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 in part that we have to be careful about exaggerating the coincidence of artists that are also people who are depressed and commit suicide. 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 them behind your 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. You are your Karma.

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

With this reasonable comparison in mind, Barr turns toward the concept of the meme. Within the mind, the concept of competing ideas cannot be true. It is merely a mixed-metaphor brought over to psychology from Darwinian concepts of biological evolution. He says:

…The common sense notion that ideas are selected by some obscure competition between objective alternatives … finds an equal bridge to selectionist principles that are derived from biology. Thus, just as Newtonian physics and common sense physics seem to confirm each other, common sense psychology and Darwinian biology share similar metaphorical principles that explain respectively how behavioral and biological selections are made.

Barr mainly argues that ideas are selected by competition and thereby misses the definition of the meme. The key thing that Richard Dawkins was arguing when he introduced the concept of the meme was the more general concept of the replicator. At the time of his writing of The Selfish Gene [Amazon link] Dawkins was attempting to find natural, basic constructs in nature that could replicate themselves — and do little else. He pointed to genes but he also pointed to viruses, computer viruses, and prions. As an aside he argued that ideas may have some capacity to replicate themselves from individual to individual, but he was not arguing that human behavior could be described by an individual mind’s competition of ideas.

And here’s where it gets tricky. Yes, meme’s can be passed from individual to individual competitively through the use of media (language, music, speech, etc.) and although they can influence behavior, they are not the only thing that does. To understand the concept of the meme it is crucial not to confuse it with perception (such as the color blue or the feeling of cold) or even information. It is a kind of data and a kind of data based on a experiential context.

A meme exists as an extension of our ability to utilize media to communicate with one another and ourselves.[1] Without media (including “natural” media such as speech) there are no memes. Perception and information come from reality and in the desert of the real our connections are our own. It is only in the shared light of media that human consciousness begins to create, trade and disseminate memes.

I have often said that what is funny is that which is wrong. A man slipping on a banana peel. That’s not a duck it’s my brother. Did Paris Hilton just fall in to a vat of… whatever. You get the idea. The joke is the meme. The tune is the meme. The fashion is the meme. The graphic is the meme. The perceptions that come before it are not memes and no more unique to our consciouness than they are to dogs and monkeys. Flat, far, and cold are not memes. But how flat, far, and cold have to do with our ex-wives is definitely a meme.

The most important embodiment of a meme is its symbolic notation. It is not that the meme exists outside of the evironment of the individual mind but rather that the meme within the mind is formed when new connections between older memes or perceptions are created through the feedback loop that is the act of observing media. Although memes do not carry the weight of information or value, they can create value within the human mind.

To touch on Barr’s point once more, meme’s are not responible for your behavior, but they may influence it. Barr seems to place memes on a higher level than necessary. Fear is not a meme. It is an instinct, something received through a mechanism other than media (natural or nurtured). I would not posit that memes could possess information nor transmit it. I would however posit that there is a meme in the connection between sex, cold, blue and Sunday morning. And there is most certainly a meme in the ability of an author to choose the words “sultry sullen Sunday” and create within our mind (if the prerequisite experiences are available to us) a new connection between perceptions — a connection you may not have possessed or imagined.

I will finish with Barr’s statement of this:

Thus, we select not only memes, but also the abstract relationships between memes as they are moderated by our thoughts and overt behavior.

But memes are the reversal of this. They are in fact the abstract relationship itself. And sometimes it is that abstract relationship, such as love, that can very much be a driving factor in our behavior.

[1] Daniel Dennett most convincingly makes this argument in Consciousness Explained [Amazon link] when he explains that the act of writing is a kind of feedback loop in which one observes one’s own thoughts and thereby reflects on them in a manner not possible without media (in this case, the medium of language)

General Reference:
The Channel Mob

We should first consider that there exists altruism on numerous levels, in which in some cases it appears more mechanical than others. One need only point to the behavior of animals in symbiotic relationships to see that evolution can create reciprocal arrangements between organisms—even organisms of different species. Of course, opponents of the Darwinian explanation immediately object that this is not the kind of altruism that they are after and this objection will be key later on, but it is critical to note that there is no objection to evolution’s capacity to generate reciprocal arrangements. For now, we can accept their objection that merely biological exchange is not altruism and move on to a higher degree of altruism—one less objectionable to opponents of evolutionary psychology.

