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We are products of complexity,
but our evolution has focused our
understanding on the situation of hunter gatherers on the
African savanna.
As humanity has become more powerful we can significantly impact
the systems we depend on. But we struggle to comprehend
them. So this web frame
explores significant real world complex
adaptive systems (CAS):
- Assumptions of randomness & equilibrium allowed the
wealthy & powerful to expand the size and leverage of
stock markets, by placing at risk the insurance and
retirement savings of the working class. The
assumptions are wrong but remain entrenched.
- The US nation was built
from two divergent political
views of: Jefferson and Hamilton. It also
reflects the development
of competing ancient ideas of Epicurus and
Cyril. But the collapse of Bretton Woods forced Wall
Street into a position of power, while the middle and
working class were abandoned by the elites. Housing
financed with cash from oil and derivative transactions
helped hide the shift.
- Most US health care is still
operating the way cars built in the 1940s did.
Geisinger is an example of better solution. But
transforming the whole network is a challenge. And
public health investment has proved far more
beneficial.
- Helping our children learn to be
effective adults is part of our humanity, but we have
created a robust but deeply flawed education system.
Better alternatives have emerged.
- Spoken language, reading and writing emerged allowing our
good ideas to
become a second genetic material.
- The emergence
of the global economy in the 1600s and its subsequent
development;
It explains how the examples relate to each other, why we all
have trouble effectively comprehending these systems and
explains how our inexperience with CAS can lead to catastrophe. It
outlines the items we see as key to the system and why.
Example systems frame |
Dietrich Dorner argues complex adaptive systems (CAS) are hard to understand and
manage. He provides examples of how this feature of these
systems can have disastrous consequences for their human
managers. Dorner suggests this is due to CAS properties
psychological impact on our otherwise successful mental
strategic toolkit. To prepare to more effectively manage
CAS, Dorner recommends use of:
- Effective iterative planning and
- Practice with complex scenario simulations; tools which he
reviews.
Complexity catastrophes |
E. O. Wilson reviews the effect of man on the natural world to
date and explains how the two systems can coexist most
effectively.
Adaptive ecology |
Barton Gellman details the strategies used by Vice President
Cheney to align the global system with his economics, defense, and
energy goals.
US vds alignment |
Kevin Kruse argues that from 1930 onwards the corporate elite
and the Republican party have developed and relentlessly
executed strategies to undermine Franklin Roosevelt and the New Deal. Their
successful strategy used the credibility of conservative
religious leaders to:
- Demonstrate religious issues
with the New Deal.
- Integrate the corporate
elite and evangelicals.
- Use the power of corporate
advertising and Hollywood to reeducate the American
people to view the US as historically religious and
the New Deal and liberalism as anti-religious
socialism.
- Focus the message through evangelicals including Vereide and Graham.
- Centralize the strategy through President Eisenhower.
- Add religious elements to
mainstream American symbols: money, pledge;
- Push for prayer in
public school
- Push Congress to promote prayer
- Make elections more
about religious positions.
Following our summary of his arguments RSS frames them from the
perspective of complex adaptive system (CAS) theory.
Strategy is the art of the possible. But it also depends
on persistence.
Inventing Christian America |
Charles Ferguson argues that the US power structure has become
highly corrupt.
Ferguson identifies key events which contributed to the
transformation:
- Junk bonds,
- Derivative
deregulation,
- CMOs,
ABS and analyst fraud,
- Financial network deregulation,
- Financial network consolidation,
- Short term incentives
Subsequently the George W. Bush administration used the
situation to build
a global bubble, which Wall Street
leveraged. The bursting of the
bubble: managed
by the Bush Administration and Bernanke Federal Reserve;
was advantageous to some.
Ferguson concludes that the restructured and deregulated
financial services industry is damaging to
the American economy. And it is supported by powerful, incentive aligned academics.
He sees the result being a rigged system.
Ferguson offers his proposals
for change and offers hope that a charismatic young FDR will appear.
Following our summary of his arguments, RSS comments on them framed by
complex adaptive system (CAS)
theory. Once the constraints are removed from CAS
amplifiers, it becomes advantageous to leverage the increased flows. And it is often
relatively damaging not to participate. Corruption and parasitism can become
entrenched.
