I am taking a course on Hume this semester, and I admit is quite interesting to study my intellectual nemesis in such detail.
One thing that has begun to bother me is this notion if identity. Hume makes an admittedly solid case for the impermanence of identity; this does not bother me, as - pragmatically - it makes no difference to me if the world around me is replaced spontaneously with identical copies every time I close my eyes: after all, if the object is numerically identical, then what difference does it make? The attributes I ascribe these objects remain; if I identify Locke, my cat, not through the persistence of her identity over time, but instead through her attributes and qualities, some of which are present in the object so described and some of which are personal labels that I project onto those qualities, then in effect, Locke the cat remains Locke the cat despite not being the "original" Locke the cat, as numerical identity is sufficient, pragmatically speaking, to retain identity.
Obviously, however, numerical identity is not what we generally mean by identity; we want persistence across time, not mere perfect copies. If I speak of Locke the cat, then it should be the "same" Locke the cat over time, not simply numerically identical copies separated by my lack of direct perception of Locke the cat.
So... I'm going to attempt to construct a case for identity here. We'll ignore self-identity for the time being; I have some other thoughts on that, relying on the idea of self-referential consciousness taken from Hofstadter and some other hokey ideas involving special agency and such, which I have probably outlined before.
While this thesis will largely presume a non-substance approach, substances make this argument significantly easier, even probably unnecessary. However, in my book, substance is a very ethereal concept - not in the realm of metaphysics, but very ontologically barren by itself - thus, this concept may yet hold water therein. Further examination of substance is beyond the scope of this post, though.
Let's begin with some basic propositions, and see if they hold water, before we delve too deep.
First, I would assert that we can observe the interactions between objects. If we accept sense-data as being an accurate reflection of the world around us - so ignoring any representation theories and such - we can make, within reason, assertions about the relations between objects. I use the word "relation" very intentionally, as I am making a reference to Hume's work: if we can speak of relations between objects, then that will be very useful. We will gleefully ignore any and all potentially causal relations between objects within our sense data; it is merely useful to observe that these relations exist, of any kind.
Second, we can observe through sense-data, provided an unbroken chain of observation (by which I mean no period of time elapsing in which an object could potentially lose its identity), that one object and another can and do have an effect on one another. If I drop a ball on a pool table, there are a number of events that transpire: the sound of the ball striking the table at least once, the potential movement of the fabric on the table's surface, the movement of the ball itself as it strikes the table. Again the precise causal nature of these events is irrelevant - merely that they are occurring, a "constant conjunction" if you want to use Hume's terminology. Order and causality matter not; only the conjunction of the objects in question in some nebulous relation of some sort.
Third, I would propose that observation is a relation. If objects we behold in our sense-data somehow retains its identity while we observe it, then it is sensible that this could be said to be a relation - there is a relationship between the viewer and the viewed that is preventing loss of identity. But - it is not necessarily just sight, but any sense-data. Thus smell, hearing, touch, all these count as potential relations that prevent loss of identity.
Fourth, I propose that it is impossible - in all but the most catatonic of states - for a human being to utterly remove themselves from the experience of sensation. By this I mean that while we can willfully remove our sight, we cannot voluntarily cease our hearing or touching of objects; we are always aware of at least one object beyond ourselves.
Should these four propositions hold, it should be reasonable to assert that existence does not spontaneously cease to be when we close our senses to it; that objects beyond our ability to perceive yet retain their identity. I shall attempt to present an example of how this is so.
We have an understanding that objects have relations to each other. Just as the pool table and the ball have a relation in our earlier example, so, too, do all other objects have some relation with at least some other object; for an object to have no relation to any other object necessitates that it exists in void, inaccessible in any fashion, and thus may as well not exist.
We can posit that these relations are maintained through our lack of direct sense-data. We do so through our earlier assertions: I am unable to completely close off my perceptions of all sense-data. Through this, I must perceive at least one other object; the precise object, in this instance, is irrelevant.
That one object, however, maintains relations to at least one other object. Thus, while the primary object does not necessarily have sense-data itself, I am aware - through my earlier sense-data - that the primary object (of which I am retaining sense-data) and the secondary (of which I have no direct sense-data at present) have a relation of some kind; this could be said to be a perception of some kind, though objects do not perceive their own relations. "Constant conjunction" would indicate a relation of some kind, and this is a necessary thing, not accidental; the form of the conjunction is again irrelevant, merely the fact that it exists is sufficient for our purposes here.
Through this acknowledgement of a relation of some kind between the primary object and the secondary object, the second object thus retains its identity by reference: the primary object holds a reference to the second through its relation to it, and I retain direct sense-data of the primary object, because I am incapable of not perceiving at least one other object, lest I be in void and thus necessarily nonexistent.
This secondary object, then, has relations to at least one other object, which we shall call the tertiary object. Through prior sense-data I am aware of the existence of this third object and its relation to the second, though I presently observe neither the second nor the third. However, the second object holds a reference to the third, namely its relation to it; thus, I know of the persistence of the identity of the third object through my knowledge of the persistence of the second, which I know through the persistence of the primary, which I know through direct sense-data.
