The importance of language

A recent study (1) that shows the individual's language preferences could affect what she sees is interesting. But more importantly, one has to wonder if disparate languages drive the apparent cultural, social and policy differences across the globe. If so, that will be unfortunate.

Complex language, apparently the only differentiating quality of the human animal, has gotten them far. They could communicate thoughts, innovate, memorize and survive in the Savannah. They have been creative, perhaps starting in clicks and music and progressing toward more complex structures. In the modern context, languages seem to share common roots in Indo-European, Sino-Tibetan, and Afro-Asiatic with a few unusual divergences in the Pacific and South India. But the larger three streams of language progression appear to be distinctly different in architecture, specialization, and use. If the general hypothesis that language shapes one's comprehension is true, we may have separated ourselves into three different worlds (not to mention smaller ones in the Pacific and South India), purely by chance.

The human brain has been trying to cope with language forever. Language is an unnatural leap for the animal and the brain could not have coped with the idea without great effort. Reinforcement learning would have led the three cohorts of humans into a higher and higher association of language with outcomes. Thus, they would likely reject observations from outside that do not fit. Their science, religion, closely follows with few cultural variations. And, their organizational philosophy, objective functions, and expectations have diverged significantly.

A technology that integrates the three distinctly different streams of language could be a necessary condition for humans to make the next leap.

(1) https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/our-language-affects-what-we-see/

Is this what we really want?

Recent news (1) that a single digital photograph could predict genetic diseases, demonstrates where humans are heading.  Now, not only hardware but also behavior (2) is predictable. We are fast approaching a regime in which both a newborn's lifespan and her expected contribution to society are predictable at birth. This has broad implications for policy.

It is important to revisit the human objective function. What exactly are we trying to maximize?. Are we trying to maximize societal utility - aggregate happiness of 7.4 billion people across the world? Are we trying to segregate and locally optimize? If so, are we considering time as an axis? Without such a notion, tactical optimization is likely to fail.

In a regime where an individual's expected contributions are predictable, a utilitarian society could cull and advance at the expense of humanity. Mathematics could override emotions and ultimately, humans. Is this what we really want? More fundamentally, is a human an aggregation of her memories? If so, are those memories valuable in the context of a societal objective function?

It appears that it ultimately comes down to what humans want to maximize. A planet spinning in distress could go on for another 4 billion years but more likely will be eliminated by an asteroid collision in significantly less time. If so, should we not attempt to maximize tactical happiness? Should we not attempt to lift 7.4 billion from distress and sorrow? Why do few humans with immense resources not understand the construct of the universe?

It is certainly depressing, but then it has always been.

(1)https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2019/01/artificial-intelligence-could-diagnose-rare-disorders-using-just-photo-face

(2) https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2019/01/people-can-predict-your-tweets-even-if-you-aren-t-twitter

Aging...

Recent news (1) that the components of the microbiome has significant predictive power in the host's age is interesting. The dance between bacteria and other biological entities has been continuing for over 4 billion years. During that time, the first occupants of the planet, have substantially expanded their ability to manage and control every other entity. Now, they demonstrate species wide optimization based on the host's state and it is exciting and possibly, scary. They have shown efficient communication between members of a society and it is possible they are practicing a broader design.

Bacteria, the most beautiful, potent and strategic biological entity in the universe, may have arrived on Earth hitching a ride on an asteroid. They have been busy ever since. They may have aided the development of more complex biological designs for future harvesting or as an enclosure for a sojourn. Such is the power of the single cell entity that they could eliminate entire species within measurable timescales. Humans, the least robust of available substrates, arrested the advance of a superior entity by cobbling together agents from soil under their feet. But now, we are regressing to the past as more powerful bacteria arrive with an ambition to wipe out the miserable lot.

The human enclosure has been profitable for bacteria. They could influence the organ that sends out instructions across the substrate from the gut. And, that gave them immense power to design and control large entities at will. Now, species wide collaboration indicates an understanding of time and the impending demise of the tactical enclosure.

It is ironic that the blue planet has a singular owner.

(1) https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2019/01/bacteria-your-gut-may-reveal-your-true-age

Voyager

Voyager 1 and 2, crowning accomplishments of the space agency, when there were real people with passion, continue their decades old work. Data from Voyager 1, the man made object that left the solar system (2), seems to debunk the hypothesis that dark matter is composed of a large number of small black holes(1). A figment of the physicists' imagination to connect status-quo theory with inexplicable observations, dark matter, has been elusive. In a world governed by experimentalists, always looking to prove what has been speculated, micro black holes certainly fit the bill. But now, Voyager 1, indicates otherwise.