Financial WMD |
Matt Taibbi describes the phenotypic
alignment of the American justice system. The result
he explains relentlessly grinds the poor and undocumented into
resources to be constrained, consumed and ejected. Even as
it supports and aligns the financial infrastructure into a
potent weapon capable of targeting any company or nation to
extract profits and leave the victim deflated.
Taibbi uses five scenarios to provide a broad picture of the:
activities, crimes, policing, prosecutions, court processes,
prisons and deportation network. The scenarios are:
Undocumented people's neighborhoods, Poor neighborhoods, Welfare
recipients, Credit card debtors and Financial institutions.
Following our summary of his arguments, RSS comments on them framed by
complex adaptive system (CAS) theory. The alignment of the
justice system reflects a set of long term strategies and
responses to a powerful global arms race that the US leadership intends to
win.
Aligned justice |
Jonathan Powell describes how the government of, the former UK Prime Minister, Tony Blair,
actually operated. Powell was Blair's only chief of
staff.
Mechanics of power |
H. A. Hayek compares and contrasts collectivism and
libertarianism.
Libertarianism |
John Doerr argues that company leaders and their
organizations, hugely benefit from Andy Grove's OKRs.
He promotes strategies
that help OKR success: Focus,
Align, Track, Stretch; replaces yearly performance
reviews, and provides illustrative success
stories.
Doerr stresses Dov Seidman's
view that employees are adaptive and will
respond to what they see being measured. He asserts culturally supported OKRs/CFR processes will be transformative.
Following our summary of his arguments, RSS comments on them
framed by complex adaptive system (CAS) theory. Doerr's architecture
is tailored for the startups KPCB
invests in. It is a subset of the general case of schematic plans, genetic operators and Shewhart cycles that drive all
CAS. Doerr's approach limits support of learning and deemphasizes the
association to planning.
Startup PDCA |
David Bodanis illustrates how disruptive effects can take
hold. While the French revolution had many driving forces
including famine and
oppression the emergence of a new philosophical vision ensured
that thoughtful leaders
were constrained and conflicted in their responses to the
crisis.
Voltaire's disruptive network |
An epistatic meme suppressed for a thousand years reemerges
during the enlightenment.
It was a poem
encapsulating the ideas of Epicurus rediscovered by a
humanist book hunter.
Greenblatt describes the process of suppression and
reemergence. He argues that the rediscovery was the
foundation of the modern world.
Complex adaptive system (CAS) models of the memetic mechanisms
are discussed.
Constraining happiness |
Isaacson uses the historic development of the global cloud of
web services to explore Ada
Lovelace's ideas about thinking
machines and poetic
science. He highlights the value of computer
augmented human creativity and the need for liberal arts to
fulfill the process.
Complex adaptive system (CAS) models of agent networks and
collaboration are discussed.
Arts technology & intelligence |
Associatively integrated robots |
Good ideas are successful because they build upon prior
developments that have been successfully implemented.
Johnson demonstrates that they are phenotypic expressions of
memetic plans subject to the laws of complex adaptive systems (CAS).
Developing ideas |
A government sanctioned monopoly
supported the construction of a superorganism
American Telephone and
Telegraph
(AT&T). Within this Bell Labs was at the center of
three networks:
- The evolving global scientific
network.
- The Bell telephone network. And
- The military
industrial network deploying 'fire and missile
control' systems.
Bell Labs strategically leveraged each network to create an innovation
engine.
They monitored the opportunities to leverage the developing
ideas, reorganizing to replace incumbent
opposition and enable the creation and growth of new
ideas.
Once the monopoly was
dismantled, AT&T disrupted.
Complex adaptive system (CAS) models of the innovation mechanisms are
discussed.
Strategic innovation |
Roger Cohen's New York Times opinion about the implications of
BREXIT is summarized. His ideas are then framed by complex
adaptive system (CAS) theory and
reviewed.
BREXIT |
Scott Galloway argues that Apple, Amazon, Facebook and Google
are monopolists that
trade workers for technology. Monopolies that he argues
should be broken up to ensure the return of a middle
class.