From this, it is a simple case of a logical chain that extends to all objects I have observed: I know of their existence through reference, through their possessing of a relation - of any kind - to another object, and so on and so forth, all the way through to the primary object, of which I retain direct sense-data.
Now, two arguments become immediately apparent: first, that I cannot know of objects of which I have no prior sense-data, and thus these objects are entirely capable of losing their persistence of identity; and second, that it is entirely possible that the primary object's only reference is to myself, as objects must admit of at least a single relation, and it is possible for only a pair of objects to exist in this model.
To the first objection, I would argue that my direct awareness of a relation between objects is unnecessary for them to maintain identity, but merely that the object has a relation of some kind to any object of which I have had awareness. I need not know whether or not a new desk has been placed in the room next door; but, because I am aware of at least one object to which that desk has a relation, that desk must have persistent identity, because it will be referenced, through a logical chain, by an object of which I am aware - namely, the primary object. If the unknown object does not exist in void, then it must necessarily exist with at least one other object; so long as one of the objects in its referential chain exists such that it holds a reference to an object that belongs to my referential chain, then the object becomes part of my referential chain, and thus it retains its identity. Thus while I am unaware of the desk, I am aware of the room it is in, the floor upon which it rests, the door through which I enter the room, and so forth - of these things I have had perceptions, and these objects retain their identity through my referential chain, thus the desk must necessarily retain its identity through reference to these objects of which I am aware.
The rebuttal to the second objection is much the same as the first. However, I will allow that it is possible for an object's referential chain to hold no reference to any object within my referential chain; in this instance, however, I would argue that then it is impossible for that object to ever be within my referential chain.
As we have demonstrated earlier, relations are held between objects even when not subject to direct sense-data; thus, even if we are unaware of a particular relation, it necessarily must still exist. If I close my eyes, the relation between the pool table and the ball upon it does not change - the two objects reference each other. From this, we can conclude that my action of observation was not a necessary component of the reference. Thus, references are qualities of the world and the objects within it, not ascribed to them by an observer. In such a world, then, an object which holds no reference to any object within my referential chain must necessarily not exist, as my referential chain will eventually hold reference to all objects that exist - thus, if an object cannot be referenced, it does not exist.
Through this argument, we have removed the need for observers capable of processing sense-data. Observation is not a necessary component of the formation of these relations, merely the realization of them. Because the precise nature of the relation is irrelevant, merely that it exists, then any relation will suffice; and if my lack of direct perception of a relation between objects is not necessary to maintain that relation, then I need not ever perceive that relation directly in order to establish that it exists.
Thus, objects that have relations maintain those relations. As sense-data is a relation, and was the key component of objects maintaining identity persistence, it can be stated that it is a relation - of any kind - that forces an object to maintain an identity. As we observe relations, and can retain knowledge of the identity of distant objects through a referential chain that includes objects to which we retain immediate sense-data, we can realize that these relations are independent of our observations. In such a world, if relations are the only necessary component to maintain identity, and objects retain reference to other objects, which is itself a relation, then all objects that exist maintain their identity through being a link in a referential chain.
Monday, March 10, 2014
Sunday, June 2, 2013
Learn By Doing
A really long time ago, I read the dissertation written by Hofstadter and his associates regarding the program known as Metacat, whose life's ambition was to understand analogies and produce a new analogy following the rules given by an initial analogy. The catch was that the rules behind the first analogy were not explained to it: it had to "figure it out," as it were. It occasionally got it right, but was more interesting was when it got it "wrong:" because, technically, the analogies it came up with did indeed follow the same rules as the first... it was just a different rule than the humans giving it the examples had thought of.
Teaching an AI is, I imagine, roughly similar to teaching a child: you basically go over the basic concept again and again, then give the AI a chance to demonstrate that it has learned what you've been teaching it. However, I suspect that there may be a better way, at least for AI, given just how incredibly different they think than we do.
Instead of just giving the AI examples of what you want, and see what happens, allow it to give the humans examples. Allow it to produce an analogy, then request that the humans teaching it produce a similar analogy.
For example, let's say that we give the AI these two analogy sets: "AA:BB, CC:??", where it needs to figure out the second half of the second analogy. Now, I can come up with at least two very reasonable responses: DD, following a +1 increment on letter position; or FF, following a doubling of the letter's position (A is 1, double is 2, so B; C is 3, double is 6, so F). Doubtless there are others, all assuredly involving more complicated maths or takes on what exactly is going on in these analogies.
The humans who gave this example have a clear idea in mind, but the AI has little clue which one is right. Humans are, for the moment, more sensitive to context and tend to think simpler at younger ages: a young child will, for example, almost assuredly give DD as the answer. Most people might not even consider FF as a possible answer, if only because performing unusual mathematical operations on letter position may not occur to them. But to an AI, this shit is all math, which leads them to doing things that may - at first glance - seem preposterous.
This is why the idea of learning by doing - by making the AI give the humans an example and an unfinished analogy - would be so incredibly powerful. On the one hand, it gives it an opportunity to see how other people solve analogies: it gives it ways to examine the concept of the analogy when it is not the one being tested, allowing it to see how other entities react to the sorts of information that it's been being tested on. On the other, it gives us even greater insights into how a particular AI is thinking: what sorts of analogies is it creating? Are they human-easy, human-difficult? Are they long and complex, or are they short and simple? Through looking at what sorts of examples the AI creates, we get a better picture of its own understanding of analogies and how they are constructed.
