulation of the idea of Karma. The typical notion of Karma (at least in the West) is something along the lines of the ways that it’s portrayed in the popular TV show “My Name is Earl,” namely that Karma is a kind of moral system: that the good that you put out into the world will be revisited on you and so will the bad stuff you do. I think this is a tragic oversimplification of a much more subtle idea. Luckily I’m not out of pop-culture references yet and we can instead look to “The Matrix: Revolutions” to gain some clarity.³ In the third part of the Matrix, Neo is confronted by a computer program that talks about it’s Karma—what it was made to do. It is important to accept what you were made to do. And on a grander scale, it is important for each of us to examine what forces have made us into who we are, forces that we had no control over. You did not choose your parents, the town you grew up in, to a lesser extent the friends you had, the toys you played with, the things that you accomplished that you were scolded or rewarded for.⁴ What waltzes in to your life, what events transpire are only fractionally under your control and it is very often the things that we simply did not see coming that have enormous impacts on us.

It’s not hard to conceive of a work of art as an aspect of this brand of Karma, the occurrence of a transcendent thought that has a lot to do with happenstance and being in the right place at the right time—or of the right view in the right mindset. The world is a rational and describable system. But it is also a maddeningly complex, contorted and chaotic system when you are in the middle of it. That a work of poetry or a song should arrive on your mental doorstep one day isn’t something you should entirely take credit for. I, for one, have often thought of some of my own ideas as really annoying—nuisances to be written down so I could move on to something more satisfying. Of course, as an artist you never really know which ideas are the good ones, so you should treat them all with the same respect you would treat a house guest (even though you might bad mouth it behind its back).

Elizabeth Gilbert, in her talk (that second link is a hint, folks) spoke of a poet that she’d interviewed, named Ruth Stone. Ruth described how a poem would come to her in the fashion of a storm in the distance. She could feel it coming and she would run for her house just in order to get a piece of paper to get it down. When I heard that, I was reminded of “The Illusion of Conscious Will” by Daniel Wegner which cites some interesting (though debatable) experiments that show that the neurological basis for decisions in the brain may begin before we are consciously aware of them. You can actually think of it as a storm of activity that begins in the brain and results in you thinking, “Oh, I’ve got an idea!” It’s a bit of a loopy debate as to who started what, but that’s beside the point for the moment. It’s also a hard line to take and it invites all kinds of what will surely be rabid debate about free will and the like, but don’t take the hard line then.

You are (and this much is undeniable in the face of the evidence) a system of systems. Some of them do what you want. Some of them don’t. One thing is for sure: your ideas do not arrive in your mind from out of an ether. They arise, rather, from brain matter on “up,” from associations, from memories, from experience, and from novel combinations and plays on those things—from imagination. But questioning how much control you have over your imagination is a useful psychological tool that doesn’t have to involve elves or spirits. It is the barrier, the buffer, that I think Gilbert is looking for that can keep things like guilt and disappointment at bay, since “you” (whatever that is at this point in the conversation) can’t be entirely to blame for whatever it was that you came up with. This is, now that I think about it, one very important reason why the freedom of expression should almost never be deterred (cries of fire in movie theaters not withstanding, quid pro quo, etc. etc.)

What Gilbert is looking for is noble. She is asking that individuals consider that their responsibility is and should be bounded (within the art of expression, at least). Show up to work. That aspect of creativity can simply never be emphasized enough. But when you look at what you’ve created, remember that you are a fleeting glimpse, a system in motion—that what you created yesterday will be entirely different if you do it again tomorrow from scratch. Know that you have some control but not total control. Too many artists get God complexes, frankly, and this is the dark side of thinking that you do have total control—a dark side that will inevitably lead to disappointment. To borrow a metaphor from Timothy van Gelder, you are a governor, a system dynamically coupled to your own experience. When it is your creation at stake, remember that in that moment, you are your Karma.

Appropriate listening: “Fix You” by Coldplay, “Winter” by Joshua Radin, and “Parallel or Together” by Ted Leo and the Pharmacists.

This kind of experiment shows just how susceptible perception can be to top-down prediction in the brain and there are analogous effects on vision. I find that shows like Ghost Hunters and their audiences be getting fooled by just this kind of effect. Not to deny them their evidence—they have no doubt collected evidence—the question remains, how much can we trust ourselves to interpret the evidence perceptually? Objective measurement in these scenarios is crucial. The show isn’t called “Thermal Anomaly Hunters,” is it? So, I think its safe to say that the evidence is being examined with some bias. To the credit of the ghost hunters, I’ve never seen them state that they have caught a ghost or spirit on tape or with thermal imaging, only that they have observed something very strange, which is true. The question remains, what have they captured and how much of the picture are our own brains filling in for us?