Water, water everywhere, but…

The recent drought in India that has resulted in one of the major cities, Chennai, effectively running out of water just as Cape Town did last year, is a cause for concern. The proposed solutions appear to focus on water availability and they are likely misguided. The blue planet has plenty of water, but it is brine. So, it is not lack of water that humans should focus on but rather how to remove salt and other impurities from this abundantly available resource on Earth.

Just like many other contemporary problems, this could also be solved by cheap energy. With an efficient Hydrogen furnace in close proximity, an advanced civilization would have reached technology that can emit zero cost energy. Unfortunately, humans are still clinging on to the concept of unearthing and burning highly toxic Carbon for their tactical needs. For humanity to advance, it has to set a goal on close to zero cost energy production as that will solve many problems threatening their very existence, including rising temperatures.

However, policy-makers and politicians are not sufficiently schooled on how the complex habitat react in non-linear ways and why feel-good actions are ineffective. For example, reducing greenhouse gas emissions from the current levels will have no measurable effect on outcomes. That window has been closed a long time ago. So, all the noise around policies and accords world over is just that, noise. Of course, it makes many feel good that they are doing “something.”

The more important thing to focus on is technology – how to terraform Earth back to its original condition. There are plenty of ideas available but it will take resources and a focus on research and development. And, R&D should move into exotic and untried options, not conventional ones to simply suck the bad stuff out and sequester it underneath. On a planet suffering from plate tectonics and idiotic human actions, it is unlikely that the bad stuff will stay down for long.

Advanced R&D is sorely needed not only to mend a broken planet but also to assure its inhabitants have life-giving fresh water forever.

Quantum pipe-dream

Quantum computing (1), possibly the only leap humans could take to reach many of their overblown expectations in Artificial Intelligence and elsewhere, is a pipe-dream. Humans are likely to find extra-terrestrial life before they will be able to parade sufficient number of q-bits to make practical computing. And, the ETs have been hiding so effectively from the space agency that they are unlikely to show up for many decades.

To make quantum computing possible, educational institutions need to redesign their curricula bottoms up. Spending years of learning Newtonian and even relativistic Physics does not lead to insights in the quantum world. The fact that most gravitate toward the "knowable," perhaps because of the ease of achieving doctoral degrees and tenures, does not mean that it is the right way to go. Meanwhile, they are building bigger and longer tunnels all around the world, smashing particles against each other to find new ones, listening to gravity waves by hanging mirrors and in their spare time, shooting robots at nearby planets and satellites to find the ever-elusive ETs. All of these activities are misguided. The latest theory postulates complete ignorance of humans and it is just that most do not want to think about it.

Humility could help humans reach the next stage. Backfilling darker matter and energy to hang onto to the contemporary faulty theories is symptomatic of the deterministic era. As the particle zoo grows faster than popping corn kernels in a popcorn maker and the water bodies way below the Earth's surface sit waiting for the particles that are unlikely to show up, humans have to admit ignorance.

It is time to wipe the slate clean and start-over. Initial conditions set a century ago may provide useful guidance.


(1) https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/observations/the-problem-with-quantum-computers/

Revisiting AI for Policy

Policy making, a complex activity that needs to consider large amounts of disparate data and optimize within constraints in the long and short run, is likely better tackled by Artificial Intelligence. Humans, let alone politicians, are notorious for their unsubstantiated biases, conflicts of interest and lack of decision-making abilities in the presence of uncertain data. Machines appear to be significantly better in this realm. A world in which machines make policy choices is likely better than the status-quo, democracy and autocracy included, for decisions made on subsets of data with bias will always be less effective compared to those based on the entire information content, without bias.

More practically, nations may need to deploy AI in the policy making realm, to at least augment decision-making. At the very least, it may reveal how inefficient human policy-makers are, how out of touch they are from emerging information and how they are destroying a world, the next generation will inherit. Such is the promise of AI in decision and policy making, it is almost trivial for machines to reach optimum choices, far superior to what their masters could accomplish. More importantly, machines are able to consider interconnected decisions into the future and use optimum control to reach best current decisions. It will be a far cry from the octogenarians in capitol hill, unable to read and understand the policy choices they are voting on.

Countries that embrace AI for policy could be the future powerhouses. In this regime, scale does not matter as the smallest and biggest countries in the world could access the same technology. In the limit, such an optimization process may make contemporary segmentation schemes - religions, countries and languages - irrelevant. If so, AI could manage by exception, raising red flags at the right points in time for human actions and guiding humanity to a better place. It could suggest best paths for innovation that will reduce downside risk and maximize upside potential. It could maximize the value of humanity and its fickle environment.

We are augmenting human decision-making with AI in every realm. It is time we provided the same for clueless politicians.

Free Will is Real (1), Really?

A recent philosophical argument that seems to hypothesize that free will is real (1) because of the "existence of alternative possibilities, choice and control over actions," may be faulty. As the philosopher attempts to make a distinction between reductionism and "intentional agency," he seems to have fallen into a "reductionist trap."

Both physics and philosophy suffer from the same basic issues. Decisions, choices, observations, particles and systems do not stand independently. There are spatial and temporal connections among them, disallowing hypotheses based on singular instances. It is not that a human being is making a choice among possibilities that are indeterminate but rather she is forced into a choice by optimizing a sequence of interconnected decisions. Thus, apparent flexibility and control observed at a decision point is an illusion. By dynamic programming, the decision-maker reaches an optimal choice (as defined as utility maximizing for her). That decision is determined mathematically and not by choice.

Physics, now fully infused with determinism and reductionism in spite of a century old theory that shows nothing is deterministic and philosophy, always struggling to prove what has not been defined yet, are both unproductive avenues for humans. They are certainly academically rich but neither in their current posture will be able to advance thinking. To move to a different regime, we need simplification and humility and a macro understanding that humans may be hypothesizing based purely on illusion.

Free Will is Real, Really?

(1) https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/cross-check/free-will-is-real/

The trouble with conservation

A recent article (1) articulates how well intentioned conservation policies could have unintended effects. From inception, humans have been attempting to shape the environment, first to their own tactical benefits and then for undefined strategic goals. Humans generally deliver bad outcomes to a plethora of life designs surrounding them and themselves. They like control and satisfaction emerging from their efforts to destroy and then attempting to mend the greenhouse they are part of.