Obviously, this concept can be expanded out to nearly anything, not just analogies. I think that one of our problems with teaching AIs to date is that we are not giving them the opportunity to learn through watching other entities work through the problems we're giving them: instead, we force them to solely rely upon their own experiential data and the information required to make decisions about the tasks we are making them go through.
Just as the presence of sensorimotor equipment may prove to be crucially important to the development of an AI, we also need to keep in mind the other myriad ways in which our present AI teaching methodologies are non-reflective of how human minds are taught and grow. The more alike we can make their environments and methodologies, the more likely we are, I think, to be able to arrive at strong AI.
Teaching an AI is, I imagine, roughly similar to teaching a child: you basically go over the basic concept again and again, then give the AI a chance to demonstrate that it has learned what you've been teaching it. However, I suspect that there may be a better way, at least for AI, given just how incredibly different they think than we do.
Instead of just giving the AI examples of what you want, and see what happens, allow it to give the humans examples. Allow it to produce an analogy, then request that the humans teaching it produce a similar analogy.
For example, let's say that we give the AI these two analogy sets: "AA:BB, CC:??", where it needs to figure out the second half of the second analogy. Now, I can come up with at least two very reasonable responses: DD, following a +1 increment on letter position; or FF, following a doubling of the letter's position (A is 1, double is 2, so B; C is 3, double is 6, so F). Doubtless there are others, all assuredly involving more complicated maths or takes on what exactly is going on in these analogies.
The humans who gave this example have a clear idea in mind, but the AI has little clue which one is right. Humans are, for the moment, more sensitive to context and tend to think simpler at younger ages: a young child will, for example, almost assuredly give DD as the answer. Most people might not even consider FF as a possible answer, if only because performing unusual mathematical operations on letter position may not occur to them. But to an AI, this shit is all math, which leads them to doing things that may - at first glance - seem preposterous.
This is why the idea of learning by doing - by making the AI give the humans an example and an unfinished analogy - would be so incredibly powerful. On the one hand, it gives it an opportunity to see how other people solve analogies: it gives it ways to examine the concept of the analogy when it is not the one being tested, allowing it to see how other entities react to the sorts of information that it's been being tested on. On the other, it gives us even greater insights into how a particular AI is thinking: what sorts of analogies is it creating? Are they human-easy, human-difficult? Are they long and complex, or are they short and simple? Through looking at what sorts of examples the AI creates, we get a better picture of its own understanding of analogies and how they are constructed.
Obviously, this concept can be expanded out to nearly anything, not just analogies. I think that one of our problems with teaching AIs to date is that we are not giving them the opportunity to learn through watching other entities work through the problems we're giving them: instead, we force them to solely rely upon their own experiential data and the information required to make decisions about the tasks we are making them go through.
Just as the presence of sensorimotor equipment may prove to be crucially important to the development of an AI, we also need to keep in mind the other myriad ways in which our present AI teaching methodologies are non-reflective of how human minds are taught and grow. The more alike we can make their environments and methodologies, the more likely we are, I think, to be able to arrive at strong AI.
Friday, May 10, 2013
Agent Is As Agent Does
I've been thinking about this concept off and on for a couple months now, so I think I should type it down. Keep in mind that it's unpolished: I don't have a solid take on the precise execution of the concept, or if it is actually functionally different from anything in the space, but it seems an interesting way to handle things, to me. It also seems to be an interesting avenue to investigate cognitive science, as well.
Anyway, on to the concept.
Let's say that you're playing chess. Now, in chess, you have the game state, and a variety of pieces, each with different abilities and functionality. The overall goal is to win by taking your opponent's king.
Now, as a bit of an AI guy, I would say that the way for an AI to accomplish this would be best done with reinforcement learning. The AI plays randomly until it wins a game, which it then propagates a value back through the move set, making those moves preferable. So long as the state of the game exactly resembles a position it has seen before, it will have a value associated with a given move that it has made previously. Throw in a chance for the AI to say, "eh, fuck it," and try something new, and... we're done here.
This is boring and impractical. Not only that, but it doesn't seem a very good model for how humans do it. The randomness aspect, yes, but not the overarching approach: we know, for instance, that the best humans don't do much look-ahead. While the AI in question isn't doing actual look-ahead, it is effectively doing it.
Now, I'm a big proponent of the idea that AI thinking doesn't need to mimic human thinking, so the idea that the AI does it differently than the human doesn't bother me too much. But anyway.
So what if, instead of approaching the board from an overview, RTS-style approach, the AI instead gives each of its pieces its own agency. In effect, rather than looking at the whole of the game state, each piece looks around itself, and the parts of the state that are relevant to it, and applies values to each potential move it could make. Apply a sort of Bayesian agency to the system as a whole at the AI's overview level, and you get something really interesting.
So let's say that this particular AI - let's call him Sam - has had much success in the past with his opening move as moving one of the four central-most pawns ahead two spaces. Sam doesn't have access to this information directly - rather, what is going on here is that the pawns each say, "hey, my value of moving ahead two spaces is 8, my value for one space ahead is 4, and my value for not moving is -2." The other four pawns say some useless things and return values that aren't as good, so they're immediately discounted by the Bayesian agency at the top level.