Following our summary of his arguments, RSS comments on these arguments
assuming they relate to a complex adaptive system (CAS).
While Scott's issue is highly significant his analysis conflicts
with relevant CAS history and theory.
Monopoly job killers |
The IPO of Netscape is
defined as the key emergent event of
the New Economy by Michael Mandel. Following the summary
of Mandel's key points the complex adaptive system (CAS) aspects are highlighted.
New economy |
Ed Conway argues that Bretton Woods produced a unique set of
rules and infrastructure for supporting the global economy. It was
enabled by the experience of Keynes
and White during and after the First World War, their dislike of the Gold Standard,
the necessity of improving
the situation between the wars and the opportunity created
by the catastrophe of the Second
World War.
He describes how it was planned
and developed. How it
emerged from the summit.
And he shows how the opportunity inevitably allowed the US to replace the UK at the center of the global economy.
Like all plans there are
mistakes and Conway takes us through them and how the US recovered the situation as
best it could.
And then Conway describes the period after
Bretton Woods collapsed. He explains what followed
and also compares the relative performance of the various
periods before during and after Bretton Woods.
Following our summary of his arguments RSS comments from the
perspective of Complex Adaptive System (CAS)
theory. Conway's book illustrates the rule making and
infrastructure that together build an evolved amplifier.
He shows the strategies at play of agents that were for and
against the development
and deployment of the system. And The Summit provides a
key piece of the history of our global economic CAS.
Bretton woods |
A key agent in the 1990 - 2008
housing expansion Countrywide is linked into the residential
mortgage value delivery system (VDS)
by Paul Muolo and Mathew Padilla. But they show the VDS
was full of amplifiers and control points. With no one
incented to apply the brakes the bubble grew and burst.
Following the summary of Muolo and Padilla's key points the
complex adaptive system (CAS)
aspects are highlighted.
Housing amplifiers |
Satyajit Das uses an Indonesian company's derivative trades to
introduce us to the workings of the international derivatives
system. Das describes the components of the value delivery
system and the key
transactions. He demonstrates how the system
interacted with emerging economies
expanding them, extracting profits and then moving on as the
induced bubbles burst. Following Das's key points the
complex adaptive system (CAS)
aspects are highlighted.
Derivative systems |
Johnson & Kwak argue that expanding the national debt
provides a hedge against unforeseen future problems, as long as
creditors are willing to continue lending. They illustrate
different approaches to managing the debt within the US over its history and of the
eighteenth century administrations of England and France.
The US embodies two different political and economic systems which
approach the national debt differently:
- Taxes to support a sinking
fund to ensure credit to leverage fiscal power in:
Wars, Pandemics, Trade disputes, Hurricanes, Social
programs; Starting with Hamilton,
Lincoln & Chase,
Wilson, FDR;
- Low taxes, limited infrastructure, with risk assumed by
individuals: Advocated by President's Jefferson & Madison,
Reagan,
George W. Bush (Gingrich);
Johnson & Kwak develop a model of what the US
government does. They argue that the conflicting
sinking fund and low tax approaches leaves the nation 'stuck in
the middle' with a future problem.
And they offer their list of 'first principles' to help
assess the best approach for moving from 2012 into the
future.
They conclude the question is still political. They hope
it can be resolved with an awareness of their detailed
explanations. They ask who is willing to
push all the coming risk onto individuals.
Following our summary of their arguments RSS frames them from the
perspective of complex adaptive system (CAS) theory.
Historically developing within the global cotton value delivery
system, key CAS features are highlighted.
National debt |
Robert Gordon argues that the inventions of the second
industrial revolution were the foundation for
American economic growth. Gordon shows how flows of people
into difficult rural America built a population base
which then took the opportunity to move on to urban settings: Houses, Food in supermarkets,
Clothes in
department stores;
that supported increasing productivity and standard of living.
The deployment of nationwide networks: Rail, Road, Utilities;
terminating in the urban housing and work places allowing the workers to
leverage time saving goods and services, which helped grow
the economy.