Conservation, the darling of millennials and those following them, could turn out be a bad thing. Those engaged in these sentiments also do not like "markets," and would like to set everything "right." What they may be missing is that there is a cost to playing with nature and humans do  not appear to be smart enough to predict the effects of singular actions on a highly non-linear and connected system.

Good intentions are necessary but not sufficient for better outcomes. More importantly, the idea of manipulating a complex non-linear system with linear policy choices is fraught with danger. The universe appears to be anchored on "markets," as illustrated by evolution. However, it is too crude and thought experiments in the direction of universal optimization may be apt. But ironically, it does not mean that such a state can be reached by incremental manipulation of the status-quo.

Stuck in a trough, humans appear to have bad instincts. Most of them want to climb out of the hole but the policy choices they impart are likely sub optimal and may pull them further down.

(1) https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/when-one-protected-species-kills-another-what-are-conservationists-to-do1/?redirect=1

36,000 days and optimization within a catastrophic constraint

Humans have a very interesting mathematical problem. They have to optimize within a harsh time constraint. Although the endowment is not known, it is increasingly predictable. Even though the range is broad - from 0 to say, 36,000 days, the variance has been going down, thanks to modern medicine. But most humans sub optimize. Materialism, ignorance, hunger for power and a variety of other value destroying metrics have misguided nearly 100 billion samples from inception.

The time afforded to a human appears limited. Irrational thinking has led most astray, some believing "God," is going to save her and others trying to create "legacy," in the absence of such an entity. It is unclear what a random individual is trying to maximize. For half the contemporary population, it is all about maximizing the probability of higher utility in after life. For the rest, it is more complex. As the seconds wind down to the inescapable event horizon, most humans run for tactical metrics without any value.

What would human 2.0 feel like? For her, contribution to society will be supreme for anything else seems meaningless. As the event horizon is specified without any flexibility, it would be important to contribute before she crosses the inescapable boundary. It is counter-intuitive as it is not that a human has to contribute to the perpetuation of a species, that appears less interesting, but rather that her role in the larger context, has meaning. It is meaning for society we are after and that is likely too conceptual for many.

Human 2.0 - If we ever get there, it could be a fantastic world with a simpler objective function, something that maximizes happiness not wealth, something that maximizes knowledge not ego, something that maximizes society not the individual, something that maximizes ideas, not the mere description of them, and something that maximizes empathy not the portrayal of the same.

Drifting apart

A recent article (1) hypothesizes that relational quantum mechanics (RQM) suggests physics might be a science of perceptions, not observer-independent reality. More generally, every individual is living in her own world of reality, and the "notion that we share the same physical reality is an illusion." For over a century, quantum mechanics has been throwing a wrench into simplicity and now it is possible that "perceived physicality is merely a representation of surrounding mental environment, brought into being by an act of observation."

Humans are in a tough spot. On one hand, they theorize about reality and rationality and on another, they find that reality is a function of the individual's observations. There is no physical reality and what an individual observes becomes the reality for her. It is conceptually elegant and it may explain why the 8 billion almost identical specimens of human genome complex across the world see things differently. It also means that systems that seek consensus, such as democracy, may be obsolete.

Eight billion parallel universes, each of which catering to an individual, are difficult to fathom. If each individual has a customized physical reality then it is likely that humans will drift apart from each other over time. Just as the universe expands into nothingness, human societies could fragment to such an extent that islands of individuals are the only available choice. 

A random assemblage of complex molecules, the human, apparently rising from a quantum phenomenon, is constrained by her observations and customized reality. She can never understand phenomena outside the reality afforded to her. And, that explains most of the ills of contemporary societies.

(1) https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/observations/the-universe-as-cosmic-dashboard/?redirect=1

Quantum health

A recent article (1) poses an intriguing question that if information such as one's genetic composition and proclivity to diseases are available to a patient, whether that could change her physiology. As argued in the article, the outcomes of a quantum phenomenon are intricately connected with the observer and analogously, this could happen in health. It is an interesting thought experiment.

My company, Decision Options, is currently involved in helping a speciality hospital identify patients at high risk so that a higher level of care could be provided to ameliorate such risk. In the status-quo, this knowledge is available only to the medical professionals, attending to the patient. However, it is fascinating to think about the possibility of providing such information to patients if beneficial effects could be garnered. It is a double-edged sword as humans are notoriously prone to suggestions. Psychosomatic illnesses command a measurable portion of healthcare expenses.

The observer does define the outcomes in quantum physics. In medicine, a plethora of complex phenomena including the placebo effect as well as the structure of observers - patients, providers and payers and the interactions among them, complicate matters significantly. However, it may be time to think about a regime driven largely by unconstrained information as it likely leads to better outcomes.

There are two orthogonal axes in medicine - how does an informed observer change outcomes and how does the availability of information result in negative effects related to human internalization of such information. We need a few experiments to tease this out and it may well be worth it.

(1) https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/can-knowing-your-genetic-risk-change-your-physiology/?redirect=1

"Shoddy simulation," asserts Mario

A recent philosophical banter (1) that speculates that the complexity of the universe may be emanating from a shoddy construction job of the entities that are simulating it, is thought-provoking. However, the illogical and complex stance of the universe could also be due to many other reasons.

First, anybody who has ever designed a simulation knows that such games never consider how simulated entities view it. But rather, the objective function is always exogenous, trying to optimize the players' needs and requirements. Humans often fall into a trap of assuming that they have some level of importance and if we are indeed in a simulation, we could be completely irrelevant. So the fact that the expansion of the universe will result in complete darkness in the future is only illogical from the perspective of the simulated entities.

Second, many of the characteristics of the observed universe appear to follow the general specification of games that tends to get harder over time. Assuming there are observers outside the context of the simulation, they may be progressing to higher and higher levels of the game. Again, from the perspective of the simulated entities, this may appear illogical as they are contained in a miniature theater within an apparently infinite stage.

Finally, what is observed by the simulated entities - illogical construct, complexity, and lack of control - could all be by design. By placing hard constraints on mobile agents across the universe, the game maker may be running an experiment to test if they could escape it. Since nobody wants to play an infinite game, it may be programmed to self destroy in the absence of a progression in the intelligence of the simulated entities.