So the Bayesian agent here has a bit of a problem, he has four sub-agents all giving him the same value. However, as the sub-agents learn, so, too, does the B agent: it knows that listening to the fifth pawn from the left usually yields successes (thanks to RL), but rather than working with raw values, it has percentages associated with each sub-agent's responses. So it returns to Sam: move the fifth pawn from the left forward two spaces.
In more complicated game states, the B agent could act as an intermediary between sub-agents. Say that two sub-agents, a queen and a knight, are both returning a 15 for a given move; to further complicate it, the B agent believes both with a 40% chance of success. All other moves are significantly weaker. The B agent might then have the authority to create a new sub-agent, that takes both sub-agent's actions into account, combining them into a single agent that can do an analysis of the effects of both actions, and return that information back to the B agent: thus allowing for a cogent decision to be made. The level of success of that action can then be propagated through to the sub-agents and the B agent, potentially allowing for a more intelligent strategy to emerge in a way that wouldn't be possible otherwise.
I realize that, taking a step back, this looks like an overcomplication of standard RL methods. Why have a multitude of agents all arguing and clamoring for attention, when the end result winds up being roughly the same - potentially even mildly worse, given potential information loss - and significantly more expensively, computationally?
Because the agents have different goals.
Consider this. Instead of a single agent, Sam, with the goal to take the opponent's king, you have a multitude of agents, all with different goals. Pawns want to get to the end of the board and get promoted. Kings want to avoid enemy pieces, with a stronger desire for that goal than any other piece. All pieces work to serve Sam's overarching goal, but recognize that they approach it differently, and this understanding of sub-agency allows Sam to reach his goal more efficiently.
Think about how your mind works. While you might have a goal in mind at any one time, there are still a multitude of other goals, all clamoring for attention in your head: eat food, put more toner in the printer, make babies, mow the lawn, start dieting, punch your boss in the face. At any given moment, we are shuffling priorities, sometimes taking stock of our current situation and attempting to determine which goal is most pertinent at the time.
In our AI efforts to date, though, we don't seem to recognize this. Our agency is not the result of a singular agent, but a multitude of sub-agents, which ultimately serve a higher power - the self - which decides which sub-agent to indulge at the moment. Selfhood is the agent of agency, through which sub-agents attain their agency by making the agent's goal their goal. We even create new agents or destroy old ones, as we come to epiphanies about ourselves and our goals in our lives - the goal of the self changes, which is reflected in the hierarchy of sub-agents.
So, yes, the end result is somewhat messier. But it allows for a significantly different approach than standard AI approaches to date. I think it also helps clarify some things in human cognition, too, explaining things like internal conflicts and the like.
Anyway, on to the concept.
Let's say that you're playing chess. Now, in chess, you have the game state, and a variety of pieces, each with different abilities and functionality. The overall goal is to win by taking your opponent's king.
Now, as a bit of an AI guy, I would say that the way for an AI to accomplish this would be best done with reinforcement learning. The AI plays randomly until it wins a game, which it then propagates a value back through the move set, making those moves preferable. So long as the state of the game exactly resembles a position it has seen before, it will have a value associated with a given move that it has made previously. Throw in a chance for the AI to say, "eh, fuck it," and try something new, and... we're done here.
This is boring and impractical. Not only that, but it doesn't seem a very good model for how humans do it. The randomness aspect, yes, but not the overarching approach: we know, for instance, that the best humans don't do much look-ahead. While the AI in question isn't doing actual look-ahead, it is effectively doing it.
Now, I'm a big proponent of the idea that AI thinking doesn't need to mimic human thinking, so the idea that the AI does it differently than the human doesn't bother me too much. But anyway.
So what if, instead of approaching the board from an overview, RTS-style approach, the AI instead gives each of its pieces its own agency. In effect, rather than looking at the whole of the game state, each piece looks around itself, and the parts of the state that are relevant to it, and applies values to each potential move it could make. Apply a sort of Bayesian agency to the system as a whole at the AI's overview level, and you get something really interesting.
So let's say that this particular AI - let's call him Sam - has had much success in the past with his opening move as moving one of the four central-most pawns ahead two spaces. Sam doesn't have access to this information directly - rather, what is going on here is that the pawns each say, "hey, my value of moving ahead two spaces is 8, my value for one space ahead is 4, and my value for not moving is -2." The other four pawns say some useless things and return values that aren't as good, so they're immediately discounted by the Bayesian agency at the top level.
So the Bayesian agent here has a bit of a problem, he has four sub-agents all giving him the same value. However, as the sub-agents learn, so, too, does the B agent: it knows that listening to the fifth pawn from the left usually yields successes (thanks to RL), but rather than working with raw values, it has percentages associated with each sub-agent's responses. So it returns to Sam: move the fifth pawn from the left forward two spaces.