The human movie has been playing in slow motion. The information content of the universe, likely infinite, has been fed to humans in bit size chunks. Satisfied with so little, Lord Kelvin declared over a century ago that "there is nothing new to be discovered now and all that remains is more and more precise measurement." The smarter ones at the turn of the century who substantially changed the slope of human knowledge, remained relatively humble. The current crop, however, is unwilling to abandon age old ideas and they cook up theories with such mathematical precision, such ideas are dead on arrival. The engineering and experimental orientation of physicists have dampened the knowledge curve for modern humans.

It is always risky to propose something completely new and it is a lot safer to prove something that has already been stated by the lords of science. A cult like culture that seems to scorn religion has all the same characteristics. The modern dark ages that show little fundamental leap in knowledge is in full flow.

 (1) https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2019/01/aging-voyager-1-spacecraft-undermines-idea-dark-matter-tiny-black-holes

(2) http://www.scientificsense.com/2013/03/good-bye-solar-system-good-bye.html#axzz5cRMINFR0

The Economist(s)

Economists are odd people. They love numbers and they pretend to make policies with a level of determinism that does not even exist in physical sciences. They will cut, dice and serve numbers onto your plate like the most skilled chef in a Benihana restaurant. And they top that off with colorful charts and interesting conclusions.

A recent article in the grand magazine appears to conclude that the "retreat of democracy," stopped in 2018 (1). This is an amazing observation. In any other professional field, this will raise many questions but apparently not in economics. The first question will be seeking a definition of the phenomenon, "democracy." Sure, this throws a wrench into the neatly tied up spreadsheets used by the authors to make such a fascinating conclusion. The next question is whether we knew if "democracy (whatever that is)," was in decline. To stop the "retreat," one has to imagine the retreat first. Colorful charts and spreadsheets are useful but they typically do not provide any insights. Granted they look beautiful in the glossy paper of the magazine that travels across the world, spewing wisdom,

Let's step back for a moment and revisit the fundamental question of definition. The largest and arguably the greatest democracies of the world elect idiots and religious fanatics. The smaller and older ones that were pushed back into their corners by their "subjects," elect bureaucrats with no understanding of the world. And, across the rest of the world where democracy reigns, they elect those who want to create policies to fragment and concentrate. So, was democracy in decline before and more importantly, have we stopped the decline?

Humans have been democratic before the arrival of the modern variety. The "modern humans," have objective functions specializing in killing, pillaging and domination. This is incompatible with "democracy," as evolved from Greek philosophers. When the brain ruled, humans found interesting ways to tap into the information content of society. This was lost many decades ago when ignorance and materialism enveloped the declining species.

In spite of all the "numbers," democracy was never in decline nor have we "stopped the decline of it" We have not had democracy for hundreds of years.

(1) https://www.economist.com/graphic-detail/2019/01/08/the-retreat-of-global-democracy-stopped-in-2018

Smart fish

Recent finding (1) that archerfish demonstrates facial recognition, likely over and above the most hyped up AI technology, is a constant reminder that humans are not very smart. Their Silicon infused technologies have led them astray and their ego has gotten them blind and incompetent. It is not the count of brain cells nor the ratio of the brain weight to that of the body weight that matters. It is how you use it and the human is the most unlikely candidate for efficient use of her endowment.

As the search, operating system and hardware monopolists with infinite access to capital prove that they can create racism on Twitter (as if that needed proof) and play games like no human has done before, it is important to be aware of basic notions of intelligence. It is not deep mind, however superb that "great," mind is playing star wars, it is not alpha go, however awesome a go player she really is, it is not deep blue, in spite of the domination of arbitrary chess boards and guess game in Jeopardy - intelligence has nothing to do with any of these games that old men and women play. The archerfish can recognize a human face from any angle without any evolutionary specialization and she has very few resources.

Humans appear to be held back because of their own progress. It is an oxymoron, for the contemporary crop seems to have forgotten what got them here. As the whales and parrots mimic human speech, as the great apes sit and wonder what has gone wrong with the universe, as the elephants visit the spot where their companion fell to mourn, as the pigs play and sleep together in a harmonious community, as the dolphins attempt to guide, as the dogs attempt to rationalize, as the octopus hide, as the squirrels save and as the crows make tools, we have a species that hate, kill and destroy their own habitat.