Gordon describes the concomitant transformation of:
- Communications
and advertising
- Credit
and finance
- Public
health and the health
care network
- Health insurance
- Education
- Social
and welfare services
Counter intuitively the constraints
introduced before and in the Great Depression and the demands of World War 2
provide the amplifiers that drive the inventions deeply and
fully into every aspect of the economy between 1940 and 1970
creating the exceptional growth and standard of living of post
war America.
Subsequently the
rate of growth was limited until the shift of women
into the workplace and the full networking of
voice and data supported the Internet and World Wide Web
completed the third industrial revolution, but the effects were
muted by the narrow reach of the technologies.
The development of Big Data, Robots,
and Artificial Intelligence may support additional growth,
but Gordon is unconvinced because of the collapse of
the middle class.
Following our summary of Gordon's book RSS frames his arguments from
the perspective of complex adaptive system (CAS) theory.
American growth |
Carl Menger argues that the market induced the emergence of
money based on the attractive features of precious metals.
He compares the potential for government edicts to create money
but sees them as lacking.
Following our summary of his arguments RSS frames his arguments from
the perspective of complex adaptive system (CAS) theory.
With two hundred years of additional knowledge we conclude that
precious metals are not as attractive as Menger asserts.
Government backed promissory notes are analogous to:
- Other evolved CAS forms of ubiquitous high energy
transaction intermediates and
- Schematic strategies that are proving optimal in
supporting survival and replication in the currently
accessible niches.
Emergence of money |
Eric Beinhocker sets out to answer a question Adam Smith
developed in the Wealth of Nations: what is wealth? To do
this he replaces traditional
economic theory, which is based on the assumption that an
economy is a system in
equilibrium, with complexity
economics in which the economy is modeled as a complex
adaptive system (CAS).
He introduces Sugerscape
to illustrate an economic CAS model in action. And then he
explains the major features of a CAS economy: Dynamics,
Agents, Networks, Emergence, and
Evolution.
Building on complexity economics Beinhocker reviews how evolution applies to
the economy to build wealth. He explains how design spaces
map strategies to instances of physical and
social
technologies. And he identifies the interactors and
selection mechanism of economic
evolution.
This allows Beinhocker to develop a new definition
of wealth.
In the rest of the book Beinhocker looks at the consequences of
adopting complexity economics for business and society: Strategy, Organization, Finance,
& Politics
& Policy.
Following our summary of his arguments, RSS explores his conclusions
and aligns Beinhocker's model of CAS with the CAS theory and evidence we
leverage.
Economic complexity |
Sven Beckert describes the historic transformation of the
growing, spinning, weaving, manufacture of cotton goods and
their trade over time. He describes the rise of a first global
commodity, its dependence on increasing: military power, returns for
the control points in the value delivery system(VDS), availability of land
and labor to work it including slaves.
He explains how cotton offered the opportunity for
industrialization further amplifying the productive capacity of
the VDS and the power of the control points. This VDS was quickly
copied. The increased capacity of the industrialized
cotton complex adaptive system (CAS) required more labor to
operate the machines. Beckert describes the innovative introduction of wages
and the ways found to
mobilize industrial labor.
Beckert describes the characteristics of the industrial cotton
CAS which made it flexible enough to become globally interconnected.
Slavery made the production system so cost effective that all
prior structures collapsed as they interconnected. So when
the US civil war
blocked access to the major production nodes in the
American Deep South the CAS began adapting.
Beckert describes the global
reconstruction that occurred and the resulting destruction of the traditional ways
of life in the global countryside. This colonial expansion
further enriched and empowered the 'western' nation
states. Beckert explains how other countries responded
by copying the colonial strategies and creating the
opportunities for future armed conflict among the original
colonialists and the new upstarts.
Completing the adaptive
shifts, Beckert describes the advocates for industrialization in
the colonized global south and how over time they joined
the global cotton CAS disrupting the early western manufacturing
nodes and creating the current global CAS
dominated by merchants like Wal-Mart
pulling goods through a network of clothing manufacturers,
spinning and weaving factories, and growers competing with each
other on cost.