In more complicated game states, the B agent could act as an intermediary between sub-agents. Say that two sub-agents, a queen and a knight, are both returning a 15 for a given move; to further complicate it, the B agent believes both with a 40% chance of success. All other moves are significantly weaker. The B agent might then have the authority to create a new sub-agent, that takes both sub-agent's actions into account, combining them into a single agent that can do an analysis of the effects of both actions, and return that information back to the B agent: thus allowing for a cogent decision to be made. The level of success of that action can then be propagated through to the sub-agents and the B agent, potentially allowing for a more intelligent strategy to emerge in a way that wouldn't be possible otherwise.
I realize that, taking a step back, this looks like an overcomplication of standard RL methods. Why have a multitude of agents all arguing and clamoring for attention, when the end result winds up being roughly the same - potentially even mildly worse, given potential information loss - and significantly more expensively, computationally?
Because the agents have different goals.
Consider this. Instead of a single agent, Sam, with the goal to take the opponent's king, you have a multitude of agents, all with different goals. Pawns want to get to the end of the board and get promoted. Kings want to avoid enemy pieces, with a stronger desire for that goal than any other piece. All pieces work to serve Sam's overarching goal, but recognize that they approach it differently, and this understanding of sub-agency allows Sam to reach his goal more efficiently.
Think about how your mind works. While you might have a goal in mind at any one time, there are still a multitude of other goals, all clamoring for attention in your head: eat food, put more toner in the printer, make babies, mow the lawn, start dieting, punch your boss in the face. At any given moment, we are shuffling priorities, sometimes taking stock of our current situation and attempting to determine which goal is most pertinent at the time.
In our AI efforts to date, though, we don't seem to recognize this. Our agency is not the result of a singular agent, but a multitude of sub-agents, which ultimately serve a higher power - the self - which decides which sub-agent to indulge at the moment. Selfhood is the agent of agency, through which sub-agents attain their agency by making the agent's goal their goal. We even create new agents or destroy old ones, as we come to epiphanies about ourselves and our goals in our lives - the goal of the self changes, which is reflected in the hierarchy of sub-agents.
So, yes, the end result is somewhat messier. But it allows for a significantly different approach than standard AI approaches to date. I think it also helps clarify some things in human cognition, too, explaining things like internal conflicts and the like.
Friday, June 24, 2011
The Symmetry of Physics
Contemplating the Higgs Boson, as of late, as well as the nature of photons. Been contemplating the idea that neither of these particles has an opposite, a mirror as it were, as most other subatomic particles do.
Doesn't this strike you as strange, that the Higgs Boson - and the photon, but that is mildly irrelevant - has no mirror, no opposite particle that serves an equal but opposite purpose?
I posit, then, with my limited physics knowledge and understanding of the universe, that there is, in fact, an Anti-Higgs Boson, a subatomic particle that imparts antimass to whatever it is attached to. That within the framework that the Higgs Field functions in, it is entirely possible that, at the same time that something could cause whatever it is attached to to become entangled in this field, thereby imparting mass, there could exist a similar subatomic entity that causes an object to be caught in the field in the opposite direction - stretching the fabric out in much the same way that the Higgs Boson causes it to be pulled inward.
Envision, if you will, a sphere. The Higgs Boson causes things it is attached to to be pulled towards the center of the sphere. It is not absurd to imagine something that could then push against the extremities of the sphere, stretching it away from the center of the sphere. Given the reciprocal nature of physics and the particles it has discovered, it seems only a natural proposition.
To relate this to previous topics on this blog, antimatter is thereby elusive because it participates in this Anti-Higgs Boson, as well as being invisible to our eyes - and therefore could be considered "dark matter". Antimatter is, perhaps by its very nature, not willing to participate in our games of mass and gravity, and is made nigh-impossible to detect because the antiphotons it precipitates are simply not visible in our normal spectrum of vision. We cannot detect the presence of antimatter with most of the tools we have at our disposal because the very nature of an antiphoton prohibits our instruments from detecting it - matter and antimatter annihilate upon contact, and thus an antiphoton will remain forever beyond our grasp, because all of our tools that could detect it are based upon matter.
It does not make sense to me to assume that the Higgs Boson is unique among subatomic particles, and has no "anti" counterpart. While perhaps a reasonable conclusion based upon the maths behind the concept of the Higgs Field, I feel that it bears more investigation of those not biased towards the concept of a matter-based universe. If the Big Bang should have given rise to equal amounts of matter and antimatter, then perhaps it is a far safer assumption that it did do so, and our means of discovery simply cannot handle the nature of antimatter, than that the universe simply did not make said amounts of antimatter, and attempting to formulate a system in which this could have arisen. While Ockham himself, and his philosophy, may have been a bit of an ass, it does not mean that his Razor is invalid.
This seems to me an obvious proposition.
Doesn't this strike you as strange, that the Higgs Boson - and the photon, but that is mildly irrelevant - has no mirror, no opposite particle that serves an equal but opposite purpose?
I posit, then, with my limited physics knowledge and understanding of the universe, that there is, in fact, an Anti-Higgs Boson, a subatomic particle that imparts antimass to whatever it is attached to. That within the framework that the Higgs Field functions in, it is entirely possible that, at the same time that something could cause whatever it is attached to to become entangled in this field, thereby imparting mass, there could exist a similar subatomic entity that causes an object to be caught in the field in the opposite direction - stretching the fabric out in much the same way that the Higgs Boson causes it to be pulled inward.