It appears likely that the experiment will end without proving that the agents could surpass the initial constraints placed on them.

(1) https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/life-unbounded/the-lowest-bid-universe/

Quantum initiative: Lifting humanity from mediocrity

The US National Quantum Initiative (1) is arguably the most important science and technology initiative today with far-reaching beneficial effects. With a foundational change in computing, humans could possibly begin to understand themselves, their genes, approaching diseases and their date of expiry. They could seek consciousness in Silicon, costless energy and space travel. They could attempt to mend a broken planet and provide resources for the next generation to rise. They could invent materials that aid space elevation, instant terrestrial travel, and skyscrapers that truly scrape the sky.

It is late. Conventionalism has dominated science and technology lately, most constructing careers by proving what has already been proved. They have slipped further into mediocrity, some taking pictures of black holes and others proving gravitational waves exist. But, if the technologists are truly practical and would like to make a difference, why don't they try to solve problems that are more difficult than collecting data and deploying supercomputers on it. The answer is that there is no money in it. The ones who made a difference did not seek money and for the last hundred years, it was money that drove science and technology.

Not even those sitting on top of mountains of data have any interest in advancing technology in a step function fashion. If they do, their own technologies and R&D would be rendered instantly useless. It is an ironic state of affairs - the technologists without an understanding of sunk costs attempt to protect it, while the governments who play second fiddle to the monopolies, play along.

Humans are a funny lot.


(1) https://science.sciencemag.org/content/364/6439/440

Freedom and the value of options for humans

The value of a human is the aggregate value of options held by her. Puts such as insurance and calls such as jobs, influence the overall value of the human portfolio. But this presumes that options are devoid of counterparty risks and timing constraints. Lack of freedom for the individual and society will impose constraints on the exercise of options held by humans. Thus, freedom is not just conceptually attractive but it is the basis of the value of humans.

Freedom is foundational to human societies for, without it, the value of humans will decline sharply. As they roamed out of Southeastern Africa with infinite horizons in front of them, freedom was important for humans. Those who object to capitalism on symptoms related to contemporary inefficient implementations should think more broadly about how value is created and disbursed. Humans create value by exercising options optimally and any constraint on this will reduce the value of the individual and society.

The autocrats, who span from the West to the East, substantially reduce the value of societies by imposing arbitrary constraints on individuals. Policies that reduce freedom are unambiguously value destroying but what the politicians do not have the capability to understand is that freedom is a multifactorial construct. A fickle greenhouse afforded to nearly 8 billion human specimens could be destroyed in a matter of decades, substantially extinguishing all option values held by humans. Progress made in over a century to assimilate populations, cultures, and colors could be arrested by ignorant leaders, substantially reducing freedom for humanity.

An advanced society will maximize the value of options held by its members - all of them. It is a portfolio maximization problem, something politicians are unlikely to appreciate. Stuck in a trough, humans may find it hard to climb out.

Bypassing the infrastructure

Recent news (1) that brain functions can be translated to speech outside the human infrastructure is interesting. More generally, it is likely that most human senses can be replicated with inputs from the brain. As humans live a lot longer than their design life, their infrastructure is likely to fail before their brain. If the brain is still able to function, most outputs could be replicated outside the ill-designed body.

Humans have been struggling to optimize a horizon that is increasingly predictable. Their infrastructure was likely selected for long distance running, something that has become less useful in the modern context. But their brains, likely overdesigned for survival, seem to be robust, perhaps able to go twice the design life of the hardware. Hence, connecting the instruction set from the brain to outside systems may become necessary for the species to survive.

Lack of understanding of the brain has kept the humans guessing. It is likely that a brain is a quantum machine and that is enigmatic in the status-quo. In the long run, pickled brains could store and process information in such a way that the network can be expanded exponentially. The failure of the infrastructure should not be considered final, as long as the brain is able to function, outside its enclosure.

We could create a new meaning to "plug and play." The brain appears to last a lot longer and conventional metrics of expiry may not be optimum. The human network could incorporate significantly more information than what contemporary societies allow. 


(1) https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/scientists-take-a-step-toward-decoding-speech-from-the-brain/

Artificial Intelligence and the slowing of Time

Artificial Intelligence has been percolating in many domains lately. If properly applied, AI could significantly slow down time for humans and organizations. From their inception, humans have been prisoners of space and time. Even in the modern context, most appear to lack time, with "work," expanding to fill any empty voids. The modus operandi for organizations has been "putting out fires." And, both the creation and ultimate extinguishment of "fires," have been the distinguishing feature of large companies and that takes a lot of time.

The most valuable resource for humans, time, has been inflexible forever. Crude attempts at extending it beyond available horizons have had minimal impact. But now, they could slow time down by delegating time-consuming tasks to obedient machines. Any organization or individual, squeezed for time, is going to fall further behind as it is a clear symptom that they have been unable to move beyond the status-quo. Humans are good at some things and they are exceptionally bad at others. Machines are quite complementary in this respect.

Any repeated task taking the same amount of time in the current iteration compared to the previous one would indicate a deteriorating process. Ironically, those attempting to apply AI rely largely on human time as defined presently. Some appear to be proud of how many data scientists they have hired and others, how much Silicon they have assembled in close proximity. Neither will allow organizations to slow down time, just the opposite. Use of conventional metrics such as the quantity of human time and computers is symptomatic of a disease that is preventing the slowing down of time for organizations of all types - both the users and providers of services and products.

Individuals and organizations have a singular metric to assess if they are able to utilize AI properly. That metric is Time - if it is not slowing down for you now, it is problematic.

Information realism and economic systems

A recent blog (1) that brings attention to information realism in physics with an abstract thought that matter is "unnecessary garbage," in a universe driven only by information, is thought provoking. More tactically, such questions could be asked of economic systems, such as businesses and countries. Most identify economic systems based on financial metrics such as profits and GDP, but one could argue that these concepts are unnecessary garbage. There appears to be ample evidence for the failure of economic systems, chasing these tangible metrics, as they leak information and become devoid of it.