Following our summary of Beckert's book, RSS comments from the
perspective of CAS theory. The transformation of
disconnected peasant farmers,
pastoral warriors and their lands into a supply chain for a
highly profitable industrial CAS required the development over
time: of military force, global transportation and communication
networks, perception and representation control networks, capital stores and flows,
models, rules, standards and markets; along with the support at
key points of: barriers, disruption, and infrastructure and
evolved amplifiers. The emergent
system demonstrates the powerful constraining influence of
extended phenotypic alignment.
Globalization from cotton |
The structure and problems of the US
health care network is described in terms of complex adaptive
system (CAS) theory.
The network:
- Is deeply embedded in the US nation state. It reflects the
conflict between two
opposing visions for the US: high tax with safety net
or low tax without. The emergence
of a parasitic elite supported by tax policy, further
constrains the choices available to improve the efficiency
and effectiveness of the network.
- The US is optimized to sell its citizens dangerous
levels of: salt,
sugar, cigarettes,
guns, light, cell phones, opioids,
costly education, global travel,
antibacterials, formula, foods including
endocrine disrupters;
- Accepting the US controlled global supply chain's
offered goods & services results in: debt, chronic stress,
amplified consumption and toxic excess, leading to obesity, addiction, driving instead of
walking, microbiome
collapse;
- Globalization connects disparate environments in a network. At the edges,
humans are drastically altering the biosphere. That
is reducing the proximate natural environment's
connectedness, and leaving its end-nodes disconnected and
far less diverse. This disconnects predators from
their prey, often resulting in local booms and busts that
transform the local parasite
network and their reservoir and amplifier
hosts. The situation is setup so that man is
introduced to spillover
from the local parasites' hosts. Occasionally, but
increasingly, the spillover results in humanity becoming
broadly infected. The evolved
specialization of the immune system
to the proximate environment during development
becomes undermined as the environment transforms.
- Is incented to focus on localized competition generating
massive & costly duplication of services within
physician based health care operations instead of proven
public health strategies. This process drives
increasing research & treatment complexity and promotes hope
for each new technological breakthrough.
- Is amplified by the legislatively structured separation
and indirection of service development,
provision, reimbursement and payment.
- Is impacted by the different political strategies for
managing the increasing
cost of health care for the demographic bulge of retirees.
- Is presented with acute
and chronic
problems to respond to. As currently setup the network
is tuned to handle acute problems. The interactions
with patients tend to be transactional.
- Includes a legislated health insurance infrastructure
which is:
- Costly and inefficient
- Structured around yearly
contracts which undermine long-term health goals and
strategies.
- Is supported by increasingly regulated HCIT
which offers to improve data sharing and quality but has
entrenched commercial EHR
products deep within the hospital systems.
- Is maintained, and kept in
alignment, by massive network
effects across the:
- Hospital platform
based
sub-networks connecting to
- Physician networks
- Health insurance networks - amplified by ACA
narrow network legislation
- Hospital clinical supply and food
production networks
- Medical school and academic research network and NIH
- Global
transportation network
- Public health networks
- Health care IT supply
network
Health care |
Deaton describes the wellbeing
of people around the world today. He explains the powerful benefit of public
health strategies and the effect of growth in
material wellbeing but also the corrosive effects of
aid.
Following our summary of Deaton's arguments RSS comments from the
perspective of complex adaptive system (CAS)
theory. The situation he describes is complex including
powerful amplifiers, alignment and incentives that overlap
broadly with other RSS summaries of adaptations of: The
biosphere, Politics, Economics,
Philosophy and Health care.
Improving wellbeing |
Donald Barlett and James Steele write about their investigations
of the major problems afflicting US
health care as of 2006.
Problems of US health care |
Glenn Steele & David Feinberg review the development of the
modern Geisinger healthcare business after its near collapse
following the abandoned merger with Penn State AMC. After an overview of the
business, they describe how a calamity
unfolding around them supported building a vision of a
better US health care network. And they explain:
- How they planned
out the transformation,
- Leveraging an effective
governance structure,
- Using a strategy
to gain buy in,
- Enabling
reengineering at the clinician patient
interface.