Envision, if you will, a sphere. The Higgs Boson causes things it is attached to to be pulled towards the center of the sphere. It is not absurd to imagine something that could then push against the extremities of the sphere, stretching it away from the center of the sphere. Given the reciprocal nature of physics and the particles it has discovered, it seems only a natural proposition.
To relate this to previous topics on this blog, antimatter is thereby elusive because it participates in this Anti-Higgs Boson, as well as being invisible to our eyes - and therefore could be considered "dark matter". Antimatter is, perhaps by its very nature, not willing to participate in our games of mass and gravity, and is made nigh-impossible to detect because the antiphotons it precipitates are simply not visible in our normal spectrum of vision. We cannot detect the presence of antimatter with most of the tools we have at our disposal because the very nature of an antiphoton prohibits our instruments from detecting it - matter and antimatter annihilate upon contact, and thus an antiphoton will remain forever beyond our grasp, because all of our tools that could detect it are based upon matter.
It does not make sense to me to assume that the Higgs Boson is unique among subatomic particles, and has no "anti" counterpart. While perhaps a reasonable conclusion based upon the maths behind the concept of the Higgs Field, I feel that it bears more investigation of those not biased towards the concept of a matter-based universe. If the Big Bang should have given rise to equal amounts of matter and antimatter, then perhaps it is a far safer assumption that it did do so, and our means of discovery simply cannot handle the nature of antimatter, than that the universe simply did not make said amounts of antimatter, and attempting to formulate a system in which this could have arisen. While Ockham himself, and his philosophy, may have been a bit of an ass, it does not mean that his Razor is invalid.
This seems to me an obvious proposition.
Sunday, April 3, 2011
The Brain and Partitioning
Holy shit, this is goddamn important! No, seriously. This is significant.
Descartes, right? Dualism. Separation of the mind and body. Kind of wrong, but important in that it illustrates the divide between the physical aspect of the brain and the mental aspect. The mental part - your mind - is a product of the brain. Yes, I'm a physicalist, and I am totally okay with that, because it makes goddamn sense and doesn't turn the mind into some metaphysical psychobabble bullshit.
But what you need to remember is that the mind is a product of the brain, right? Analogy, f(x) = y, f is the physical part of the brain, x is its functionality, y is the mind. Makes sense, yes? Ish. Okay that analogy kind of fails, but I'm typing at the speed of thought here, so bear with me.
The goddamn brain is partitioned! Okay, like prefrontal cortex and all that neurobiological bullshit. The pieces aren't relevant, what's relevant is the fact that it's in pieces. "The sum is greater than the whole of the parts," some might say, and yes, I totally concur.
However, that phrase is usually used to indicate that the mind is greater than the sum of the brain parts. That somehow from all these disparate pieces a mind comes together, fully cogent, and what-not.
I CALL SHENANIGANS!
Layers, people! Ogres have layers, cakes have layers, onions have layers, and holy shit, your goddamn mind has layers, too! The fucking subconscious, it's a thing we talk about all the goddamn time, yet philosophers of mind seem to totally ignore it or treat it irresponsibility.
Okay, so we ...
...
What's the point in being excited about something that might wind up being bullshit upon further review.
Basically: theory. Between the layer that is the actual mind and the actual brain, there is a system of relatively-independent layers which are actuated by the various pieces of the brain. Instead of saying that the mind is a product of the brain, we have these "mind pieces" that are products of the "brain pieces," which - when combined - produce the mind itself.
This is a sensible conclusion, due to an individual's ability to "overwrite" reactions to input over time. For instance, pheromones: an individual can, over time, condition themselves to react differently to their presence.
If there was a direct mind-brain connection, this kind of overwrite wouldn't be possible, because of the systemic nature of the mind. It relies on the entirety of the brain, so overwriting one piece would be difficult at best, if not impossible. But if you break the mind into pieces at a lower level, one area can overwrite portions of another, without having an immediate impact on the mind at the higher level. Gradual, yes, but the kind of disruption that would come from a brain-to-mind-to-brain overwrite just isn't evident in the majority of cases, I think.
Such overwriting, if done at the higher level, would completely screw over the mind because of the nature of the mind itself - a product of the physical system at a lower level. The mind is a product of the brain-state taken as a whole, not as pieces. But if you insert another layer and say that the mind is a product of the mind-pieces-state, which is itself a product of the various pieces of the brain, you remove the issue. The changes are phased over the course of the process, rather than completely disruptive.
I'm starting to use rationalization, here, which is not so good.
But this model explains a lot of things, like the classic "internal struggle" - we can much more easily demonstrate such a thing if we introduce a sub-cognitive layer between the consciousness and the brain, where such conflicts take place. It doesn't make sense that these things would happen at the brain level: that's the hardware, it just does what it does. But to say that those conflicts and such occur at the cognition level seems inadequate: there is something more going on there, some conflict occurring that causes the mind to sometimes be unable to resolve itself. That would seem to indicate something going on at a lower level than is immediately accessible, but - again - the brain is just hardware.
That's all I've got, right now.