Not too smart.

(1) https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/fishy-smarts-archerfish-can-recognize-human-faces-in-3-d/

Plan S

As ignorant politicians battle against each other to make the world worse, there is a movement afoot that could move humanity closer to a positive slope of advancement. It is ironic as the undemocratic countries sign on to an idea of open science, the "advanced democracies," stay on the sidelines. There are good reasons for this as money make many "scientists," go blind and the rest seek fame, tenure and Nobel prizes by hiding their research, funded by the public.

It is time for Plan S (1). Knowledge should not be bottled up even for money and fame. This is especially true if such money and fame came from funded research by the public. The racket has been widespread - authors, publishers and "peer reviewers," - an in-bred community who do not understand the world at large. They assert they are "elite," and know everything. They attempt to teach at universities with singular metrics for performance that counts the number of "publications." Such manufactured research, akin to sausage making, moves us back and not forward.

It is time for Plan S. For nearly half a million years, homo-sapiens progressed across unknown terrains by sharing information freely. They collaborated, brain-stormed and advanced thinking. The academic sham has put an end to human progress as they protect marginal increments in knowledge to extract economic rents. They pretend to teach but only those who do not understand their "research." They "advise," but only those who do not recognize the shallowness of their knowledge. They "influence," policy as if they can see the future and they look down on the rest.

It is time for Plan S. If you discovered something with public money, it is for the public and not for you.

(1) https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2019/01/will-world-embrace-plan-s-radical-proposal-mandate-open-access-science-papers

Wearing the inside out

A precise definition of consciousness eluded humanity forever. As she stood up in the African Savannah for the first time and took a peak at the star-studded Southern sky, unobstructed by light pollution, she knew there was something more than tactical optimization of a narrow objective function that included food, sex and survival. Consciousness appears to have originated from the individual abstracting herself from the immediate and visible context. Thus, a conscious individual will be more prone to abstraction such as art, literature and music and will be less adept at prescriptive notions as perpetuated by science and technology. It is likely that the industries that drive the economy has less aggerate consciousness compared to society.

As "artificial intelligence," accelerates with a battle being fought on the margins to make machines, "conscious," the technologists have to understand that one cannot impart a property to an object without a clear definition of the property. Consciousness is clearly not appearing, talking and behaving like a human (or a dog), but rather an ability to abstract. Dogs are likely more imaginative than most humans and they are possibly more conscious. A narrow objective function will constrain the originator and most of the world's human population is struggling to cope. The luxury of time to think is an important nourishing aspect of consciousness.

Then, a more important question is whether consciousness is utility enhancing for the individual. A conscious human being will have a higher level of pain as she attempts to optimize within a complex and uncertain context. A conscious individual will not limit her thoughts to countries, religions, races or education. A conscious individual will not extinguish another, be unfair, seek localization and become narcissistic. A conscious individual will seek to unite rather than divide, seek freedom and achieve happiness within a finite time horizon.

Humans do not seem to have very high levels of consciousness nor do they have a definition for it.

Singularity, revisited

As fragmentation rules the status-quo, as hatred defines actions and policies, as incompetence dominates, as ignorance prevails, as uncertainty thumps the known and the deterministic, as science ignores religion, as religion seeks to kill science, as technologists travel to the street for money to invest, as financiers travel to the technologists to fill their sack, as musicians shout and cry without meaning, as cops kill, as the white, black and brown assert why they matter, as the politicians who went to drain the swamp, poison it, as the markets crash, as the homeless shiver, as the sea rises and crashes into the coasts to eliminate life, as the academics write papers of irrelevance, as the doctors attempt to keep their patients on life support, as the physicists make theories of nothing, as the engineers make meaningless inventions, as the graduates of the best schools get elevated in spite of their criminal backgrounds, as the bureaucrat in the lonely island gets lost in separation logic, as the elite drink wine and the rest beer, as the handsome horse rider plans the next intervention, as the purveyor of non-capitalism deals with the one who does not understand capitalism, as the religious leaders lock up their positions by attempting to eliminate those with a different faith, as the ancient island loses humans in droves, as the technologists spread private data as if it is Halloween candy, as the consultants assert they know everything and the investment bankers assert they have all the money, as the universities attempt to recruit the best and the brightest of certain shades, as some dole out tax relief and others take it back, as entrepreneurs struggle and monopolists win, as the young and confused battle against the old and weary, as some try to burn anything that burns and others try to save the burning residue, as the powerful kill those with information and the most powerful stand silently behind, as the world spins in distress in spite of the many exo-planet discoveries, we have reached a discontinuity.