In the context of physics, matter is a distraction in a universe driven only by information. Same could be argued about economic systems. Profits and such metrics are pure distraction for viable economic systems. If they do not grow information, they can be predicted to fail with high confidence. The value of a system can then be determined by the information it holds and the expected growth in such information. The latter is more critical as economic systems live in a competitive pool of bounded growth in information and their success and failure largely depend on taking a share of that growth. Thus, success of an economic system does not depend on its balance sheet, income statement or even the quantity of countable resources it holds such as humans, computers and mining rights. Rather, it depends on its ability to grow information - private and public.

For most conventional systems, the idea that countable metrics do not matter could be shocking. More provocatively, systems that count what can be counted are bound to fail. Assets of an economic system, thus, can be defined as entities that hold information or have the power to grow information. As we move toward a regime driven by technology, it is important for the leaders to think about accounting in terms of information content and not tangible and countable units. Financial markets are quick to catch up and they become efficient lot faster than real markets and decisions, contrary to popular views. Real markets show high inertia to change and in this rapid and deep transition, traditional companies become risky as evident in their risk premia. Size does not matter but more importantly if information per capita is not growing in a system, its market value will decline rapidly.

The information tsunami is here. Most economic systems are ill-equipped to survive in it.


(1) https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/observations/physics-is-pointing-inexorably-to-mind/

The hype of AI

A recent article (1) further reinforces what autonomous vehicle industry has been doing. Neural net systems with feedforward and feedback control architectures trained by historical data on specific surfaces and conditions. Remnants of 1960s technologies, ably assisted by zero cost computing, have been percolating across the autonomous landscape. This trajectory is problematic for many reasons.

First, a brain trained on historical data selected by a biased human is a disaster waiting to happen. The situation is no better with hand-coded heuristics as demonstrated by recent aircraft failures. What computer and data scientists have to understand first is that their own brains still remain to be vastly superior to code they write running even on a super-computer. Hence, blind attempts at removing the human from complex decision-making processes are likely to fail.

Second, hype and ignorance have propelled AI to the stratosphere without significant practical use cases. AI is a tool and it is not a panacea. AI still fails when it encounters the unexpected. This is important as it indicates conventional computing and Silicon based architectures, albeit great engineering innovations, have nothing to do with "intelligence." We have not advanced AI much from the 80s, when the "oldies," used to call it expert systems. Granted, simulated voices, believable human faces, and incredible jumping robots are great inventions, but unfortunately, these have nothing to do with AI.

And finally, high human resource intensity in model building often leads to costly failures. For practical AI, two important things need to come together - rapid and flexible prototyping with automation and considering AI to be augmenting the human, not replacing her.

(1) http://robotics.sciencemag.org/content/4/28/eaaw1975

Alzheimer’s - we fail again!

Recent news (1) that high profile experiments, targeting a solution for the famous disease, Alzheimer's, has failed again is sobering. It clearly indicates that life sciences companies are on the wrong track to improve a condition, most dread. It is also a constant reminder that systemic problems cannot be solved by treating symptoms or tactical observations. The engineering view of medicine has run its course and it has been very successful in fighting opponents that can be clearly identified. But now, a system failing because of overuse, cannot be mended by such crude methodologies.

Immortality is prohibited by contemporary Physics. So, the optimization problem narrows to maximizing utility within an afforded time horizon. Humans have been naturally optimistic, an evolutionary advantage. They have been attempting to extend life rather than optimizing within constrains. Therein lies the paradox for healthcare. As artificial intelligence progresses, it is conceivable that a human could have reasonable estimates of life span and disease incidences, at birth. For the first time in history, we may be in a position to focus on optimization of utility rather than extending a highly uncertain horizon.

It is clear that the human hardware deteriorates in predictable ways. Most of it appears to be related to plumbing, an inability to remove waste at an optimum rate. From the brain to the kidneys, waste removal efficiency seems to decline over time, just as in any physical system. We may need to accept this as an unbreakable law and find ways to slow down the deterioration. In this context, research in the direction of cure for auto-immune diseases may be misplaced. What could be more important is predicting the likelihood of disease early and slowing its progression.

Artificial Intelligence could have a significant impact on human utility and happiness. If one can get over the hype and confusion, it will become clear that AI could provide useful guidance for humans to best utilize their limited time in the universe.

(1) https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2019/03/another-major-drug-candidate-targeting-brain-plaques-alzheimer-s-disease-has-failed

F-Theory, Occam's razor and ignorance

Physicists are funny people - they like complexity and large numbers. They recently found F-theory (not sure what "F" stands for except for the obvious possible guesses), that demonstrates a "quadrillion ways, string theory could make the universe." That is impressive and could provide rich fodder for PhD theses and "peer reviewed," publications for a century to come. But does it advance knowledge? It is less clear.

Complexity is a problematic concept. As the true geniuses of the yesteryear correctly emphasized, "God does not play dice," and unless she has a quantum computer in the basement, she will not embark on a journey that has "quadrillion," ways to make the universe. Large numbers could be ego boosting behind the ivy walls but it has no practical use. It is probably time for those attempting to formulate the next exotic "theory of everything," to get out of their windowless offices and smell the roses.

There is no problem that has been solved by increasing complexity. Those who advanced thinking always preferred simplicity. Knowledge is clearly inversely correlated with complexity. Even the money men, who typically do not know much, seem to have gravitated to this universal law. So, why are we here at this point in time? One possible answer is that engineering heavy education has churned out engineers who want to measure "reverberations," not much larger than the size of a proton or mathematicians, enamored by "large numbers." Even the business guys seem to have learned bad habits as most want to use, "big data."

Complexity is utility diminishing. Theories that push in that direction is utterly useless.

(1) https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/found-a-quadrillion-ways-for-string-theory-to-make-our-universe/

The era of bioelectronics

The most complex electromagnetic and chemical system known, the human body, so far has substantially avoided manipulation by electromagnetic means. This may be changing. Recent news (1) about a transistor design that enables integrated, real-time sensing and simulation of signals from living organisms, could lead to better diagnostics and treatment. Low cost Silicon has impeded innovation and applications in non-conventional substrates. There have been few biocompatible designs for the lack of appropriate materials and incentives.

Chemicals have been easier and in the presence of many low hanging fruits, researchers did not spend much time on alternatives. As they solved simpler problems, auto-immune diseases start to dominate the human architecture. The heart-breaking failure of a recent drug for Alzheimer's (2) is symptomatic of the end of the chemical era. The brain likely responds better to electromagnetic stimuli but contemporary pharmaceutical companies are ill-equipped to pursue this line of thought.