A key question concerning altruism in higher-order organisms is why should evolution only be allowed to develop altruism as a pure and defenseless adaptation in isolation? This is a critical premise in the argument that evolution would weed out organisms that developed an altruistic trait. In effect, the argument made is that altruistic organisms would have no defense against their own behavior. But altruism as a trait should be regarded as a phenomenon that can happen in concert with other adaptations. Consider that the adaptation of altruism, acting for the benefit of another without regard to self-interest, and the adaptation of memory, the ability to recall past experience, can interact to form a meta-adaptation, as it were. An organism capable of acting for the benefit of another while simultaneously being able to recall if that action resulted in a return of the favor in the past would have a defense against any organism acting purely in its own self-interest. Both of these adaptations working together allow for the development of strategies that dictate when and if to act altruistically.

In fact, computer simulations have shown that an ideal strategy exists referred to as Tit-for-tat. Numerous computer programs have been pitted against one another, each acting with some strategy for interaction with other programs during a trade. In every instance of a trade, both programs have something to exchange. When they make the exchange they can either act honestly and offer their “good” in exchange or they can cheat and only take without giving in return. If both programs act honestly they benefit from the resulting exchange. According to those who say that altruism would be wiped out in a competition, the cheating programs should handily win the competition. But they don’t. A program that is honest—or altruistic—during its first exchange but then conducts itself the same as its fellow program every turn onwards succeeds in gaining the benefit from cooperation while defending itself against those programs that only cheat. It acts altruistically and it remembers the outcome. No other higher function is necessary for this program to succeed against all other strategies.

Moreover, emotions, generated through chemical mechanisms created by genes, can drive organisms to engage just these kinds of strategies. When we are cheated we feel disappointed or angry and those negative emotions re-enforce a resolve not be duped again. Acting for the benefit of others grants us good positive emotional re-enforcement—feelings of satisfaction and happiness. These emotions are not necessary for the strategy to exist. Clearly the tit-for-tat program required no emotion to benefit from an altruistic-memory strategy, but then it was programmed to be altruistic in only one situation (exchange) with only two behavioral options (give or cheat). Organisms that daily encounter more complex situations, some entirely new, require a greater spectrum of behavioral options and emotional drives to continue acting altruistically with even limited success. Sharing food with each other might yield benefits for all but sharing food with bears is not nearly as good an idea. Other behavioral adaptations such as fear (especially of animals much larger than ourselves) might override our inclination to be altruistic. And evolution will not necessarily create such a simplistic behavior as a purely altruistic organism; one that is totally uninterested in ever acting on its own behalf.

to be continued…

References: Barash, D. (1979) Sociobiology: The Whisperings Within, Fontana/Collins Dennett, D. C. (1995) Darwin’s Dangerous Idea: Evolution and the Meanings of Life, Penguin Books

Technorati tags: darwin, evolutionary psychology, evolution , altruism , mind

A potential requirement for the status of meme would seem to be that it is a concept that is not innate but based on some notion of imitation. While vocabulary concerning temperature might have to be taught and the word “cold”[1] a meme in itself it is certainly clear that the concept of cold (without verbalization) is not something that needs to be taught. A better example is Impressionism because it is not a simple symbol that represents a simple concept. In fact, to understand Impressionism it is clearly important to also be able to understand art and a little bit of art history. And there are a myriad of levels on which one could understand something like Impressionism. The best description of the technique I could give (not being much of a student of art history) would be that “it’s a little bit fuzzy”. However, a deeper understanding of Impressionism could lead to descriptions of brushes, techniques and a far more elegant understanding. If Impressionism as a meme is (as it has to be) reliant on the existence of other memes, what are the basic memes necessary for understanding it?

I only intend to start this basic line of questioning in this particular entry in order to point out what is to me an interesting similarity here to information theory. If there can be considered to be a basic requirement for a meme, and hence a way of reducing complex memes, then is there a way to relate it to a basic unit of information? According to information theory we can suppose a basic unit of information to be “yes” or “no” (represented as 1 or 0 for computers or ‘on” or “off”). Information doesn’t discern between what is true and what is false, it merely provides a groundwork for an individual to make a choice. In other words, if I have something behind my back and ask you to guess what it is, you might ask “Is it bread?” Whatever answer I give you reduces the current possibilities and is therefore information, true or false. You will make a decision (in this case a guess) based on the information and uncertainty will be reduced. In some sense, then, information is empty — it is what it is and isn’t by definition tied to any concepts. Tying memes to information theory, at first glance, offers an opportunity to examine efficiency of communication. I could describe to you “a period in art history where a school of thought existed in which artists painted an impression that they received…” etc. or I could say “Impressionism”. One clearly seems more efficient and the more efficient communication is based on a more complex meme.