I suspect, this was not the singularity they have been waiting for.

High-throughput Screening for Energy

The battle for innovation will be won at the intersection of materials and information. The field has been lagging for nearly a century as scientists focused on incremental improvements to established media. Now, there appears to be hope for progress at an accelerated pace (1). Well established techniques in fields such as life sciences could boost productivity in other areas.

Humans have gotten used to relying on nature for materials for half a million years. In the modern world, that substantially curtails their ability to move further. They have been given a matrix of simple molecules and the capability to combine them at will to create new properties and applications. They have been misguided for ever, trying to make gold from charcoal and attempting to fuse hydrogen in a cold test-tube. Industries such as pharmaceuticals that claim to have found "new agents," largely relied on tree barks and soil. It was nature that made the humans tick, albeit at a very uninteresting level.

The ability to custom develop materials to fit desired properties will be an indication of human advancement. It is not the ability to code, to send mechanical toys to nearby planets, to keep the weak and the weary on life support systems, to devise theories of nothing, to postulate the growth and decline of countries, markets and cryptic currencies, to create humanoids without consciousness, to make vehicles that move at the speed of sound or to inject poison to the political swamps.

Next generation materials will redefine the energy and the future of the "tiny blue dot."


(1) https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2018/12/megalibraries-nanomaterials-could-speed-clean-energy-and-other-grand-challenge-targets

It is all in your mind

An experiment at Stanford (1) appears to demonstrate the power of the placebo effect. Most pharmaceutical research clearly points to the effects of believing and as suggested in the study, it has implications for how information is captured and disseminated through tests. Humans are susceptible to suggestion and can completely rewire the infrastructure of their body from their brain. This should have had survival benefits early as the village elder may have segregated people into random groups and reinforced one side positively and the other not. Those who where lucky enough to be in the right group started believing and ultimately succeeded, proving the point.

An over-tested and over-treated contemporary population is not only suffering from ineffective treatment regimens but also the negative effects imparted on their bodies by their brains. As medical schools get more technical in their educational stance, they have to remember that the weakest link in the chain remains to be the patient, who could easily fight technology. In this context, it may be time to redesign education bottoms up with more focus on how patients internalize information. Ultimately, it is the content of revealed information that drives outcomes. As technology advances we are likely to be exposed to more information and the effects of such exposure could completely negate any positive impact of advanced treatments.

For a variety of reasons, humanity is at crossroads. On one hand, we have accelerating technologies that boasts to make everything better and on the other, it conflicts with the psyche of ordinary human beings. With a harsh timing constraint, once an individual is sliding down the slope, it is nearly impossible to reverse the trend.

Everything appears to come back to how society manages and uses information.


(1) https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2018/12/just-thinking-you-have-poor-endurance-genes-changes-your-body

GammaGo

News (1) that AlphaGo can successfully learn Chess, Shogi and Go through self-play is interesting. It is symptomatic of trends in AI largely relying on raw computing power. Typically, innovation lags when resources become infinite and we have early signs of trouble here. Reinforcement learning through self-play is not a new concept - it has been here from the advent of computers. It is just that not many have access to computing resources necessary to create demonstrable prototypes.

More importantly, this approach is unlikely to culminate in cognition and consciousness, the possible end game. It is clearly the case that computers can create usable heuristics by repeated experiments, just as humans do. However, those heuristics are generated within a framework of rules that were specified ex. ante. The "deep mind," enthusiasts had argued a few years ago that their computer found a "new way," to play an ancient game. It is quite possible that given a large number of experiments, computers can learn from cases that are outside the norm. But to label this "creativity," is a stretch. It is more an accident than invention. One could argue that humans have benefitted handsomely from accidents in the past and so why not computers. This is true and so the general question is whether computing resources running amuck with an infinite number of repeated experiments can provide learnings from accidents at a faster rate than humans are capable of.

It is tantalizing. What the AI leaders need to understand, however, is that we have been here before. A critical look at the approach may be beneficial. We knew that we could predict from historical data ever since math was invented and we knew that repeated search of the design space could yield usable results since the advent of computers. The question is whether we have done anything new except pouring money into scaling conventional technologies. Stacking countless "computers," in the "cloud" on the promise of AI has many drawbacks.

It is time to go back to the drawing board. A field replete with engineers seems to be going in the wrong direction. As innovation lags in materials and quantum processing, they are creating mountains of Silicon to show heuristics generation is possible. The mathematicians locked up in low productivity areas such as finance, may be well advised to go back and think.