Simple diseases such as Hypertension and Type 2 Diabetes, that command over half of the healthcare costs in the log run, could be positively influenced by better monitoring and treatment mechanisms that are integrated into the body. CHF and other Cardiovascular events could be picked up earlier and intervened optimally by the same mechanisms. As the sun gets hotter and nastier, embedded devices in the skin could shield the body from harmful rays. Organ failures could be arrested, nutrition deficiencies could be remedied, better food and treatment regimens could be suggested and humanity could possibly move to a more advanced health regime.

It is exciting. Integrated bioelectronics with embedded artificial intelligence could be a game changer.

(1) http://advances.sciencemag.org/content/5/2/eaau7378
(2) https://www.cnn.com/2019/03/21/health/alzheimers-drug-trial-failure-aducanumab-bn/index.html

The fallacy of experimental Physics

Experiments, albeit useful from a practical perspective, have never advanced theory. The Hubble constant is being pushed, pulled and tweaked by engineers and physicists as if that is going to lead somewhere. The "standard model," was dead on arrival. It is just that tenure seeking academics and measurement driven engineers, will not let it go. Now, the "cosmological crisis," (1) apparently is going to propel the theory to the next level.

It is unlikely. Theory emanates from imagination and not from "precise," measurements. Theory is about the unknown and not the incremental. Theory is about scope and not scale. Theory is about emergence and not process. Theory is about mindless excursions and not planned travel. Theory is about finding connections among the disconnected. Theory is about freedom and not programs. Theory is not about travelling to adjacent planets but conceptualizing what may be beyond, Theory is not exploration of the tangible but the unknown. Theory does not require heavy steel, just paper and pencil.

Humanity waits for the arrival of the next genius. For over a century, experimentalists roamed the planet with nothing to show. It showcases why the existence of a singular mind at a space-time coordinate defines the trajectory for knowledge.

We may be stuck. Our more and more "precise," measurements will asymptotically reach complete ignorance.



(1) https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/best-yet-measurements-deepen-cosmological-crisis/

AI and the weakest link

The recent debacle in aircraft design is a constant reminder that software engineers and “data scientists,” excited by the possibilities, could create havoc in many different industries. In transportation, as autopilot systems get smarter, they could take over virtually everything a vehicle does, terrestrial or otherwise. What the designers seem to have missed recently is that an aircraft is a conglomeration of data transmitting mechanical sensors and sophisticated software. Traditional engineering education would have informed the designers that the system is only as good as the weakest link, but the younger ones may have skipped those courses. Here, faulty data from an old technology may have confused the brain. There are multiple issues to consider here.

First, the design of systems needs to be holistic. This is easier said than done as a complex vehicle is designed in parts and assembled. Teams who work on these components may have different skill sets and the overall blueprint may not consider the biases in designs created by separate teams. For example, if the brain is designed with little flexibility to discard faulty data, the expectation would be that it is unlikely. However, if the data is emerging from mechanical devices, with no embedded intelligence, it is almost a certainty that faulty data will arrive at some point in the senor’s life. Two recent aircraft failures in Asia and Africa and the one much earlier over the Atlantic seem to have been caused by bad sensors sending bad data to a “sophisticated AI agent,” with little capability to differentiate between good and bad data. So, either the sensors and other mechanical devices in the system need to be smarter so as to recognize their own fallibilities or the central brain has to be able to recognize when it is fed bad stuff. There is a lull in engineering education that has moved in the direction of high specialization, without an overall understanding of systems design and risk. This is going to surface many issues across industries from transportation, manufacturing to healthcare.

Second, the human is still the best-known risk mitigator, with her brain fine-tuned over the millennia to sense and avert danger. In transportation, disengagement has to be a fundamental aspect of design. Although it could be tempting to sit back while an aircraft takes off and lands or to read “Harry Potter,” while behind the wheels of an autonomous terrestrial vehicle, these actions are ill-advised. The human has to expect the machine to ill behave and be at the very least ready to receive complete disengagement at any point in time. Excited engineers may think otherwise, but we are nowhere close to fail-safe AI. Let’s not kid ourselves – writing code is easy but making it work all the time, is not. Educational institutions will do a disservice for the next generation of engineers if they impart the idea that AI is human devoid.

Transportation is just one industry. The problems witnessed, span across every industry today. For example, in healthcare, AI is slowly percolating but the designers have to remember that there are weak links there too. Ironically, in the provider arena, the weak link is the human, who “inputs,” data into aging databases, sometimes called Electronic Medical Records (EMR) systems. Designed by engineers, with no understanding of healthcare, a couple of decades ago, they are receptacles of errors that can bring emerging AI and decision systems to their knees. If one designs AI driven decision systems in these environments, she has to be acutely aware of the uncertainty in inputs caused by humans, who are notorious in making mistakes with computer keyboards (or even voice commands) and database containers designed with old technologies. So, designs here need to systematically consider disengagement when the AI agent is unable to decipher data.

In manufacturing, led by data collection enthusiasts from the 90s, older database technologies, sometimes elegantly called, “Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP), systems, dominate. They have been “warehousing,” data for decades with little understanding of what it means. Now, “Hannah,” and her cousins, seem to have gotten religion but again, there is a problem here. Cutting and dicing data to make pretty pictures for decision-makers, does nothing to improve decision-making or to mitigate risk. The weak link here is the technology, designed and maintained by those who believe businesses are run by the collection, aggregation, and reporting of data. Unfortunately, successful businesses have moved on.

AI is a good thing, but not in the absence of logical thinking and systems design. Intelligence is not about the routine, but the ability to act when encountered the “non-routine.” As the software and hardware giants sell their wares, in the cloud and elsewhere, they have to understand the perils of bad and rushed technology. It is great to fool a restaurant by simulated voice, it is great to demonstrate that “machine learning,” on Twitter will create a racist and it is great to tag and collate music fast, but none of these activities is going to propel humanity to the next level. Being good in search, operating system design or good hardware, do not automatically make these companies, “experts” in an area that is erroneously called, Artificial Intelligence. There is nothing artificial about intelligence. Machines have the potential to be a lot more “intelligent,” than humans. If anybody has any doubt, just take a look at the nation’s capital and imagine a scenario of replacing the policy-makers with dumb machines. They will likely perform infinitely better. For the rest of us, the reality is still an important concept and there, we have to make sure the developments are in a beneficial direction.