That potentially frames the meme as a unit of information compression. And the ones and zeros of the matter don’t at all need to be as concrete as ones and zeros, but rather those most basic perceptions handed over to the brain by our sensory organs. Within this construction one could see why it is reasonable for a blind man to possess certain complex memes that relate through senses other than sight but would find it difficult to discuss any matter of Impressionism. Even for someone who doesn’t entirely understand the complexities of Impressionism, they know that it revolves around their sight (and likely what Impressionistic works they’ve viewed).

The difference between a perception and a meme, the actual line, is still not all that clear, but one clear delineation appears to exist in that perceptions are atomic — incapable of being broken down. Memes on the other hand not only appear to be capable of being compressed but compression seems to be a natural way to track their formation. I think, upon further exploration, that the compression of memes is tantamount to their evolution. Information in this form had gradually reduced it byte-size in order to take advantage of the limited capacity of the human mind’s ability to retain information as information in the environment has increased dramatically over the course of human civilization.

[1] The word cold can be thought of as both the concept and the construct that defines it. An easier way to relate this would be to use a heiroglyph — say a blue octogon — that could just as easily represent the concept cold. Without having been taught the meaning, or inferred it through experience, the symbol is meaningless. The symbol in itself then is a representation of a concept.

And on that note, probably one of the more interesting sections in the book is the section that describes, in essence, here’s why the other guys haven’t figured it out yet. In short, the neuroscientists haven’t figured it out yet because they’re too busy looking at all the individual parts and sections and collecting data from MRIs. They can’t see the forest for the trees. The AI guys haven’t gotten it yet because they’ve all but discarded the idea of modeling anything on the brain. The brain is a kludge and we can do better. And the connectivists got stuck in the application realm of the science and realy just haven’t gotten around to tackling anything much bigger, or holistic for that matter. Mind you, Hawkins is modest throughout. He doesn’t discard anyone’s work nor claim that his way is the only way. He presents these descriptions of other fields to help clarify where we’ve been versus where we could explore.

Without ever mentioning it specifically, Hawkins is taking an emergence theory approach toward intelligence, a self-organizing system of small parts doing simple things that creates complex behavior. And without doubt, a lot of people are going to have real problems with that approach. It begs questions like “Does it eliminate our capacity for free will?” and “If intelligence is all that simple then how come we don’t see more of it?” He lightly deals with these concerns but it is clearly not the drive of the book — as well it shouldn’t be. The drive of the book is forming a hypothesis that can help us to create intelligence in forms other than the one that has naturally evolved. He doesn’t even attempt to explain the entirety of the brain, only the neocortex — that part of the human brain that has evolved beyond all other animals. He grants other animals like rats, monkeys and dolphins with kinds or levels of intelligence, but points out that ours is a unique kind of intelligence, revolving around an ability to create abstractions (something he calls invariant memories), concrete memories, and predictions.

Specifically, Hawkins calls his hypothesis the memory-prediciton framework of intelligence. His argument is that what we call intelligence arises out of our ability to remember the past and predict things in the world based on those memories. He eloquently points out that many theories of intelligence deal with the concept in terms of behavior and outcomes but that his framework would account for someone lying still, doing nothing, and yet still being intelligent. The mind is a kind of giant dynamic feedback engine that is constantly adjusting its behavior to adapt to an ever-changing world, finding patterns and consistencies and alerting itself to situations that don’t fit patterns or are different. And the best thing about this framework (in my mind) is that it accounts for the fact that humans, with all their intelligence, still make mistakes — from stumbling and catching ourselves to wandering off our usual paths and getting lost but being able to find our way back.

I won’t go into all the great examples of intelligence and how it can be viewed in Hawkins’ framework — that’s one of the primary reasons to read the book! I highly recommend it to anyone with an interest in artificial intelligence and the mind. Even with a very small understanding of neurons in the mind (mainly farmed from Scientific American) I was able to completely understand the more biological parts or the mechanics of the book and Hawkins’ description of the human mind.

I only have two criticisms of the book. I felt it owed a nod to Marvin Minsky’s “Society of the Mind” or Daniel Dennett’s “Consciousness Explained” which I feel both discuss the human mind as an emergent system (without the mechanics that Hakwins goes into). Besides that, I felt that he too easily dismisses the idea that intelligent machines could pose any kind of threat to society or humans. Many, many others, I’m sure, will deal with this issue (as will I in several essays on my blog.)

Besides those two criticisms, read this book. Even if you disagree with the memory-prediction framework as a plausbile explanation for human intelligence, it remains to be an intriguing tactic for developing some kind of machine intelligence.