Thinking has a low premium currently and that is problematic.


(1) http://science.sciencemag.org/content/362/6419/1140

Gene editing: There is no turning back

Recent news (1) that gene editing could successfully create a mutant form of a gene that makes the host, resistant to HIV, is likely to create scientific awe and ethical concerns. It is important to understand that the technology has arrived and there is no turning back. We will use it to solve identified tactical problems and gloss over the unknown and the unanticipated. Logically, this is the best decision.

Humans are in a bind - they have not been able to meaningfully extend life but they have found many band aids that will keep the recipient breathing, pulsating and alive for short periods of time. The constraints are clear and the micro-optimization problem, relatively simple to solve. But the relevance of their innovations and actions in the societal context, is less clear. Now that we can gene edit out of one problem without considering future ones, the technical minds will be happier than ever.

As we manage life bottoms up as the individual desires, we are approaching a discontinuity in which those with resources to accommodate the micro-objectives win over the rest. But the victory is short lived, literally. The larger question is why the individual makes decisions for herself even though the expected outcomes are utility diminishing for her, given the current technology. One reason could be the option value the individual computes with the uncertainty in emerging ideas and technologies. In this case, sustaining life even with debilitating disease states, could be dominant.

However, the individual has to consider the trade-offs systematically. Given a small probability of hitherto unknown technology that could reset pre-existing disease states with potential pain and disutility that are most likely otherwise, it is a difficult problem to solve. This problem is easier to analyze at the societal level, if the objective function can be clearly defined. For most on Earth, it appears to be perpetuating their genes and humanity in general. It is unclear if that is objective.

A thought experiment on the formation of objective functions in an advanced society could be interesting. If the individual is perpetual, you could effectively remove the noise emanating from micro-objectives. In such a society, only the macro-objective remains. Since the individual's desires are already maximized, society can extend overall objectives without constraints. What would an advanced society like to maximize? They will likely incorporate universal ambitions in a beneficial way.

Humans do not have to fear an "attack," from an advanced ET. They are unlikely to "attack," if they are advanced.


(1) https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2018/11/ethics-aside-does-crispr-baby-experiment-make-scientific-sense

Beyond the horizon

The span of human life, with a stringent expiry date, has been short to attempt fundamental changes to society. The age gene they carry, apparently by sheer accident, has done more damage to the human psyche than diseases and lately, accidents and suicides. The human brain has been a slow learner, deploying empiricism and machine learning to create meaning for context. But by the time it recognizes pure abstractness, it is typically too late. As knowledge simply vanishes over the horizon and as the new batch starts over with a different technology, humanity may be reaching a plateau with little expected advancements.

Early civilizations recognized the value of knowledge in a tactical sense. They could actually see better decision-making by the village elder, who had gained experience. But this simply does not work in the modern context. As technology and knowledge increase exponentially, humans will likely struggle to find a happy medium to encapsulate relevant information from the past. The technology behemoths, competing with each other to create a "bigger cloud," simply do not understand the needs of society. As they attempt to siphon all available electrons to power their data centers, eminently capable of accelerating entropy, there are larger questions facing society they could potentially help with.

Information is a dying asset and having an infinite capacity to store it simply does not help. Heuristics generated from information is in a spectrum, some robust enough to stand the test of time and others superseded by emerging ones. So, knowledge is about differentiating the utility of heuristics and reducing noise to the absolute minimum. The generation who thrived on noise and triviality is about to check out and they will be replaced by another who seem to be better positioned. However, they will simply lose the few heuristics from the past generated at tremendous cost. It is this connection that may have made other civilizations to move further. This is not about technology but an abstract understanding of how knowledge could be transferred.

The problem to solve is not robotics or AI, but how relevant knowledge could be transferred across generations. This idea will not increase shareholder value, reelect incompetent politicians or allow academics to publish papers to capture "tenure," and therein lies the conundrum. The "think tanks," across the world are incapable of "thinking," and we have arrived at the doorstep of self-destruction. The biggest "accomplishments," of contemporary humans such as landing a mechanical toy on a nearby planet, increasing the life span of humans marginally, building vehicles that can move marginally faster and  designing computers that are marginally more efficient are not accomplishments at all.

It appears that there are no positive slope to the human psyche. Perhaps, they are programmed this way. But beyond the horizon, there is a rainbow that we could continue to seek.