Intelligence, ultimately, is about decision-making. Humans have been pretty good at it, barring a few narcissistic and mentally ill specimens in full view. They had to survive the dicey world they were handed when they climbed down the tree and stood upright in the African Savannah for the first time. Bad decision-making would have instantly eliminated them. They survived, albeit with less than 10K specimens through a harsh bottleneck. Later, single-cell organisms almost wiped them out on multiple occasions but they survived again. Now, they encounter a technology discontinuity, something that is so foreign to their psyche, the dominant reaction has to be, rejection. And, for the most part, it is. But their brains have morphed into a quantum computer, able to think about possibilities. This could be their Achilles heel, but then, life is not worth living without taking risks.

Educational institutions, still chasing the latest trends to make money, have the ultimate responsibility to get this right. To bring humanity to a level 1 society, we need to move past our instincts, created by tactical objective functions driven by food and sex and embrace intelligence. It is likely that machines will lead humanity out of its perils.

Micro customization

Recent news (1) that a gastric resident delivery mechanism can deliver reliable, sustainable doses of agents for the long term is important. Innovation in chemical agents has moved ahead of mechanisms that would deliver them at the right time, in the optimum dose, by the best route and to the most receptive site. The ability to optimally deliver the agent is likely more important than the agent itself. In the absence of such delivery mechanisms, manufacturers have stuck to the original blue print - mass manufacturing of pills in a singular dose that shows the best therapeutic index in the population. Personalized medicine, thus, has remained elusive and more importantly, outside the business models of manufacturers.

It may be changing. Ironically, providers have moved ahead of other participants in the healthcare value chain, in the implementation of personalized medicine. Recent advancements in Artificial Intelligence and the availability of abundant data have better  positioned the providers to understand, treat and manage patients, individual by individual. If delivery mechanisms improve and become individually customizable, we can rapidly move into the next level of personalized medicine. Here, we can envision devices that can measure, decide and disburse micro doses to assure optimum delivery and complete compliance. Intelligent devices could be just round the corner, taking advantage of IoT. With embedded intelligence on board, such devices can not only operate as initially primed but also self learn and adjust over time. A couple of decades from now, medical professionals will likely view the current regime to be completely archaic.

More generally, any business that is driven by scale, a blind adherence to singular specifications, will have great difficulty to survive in the future. Technology is readily available, not just for mass customization but rather for individual intervention. This is a regime change that will affect every industry and every business. Getting ahead of this rapid transformation is a necessary condition for success.

(1) A gastric resident drug delivery system for prolonged gram-level dosing of tuberculosis treatment. Verma et al. http://stm.sciencemag.org/content/11/483/eaau6267

Type 2 Debate

A recent article (1) brings the current diagnostic and treatment regimens for those who are deemed to be at risk for progressing into Type 2 Diabetes, into question. The arguments are fair and the conflicts are clear. But what the article misses is the risk/return trade-off for the wretched condition. The total cost of diabetes related cost in the US alone is fast approaching $0.5 Trillion. With India and China running fast to the precipice, happily feeding on Western food, we do have a significant issue to deal with.

So, there are two important questions. First, do we have a reasonable idea of the risk of incidence and progression? Age old heuristics such as fasting blood sugar has been shown to be utterly useless.The current golden metric, A1c, is likely equally flawed. The answer to this question appears to be an emphatic no. And second, are the people in charge of prescribing the thresholds for diagnosis and prevention influenced by factors outside science. Unfortunately, the answer to this is likely yes.

Medicine has always shunned data and analytics in making decisions. This has set them so far behind, the US spends close to 20% of its GDP for worse outcomes. And aging regulators, still using century old statistical measurements to make decisions, makes this worse. The manufacturers, bloated with conventional statisticians, ever ready to prove what the regulators seek, are progressing backward in time. So, it is not surprising that we have ended up in a confusing muddle regarding a disease state that affects close 20% of the world population.

Now, what? It is easy to show statistics that claims only 2% of the pre-diabetics progress into diabetes. Since we are unclear as to the "precise," demarcation between pre and post diabetes, a more relevant question is what the total cost is on the system. A few thousand years ago, humans invented agriculture - and it clearly had an impact on their health. Meat eating humans for millennia, moved to stuff their bodies are not designed to process. In the last hundred years, they had too much to eat and that will certainly create problems not only for their organs, efficiently designed for very little food but also their infrastructure, designed for a slim body. Half the world's population now exceed the parameters of original designs.

Medicine has to embrace modern technology. Doctors should not be simply following rules put down blindly, regulators have to open their windows and realize that the "p-value," is a dead construct and manufacturers need to understand that their job is not a constrained optimization based on what the regulators think.

It is time for the industry to move on.


(1) https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2019/03/war-prediabetes-could-be-boon-pharma-it-good-medicine

Health

News (1) that a group of scientists is attempting to build up a health system in Madagascar from scratch, driven by data, analytics, and pure heart is welcome news. Health, a non-tradable asset, has kept modern humans bottled up. Electing dumb leaders has taken them further behind. The economics of health is a complex question and till scientists and medical professionals take it on, we will swirl around in political ignorance and impasse.

Humans did not have to worry about health until recently. Their able bodies were eaten by cats or crushed by heavier animals much before any required intervention against single cell organisms or auto-immune diseases. It is different now. They are living way past the design horizon. To make matters worse, they have been carrying unwanted weight, putting unexpected levels of stress on their joints. Their organs have been failing because of overuse and their infrastructure is crumbling, not able to hold them up. Modern medicine has acted as a band-aid to prolong life but it has not contributed to maximizing the utility of the individual or society.

A big part of this issue has to do with the inadequacies of systems that apparently intelligent people designed. When there are no markets, incompetence rises. When incentives are misaligned, humans behave as they are expected to, maximizing short term returns. And, humans have a tendency to gang up on the weak and the weary as they learned through the eons of evolution. It is a perfect storm - incompetence, ignorance and non-market designs - that could sink humanity.