Descartes, right? Dualism. Separation of the mind and body. Kind of wrong, but important in that it illustrates the divide between the physical aspect of the brain and the mental aspect. The mental part - your mind - is a product of the brain. Yes, I'm a physicalist, and I am totally okay with that, because it makes goddamn sense and doesn't turn the mind into some metaphysical psychobabble bullshit.
But what you need to remember is that the mind is a product of the brain, right? Analogy, f(x) = y, f is the physical part of the brain, x is its functionality, y is the mind. Makes sense, yes? Ish. Okay that analogy kind of fails, but I'm typing at the speed of thought here, so bear with me.
The goddamn brain is partitioned! Okay, like prefrontal cortex and all that neurobiological bullshit. The pieces aren't relevant, what's relevant is the fact that it's in pieces. "The sum is greater than the whole of the parts," some might say, and yes, I totally concur.
However, that phrase is usually used to indicate that the mind is greater than the sum of the brain parts. That somehow from all these disparate pieces a mind comes together, fully cogent, and what-not.
I CALL SHENANIGANS!
Layers, people! Ogres have layers, cakes have layers, onions have layers, and holy shit, your goddamn mind has layers, too! The fucking subconscious, it's a thing we talk about all the goddamn time, yet philosophers of mind seem to totally ignore it or treat it irresponsibility.
Okay, so we ...
...
What's the point in being excited about something that might wind up being bullshit upon further review.
Basically: theory. Between the layer that is the actual mind and the actual brain, there is a system of relatively-independent layers which are actuated by the various pieces of the brain. Instead of saying that the mind is a product of the brain, we have these "mind pieces" that are products of the "brain pieces," which - when combined - produce the mind itself.
This is a sensible conclusion, due to an individual's ability to "overwrite" reactions to input over time. For instance, pheromones: an individual can, over time, condition themselves to react differently to their presence.
If there was a direct mind-brain connection, this kind of overwrite wouldn't be possible, because of the systemic nature of the mind. It relies on the entirety of the brain, so overwriting one piece would be difficult at best, if not impossible. But if you break the mind into pieces at a lower level, one area can overwrite portions of another, without having an immediate impact on the mind at the higher level. Gradual, yes, but the kind of disruption that would come from a brain-to-mind-to-brain overwrite just isn't evident in the majority of cases, I think.
Such overwriting, if done at the higher level, would completely screw over the mind because of the nature of the mind itself - a product of the physical system at a lower level. The mind is a product of the brain-state taken as a whole, not as pieces. But if you insert another layer and say that the mind is a product of the mind-pieces-state, which is itself a product of the various pieces of the brain, you remove the issue. The changes are phased over the course of the process, rather than completely disruptive.
I'm starting to use rationalization, here, which is not so good.
But this model explains a lot of things, like the classic "internal struggle" - we can much more easily demonstrate such a thing if we introduce a sub-cognitive layer between the consciousness and the brain, where such conflicts take place. It doesn't make sense that these things would happen at the brain level: that's the hardware, it just does what it does. But to say that those conflicts and such occur at the cognition level seems inadequate: there is something more going on there, some conflict occurring that causes the mind to sometimes be unable to resolve itself. That would seem to indicate something going on at a lower level than is immediately accessible, but - again - the brain is just hardware.
That's all I've got, right now.
Sunday, January 16, 2011
Mapping the Hypersphere
So I was at work, the other day, and randomly contemplating the fifth postulate and the ramifications that would have on the nature of space and FTL methods... yeah it was a weird day.
Anyway, so I was like, okay, what if space is a sphere, right? We're on the surface of a giant sphere. So maybe you could cut across it?... but that kind of stopped making sense, because clearly space is three-dimensional. So how could we be on the surface of a sphere?
And then I remembered the lessons learned from Flatland, and realized - aha, we are effectively a flat surface from a 4-dimensional perspective (and by "effectively," I mean we could be on the surface of a 4-dimensional sphere)! But then I had an "oh crap" moment when I realized that I was unaware of any useful ways of mapping a 4-dimensional space (because honestly, is that a skill that comes up all that often?).
Then I remembered some things that I read awhile ago about mapping, using charts and atlases and such. See an atlas is composed of a number of maps that overlap to display the entire area you're mapping, if the shape of the thing is not a thing you can map on a 2-d surface - much like the surface of the earth. I don't honestly remember why I came across it - probably something to do with Minkowski spaces, that's a thing that comes up a lot with my random studying - but it was mildly useful, so huzzah for that.
So I pondered - hmm. Could you do much the same with 4-dimensional spaces, by using 3-dimensional maps that overlap, that - when taken together - show you the entire thing?
Of course, it should be possible to map a 3-dimensional space (even when taking interior space into account, unlike with maps of the Earth) with an atlas of 2-dimensional maps.
Which thus leads me to the conclusion that it is entirely possible to map any n-dimensional object with an increasingly exponential (or maybe logarithmic, who knows) number of 2-dimensional maps.
Possibly even approaching infinite, since to map a 3-dimensional sphere, including its interior, you would theoretically have to take an infinite number of bisections. Well okay, you could theoretically take an infinite number of bisections, though the utility of that seems less than ideal to me, so it would probably be a finite number, but depending on the spaces (ha!) involved, might get unwieldy fast.