It is time to step out. Experiment, revolutionize and let information and technology guide future actions.

(1) http://science.sciencemag.org/content/363/6430/918

Reducing software by hardware

New transistor designs (1) may help surpass the daunting constraints faced by contemporary software as we move toward solving highly specialized problems. The dominance of software over general computing architecture may be coming to an end. Until architectures can practically incorporate quantum computing, there is an impasse. And, quantum tunneling has brought conventional transistor designs to an asymptotic and predictable lethargy.

It is time to return to customized hardware for specialized problems. This will require more engineers again and less programmers and mathematicians. Educational institutions, grand masters at following the latest trends, while they teach the students "strategy," are incompetent in understanding what tomorrow will bring. And, that will certainly dampen innovation in the required direction.

However, this could be a short term phenomenon. Either of the two directions, squeezing more out of Silicon or finding better materials, may yield interesting designs that may allow a return to software in the future. The latter has much more potential but is also more risky. That would mean that the giants of the industry will shy away from it as they try to tie the quarterly numbers for the shareholders. And some of them may realize that the "cloud," is not a solution, just a sojourn.

The hardware regime is beginning again. We have to give electrons a more direct way to shuttle for efficient computing. Anything less will tie us down to the status-quo.

(1) http://advances.sciencemag.org/content/5/2/eaau7378

AI for the brain

Consciousness, still an undefined construct, may emerge from the brain's attempt to implement AI on its automation infrastructure. The predictive brain (1) often fails and consciousness may provide an overarching control over manual and ad-hoc decision making, that is dangerous. As she stood up in the African Savannah for the first time, she had to predict well to thrive. But when the predictions failed, it was fatal. The brain's AI, consciousness, was a necessary condition for humans to tackle the hostile conditions they were in early in their progression.

For modern humans, however, it has become less relevant. The consciousness content of the brain has been declining for centuries for many reasons. First, the brain has been dumbed down with no need to predict to survive - instead, it has been delegated to an instrument that does arithmetic like a calculator. Second, the noise fed into the brain from a plethora of external devices has forced specialization in certain areas such as translation, optimization, and prioritization. These are programmatically driven with no scope of consciousness. Finally, it is possible that modern humans have much simpler objective functions driven largely by material wealth and that does not require the activation of consciousness.

If so, the advancements in brain design during the early years of human history may have become a liability later. As science took hold of the human psyche, humans have lost on consciousness led abstract thoughts. As the cave paintings in France indicate, there has been a right brain dominance in humans early as they struggled through the daily routines. Only a handful of specimens have been able to dream and predict simultaneously in the last few centuries. And now, since the left brain has been in complete control, humans have no use for consciousness. As the AI enthusiasts burn the midnight oil to make computers look and act like humans, they may want to consider that their task will become easier as time progresses. In the future, humans will automatically act like computers, without consciousness. So, there is no need for AI for computers, as humans devoid of brain AI, will proxy for the computers of the future.

It is ironic. As humans struggle to teach computers about themselves, they have become less than computers.


(1) https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/the-brains-autopilot-mechanism-steers-consciousness/

Entanglement of left and right brain

Humans seem to survive with two opposite personalities in their brain. The left and right hemispheres of the brain accumulate and process data differently - it is almost like two different people are living inside the same context, simultaneously. In most cases, it appears one or the other dominates unilaterally and consistently, providing an unchanging outward personality. In a limited number of cases, humans seem to be able to switch back and forth, demonstrating different personalities and thought processes - perhaps one at work and the other at home.

An entanglement of the left and right brain could provide humans a higher context. The left brain, typically analytical and precise, battles constantly the right, shy and holistic. The left, a master at tactics do not typically yield to strategy, that appears squishy and undefined. The time lag that comes with the tenuous hardware connection between the two often leads to confusion - and sometimes to diseases.

But if one could get the two sides entangled, perhaps thoughts and ideas could be transmitted without a loss in time. If so, humans could have an integrated brain - that combines tactics with strategy, precision with uncertainty, optimization with satisfaction, utilitarianism with emotion, wealth with knowledge, ideas with processes, bad with good, past with future, ignorance with science, technology with ordinary decisions, insurance with health of the populace, board rooms with manufacturing plants, teachers with students, Washington with the heartland, East with the West, business with academics, politicians with those who run away from it, the guy with beautiful artificial hair and the hairless, those who spent millions to make their skin look better before heading out to the red carpet with those who do not have enough for dinner.

Entangle two sides of your brain. If so, you could propel humanity further.

Poop for depression

It has long been known that the microbiome has a significant influence on the human brain. Now more tactical observations (1) confirm that certain missing species in the gut could lead the host to depression. This is an important finding that may lower brain research to focus on lower parts of the body.

The gut has been an unavoidable and most important aspect of large biological systems including humans. There they converted plant and animal matter to energy, powered their ever agreeable computer and went to work. Most systems had very efficient designs of the brain, just capable of keeping their mechanical systems that controlled the body in tune. Then the freak, human, showed up, with significant excess capacity in an organ that tends to get bored. However, the small ones in the gut always held the strings. It is possible that they are using the quantum computer upstairs for research, without the knowledge of the host.

Fecal transplant seems to solve many problems and lately CNS issues, including depression. The predictive power of microbiome on the occurrence and amelioration of human disease states is higher than what can be done with the compendium of medical knowledge based on foreign chemical agents. In fact, chemical agents that destroy the microbiome, albeit being able to show short term benefits, lead to long term deleterious effects on the system. Antibiotics certainly fall into this category. More importantly, these agents seem to have accelerated the decline of beneficial bacteria while simultaneously increasing the potency of the bad ones.

Medicine may need to focus on, not on the host, but what the host carries. The later, perhaps accounting for over half of the live cells in the system, appears to control almost everything including the host's brain.


(1) https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2019/02/evidence-mounts-gut-bacteria-can-influence-mood-prevent-depression

Mirror, Mirror... Who is the smartest?

News (1) that a tiny reef fish can recognize itself in the mirror may have implications for how intelligence is defined, consciousness is understood and ultimately, how the contemporary darling of humans - "artificial intelligence," progresses out of hype and confusion. Humans, endowed with a massive quantum computer with almost infinite capacity, appear incompetent compared to life forms with limited resources. Assessment of intelligence has to consider both the output as well as the endowment - it has to be a ratio of these metrics. More tactically for humans, "IQ," has to be a function of initial conditions afforded to the individual, exhibiting intelligence. Biased standardized tests and IQ tests do not have a clue how this works.

A new measurement is sorely needed. Across the animal kingdom, if output is measured against brain endowment, humans are likely going to bring up the rear. It is apt, as they have been trying to burn the Oxygen out of their greenhouse before they suffocate, erect walls and hatred and smash a beautiful planet down, at the first opportunity. This is clearly not signs of intelligence, far from it. Recognizing self is an important leap in the intelligence spectrum. If a biological entity could do that with few brain cells, it would point to major pitfalls in our understanding of IQ. Self awareness is a necessary (but not necessarily sufficient) condition for consciousness. If we ultimately find aggregate consciousness across species is approximately the same, it will be damning for the human ego.

If consciousness can be replicated with few q-bits, as in the case of the reef fish, it may also mean that humans are on a wrong tangent toward "artificial intelligence." It would not matter if companies have infinite computing resources, that will not be sufficient to create intelligence. As the hardware, search and operating system giants have found out by repeated experiments, hooking up infinite processors and computers do not lead to "intelligence." It will certainly burn a hole in your clients' quarterly budgets but nothing beyond that. And, the ".ai" companies with stars in their eyes, doing everything to change the world, will do much less.

Let's learn from the reef fish - minimize resources and maximize output. That's the definition of intelligence.


(1) https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/a-tiny-reef-fish-can-recognize-itself-in-a-mirror/

Universal mathematics

Recent news (1) that honeybees can add and substract using colored symbolic representations, indicates that mathematics is a more fundamental concept, integral to any entity. For a biological system to survive and thrive, it appears that the conceptualization of symbolic representations and arithmetic are necessary conditions. It may have broader implications for those seeking life outside Earth. If life is Carbon based, it is possible that they will share a common mathematical language, regardless of the state of their evolution.

The physical discontinuity that led to mass extinctions 65 million years ago on Earth and sent the remaining biological diversity on a tangent, may have resulted in a slower than typical progression on mathematical capabilities. If Honeybees could have performed arithmetic 300 million years before humans arrived, it is possible that the survivors are less competent in conceptualization and symbolic representation. If so, extraterrestrial life is likely substantially more advanced in mathematics. The beauty of math, as a language, is that it is backward compatible. The advanced species, thus, will be able to recognize the crude conceptualization and arithmetic that humans are currently specializing in.

If the current constraints on space-time hold true (which is unlikely), physical transport across coordinates of possible life will be impossible. Assuming we got this reasonably correct, an advanced entity elsewhere will try to communicate using only mathematics and not rigid constraints such as languages. Voyager is carrying recordings of languages from around the world on the premise that when ET picks it up, they will be thrilled by English or Arabic. It is unlikely. Human languages are not backward compatible nor are they mathematically reducible. It is an accumulation of errors, an inelegant misrepresentation of beautiful math. More cynically, the human brain appears to be mathematical in operation, not in use. An advanced entity may ultimately be able to connect directly with the hardware but not to the carrier of it.

Is there free will?

(1) https://www.inverse.com/article/53065-can-bees-do-math-wtf

Options for the blue planet

As the policy makers try hard to curtail the options left for the tiny blue dot based on ignorance and ego, there could still be a few left for humanity to consider. The planet appears to be sick and is under constant threat from space, both intra and extrasolar. Any external observer to this closed system is unlikely to bet on its survival. The existential threats to humanity fall largely into two buckets - a slow environmental deterioration that will lead to massive biological extinctions with an anticipated culmination and a catastrophic event that will wipe it out from the vast universal map.

So, what options are left? On the former, most scientists and policy-makers are focused on curtailing greenhouse emissions. It is a bit like studying how brakes work on an automobile that is falling down the mountain slope. Policies that incrementally curtail emissions will do nothing - that time has long passed. Data will show that it was never a reliable option -just an academic notion and a feel-good exercise. The only option is a technological leap - an invention that can substantially change the composition of the greenhouse we all breathe in, within a decade. This is fundamentally a material science and energy problem. If we get the best minds focused on it, we can certainly solve it. It is a waste of time trying to influence the nincompoops in the nation's capital and elsewhere.

On the later, the space agency has been a disappointment. Packed with a bimodal distribution of engineers, some very old and some very young,  they have completely missed the boat. The older ones want to make rockets and land on nearby planets. The younger ones with stars in their eyes want to time travel. Neither is going to be helpful in any way on an impending threat of collision with a large-sized body. Here again, the only option is a technological leap. Engineers have a tendency to rely on what they know, such as exploding an approaching asteroid with a nuclear bomb. What they need to focus on are inventions that will render the status-quo obsolete. Universities, money hungry machines, have not been helpful in teaching the next generation what is really important. The professors seek tenures, the administrators seek handouts and the students seek degrees with irrelevant rankings and stamps.

It is truly a comedy. As they run faster and faster like hamsters on a treadmill with no end goal, humans have to wonder how they can break out of the shackle.

The Chicago constant

Professor Hubble of Chicago proposed and measured a single number, with such broad implications that a century later we are still trying to figure it out (1). The fate of the universe, no less, rests on the thoughts of a singular individual from the Southside. Candles and CMB seem to disagree so closely that God should be chuckling as She let the humans seek unattainable truth as they vanish. But the accomplishments of a single individual, Hubble, cannot be underestimated.

The engineers got LIGO and those who do not have access, simpler ideas. Could we not understand if we expand into darkness or simply converge back into heat and fury? Could we not understand that an ailing World, a spec in the universe, does not matter? Could we not understand that the short horizons we are afforded are so ephemeral that counting money and power are useless? Could we not understand walls and hatred do not solve problems? Could we not understand only those hypotheses that are well supported by "grants," are proved and the rest not. Could we not understand that outcomes are mostly based on initial conditions and not capabilities, competence or assertions?

A single number, invented by an advanced human being, hangs in the balance. It is ironic.

(1) https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/the-universes-fate-rests-on-the-hubble-constant-mdash-which-has-so-far-eluded-astronomers1/#googDisableSync

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