Not entirely sure how useful this thought is. But I think it serves to illustrate how my mental processes work when contemplating a problem.
Anyway, so I was like, okay, what if space is a sphere, right? We're on the surface of a giant sphere. So maybe you could cut across it?... but that kind of stopped making sense, because clearly space is three-dimensional. So how could we be on the surface of a sphere?
And then I remembered the lessons learned from Flatland, and realized - aha, we are effectively a flat surface from a 4-dimensional perspective (and by "effectively," I mean we could be on the surface of a 4-dimensional sphere)! But then I had an "oh crap" moment when I realized that I was unaware of any useful ways of mapping a 4-dimensional space (because honestly, is that a skill that comes up all that often?).
Then I remembered some things that I read awhile ago about mapping, using charts and atlases and such. See an atlas is composed of a number of maps that overlap to display the entire area you're mapping, if the shape of the thing is not a thing you can map on a 2-d surface - much like the surface of the earth. I don't honestly remember why I came across it - probably something to do with Minkowski spaces, that's a thing that comes up a lot with my random studying - but it was mildly useful, so huzzah for that.
So I pondered - hmm. Could you do much the same with 4-dimensional spaces, by using 3-dimensional maps that overlap, that - when taken together - show you the entire thing?
Of course, it should be possible to map a 3-dimensional space (even when taking interior space into account, unlike with maps of the Earth) with an atlas of 2-dimensional maps.
Which thus leads me to the conclusion that it is entirely possible to map any n-dimensional object with an increasingly exponential (or maybe logarithmic, who knows) number of 2-dimensional maps.
Possibly even approaching infinite, since to map a 3-dimensional sphere, including its interior, you would theoretically have to take an infinite number of bisections. Well okay, you could theoretically take an infinite number of bisections, though the utility of that seems less than ideal to me, so it would probably be a finite number, but depending on the spaces (ha!) involved, might get unwieldy fast.
Not entirely sure how useful this thought is. But I think it serves to illustrate how my mental processes work when contemplating a problem.
Sunday, January 9, 2011
LOS and the Tele
Encountered an interesting spatial issue awhile back, thought I might share (primarily because now I will have hit both architecture and xenobiology, much as the description of the blog claims).
So, our flat is rather linear in nature - the first room you enter is the so-called "middle room," which then can exit into the living room (now a bedroom), the balcony, or the kitchen. Due to the room's dimensions, the couch and the television are on opposite walls, with the doorway to the kitchen in-between.
This, obviously, becomes massively inconvenient anytime someone is watching the tele. Want to go to the bathroom, you have to break their focus for a moment.
In further contemplating this conundrum, it occurred to me that most dwellings are not designed with television-viewing in mind - which is kind of fascinating, given our culture's fascination with the damn thing. Hell, we've gotten to the point where wall-mounted televisions are becoming more and more common, which makes this LOS (line of sight) issue even more prevalent: a TV on a stand you can position somewhere convenient, but walls have a rather common nature of being at right angles to each other, which can cause furniture-placement issues.
Ideally, what you'd want is essentially something like a giant alcove, explicitly for television placement/viewing. The point of such a thing would be to ensure that there is nothing on the other side that folk want to get into - like a closet, or a balcony, or anything - and the only reason for someone being in the alcove is explicitly to use the tele.
I imagine that, if you examined dwellings with larger rooms, you'd see something like this happening in practice via furniture placement - people arrange furniture in such a way as to effectively build a wall somewhere in front of the tele, producing an effective alcove. I also imagine that a common problem with such artificial alcoves is that there is a reason that a person would want to cross through the LOS area, like a closet or something.
So yeah. Architect-folk, you should probably fix this in modern housing design. Just sayin'.
So, our flat is rather linear in nature - the first room you enter is the so-called "middle room," which then can exit into the living room (now a bedroom), the balcony, or the kitchen. Due to the room's dimensions, the couch and the television are on opposite walls, with the doorway to the kitchen in-between.
This, obviously, becomes massively inconvenient anytime someone is watching the tele. Want to go to the bathroom, you have to break their focus for a moment.
In further contemplating this conundrum, it occurred to me that most dwellings are not designed with television-viewing in mind - which is kind of fascinating, given our culture's fascination with the damn thing. Hell, we've gotten to the point where wall-mounted televisions are becoming more and more common, which makes this LOS (line of sight) issue even more prevalent: a TV on a stand you can position somewhere convenient, but walls have a rather common nature of being at right angles to each other, which can cause furniture-placement issues.
Ideally, what you'd want is essentially something like a giant alcove, explicitly for television placement/viewing. The point of such a thing would be to ensure that there is nothing on the other side that folk want to get into - like a closet, or a balcony, or anything - and the only reason for someone being in the alcove is explicitly to use the tele.
I imagine that, if you examined dwellings with larger rooms, you'd see something like this happening in practice via furniture placement - people arrange furniture in such a way as to effectively build a wall somewhere in front of the tele, producing an effective alcove. I also imagine that a common problem with such artificial alcoves is that there is a reason that a person would want to cross through the LOS area, like a closet or something.
So yeah. Architect-folk, you should probably fix this in modern housing design. Just sayin'.
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