- Implementing the reengineering for acute, chronic
& hot
spot care; to help the patients and help the
physicians.
- Geisinger's leverage of biologics.
- Reengineering healing with ProvenExperience.
- Where Geisinger is headed next.
Following our summary of their arguments RSS comments on them. We
frame their ideas with complex adaptive system (CAS)
theory.
E2E insured quality care |
Robert Pearl explains the perspectives of a health care leader
and son who know that the current health care network interacts
with human behavior to induce a poorly performing system that
caused his father's death. But he is confident that these
problem perceptions can be changed. Once that occurs he
asserts the network will become more integrated, coordinated,
collaborative, better led, and empathetic to their
patients. The supporting technology infrastructure will be
made highly interoperable. All that will reduce medical
errors and make care more cost effective.
Following our summary of his arguments RSS comments on them. We
frame his ideas with complex adaptive system (CAS) theory
including synergistic examples of these systems in
operation. The health care network is built out of
emergent human agents. All agents must model the signals
they perceive to represent and respond to them. Pinker
explains how this occurs. Sapolsky explains why fear and
hierarchy are so significant. He includes details of Josh
Green's research on morality and death. Charles Ferguson
highlights the pernicious nature of financial incentives.
Bad medical models |
US healthcare is ripe for
disruption. Christensen, Grossman and Hwang argue that
technologies are emerging which will support low cost business
models that will undermine the current network. Applying
complex adaptive system (CAS)
theory to these arguments suggests that the current power hierarchy can effectively resist
these progressive forces.
Disrupting health care |
Atul Gawande writes about the opportunity for a thirty per cent
improvement in quality in medicine by organizing
to deploy as agent based teams using shared schematic
plans and distributed signalling or as he puts it the use of checklists.
With vivid examples from a variety of situations including construction, air crew support and global health care Gawande illustrates
the effects of
complexity and how to organize to cope with it.
Following the short review RSS
additionally relates Gawande's arguments to its models of
complex adaptive systems (CAS) positioning his discussion within
the network of US health care,
contrasting our view of complexity, comparing the forces shaping
his various examples and reviewing facets of complex
failures.
Complexity checklists |
Friedman and Martin leverage the lifelong data collected on
1,528 bright individuals selected by Dr. Lewis Terman
starting in 1921, to understand what aspects of the subjects'
lives significantly affected their longevity. Looking
broadly across each subject's: Personality,
Education, Parental impacts,
Energy
levels, Partnering,
Careers, Religion,
Social networks,
Gender, Impact from war and
trauma; Friedman and Martin are able to develop a set of model pathways,
which each individual could be seen to select and travel
along. Some paths led to the traveler having a long
life. Others were problematic. The models imply that
the US approach to health and
wellness should focus
more on supporting
the development and selection of beneficial pathways.
Following our summary of their arguments RSS comments from the
perspective of CAS theory. The pathways are most
applicable to bright individuals with the resources and support
necessary to make and leverage choices they make. Striving
to enter and follow a beneficial pathway seems sensible but may
be impossible for individuals trapped in a collapsing network,
starved of resources.
Promoting longevity |
Gawande uses his personal experience, analytic skills and lots
of stories of innovators to demonstrate better ways of coping
with aging and death. He introduces the lack of focus on
aging and death in traditional medicine. And goes on to
show how technology has amplified
this stress point. He illustrates the traditional possibility of the
independent self, living fully while aging with the
support of the extended family. Central
planning responded to the technological and societal changes
with poorly designed infrastructure and funding. But
Gawande then contrasts the power of
bottom up innovations created by experts responding to
their own family situations and belief
systems.
Gawande then explores in depth the challenges
that unfold currently as we age and become infirm.
He notes that the world is following the US path. As such it will
have to understand the dilemma of
integrating medical treatment and hospice
strategies. He notes that all parties
involved need courage to cope.
He proposes medicine must aim to assure
well being. At that point all doctors will practice
palliative care.
Complex adaptive system (CAS) models of agency, death,
evolution, cooperation and adaptations
to new technologies are discussed.
Agent death |
Sonia Shah reviews the millennia old (500,000 years) malarial arms race between Humanity, Anopheles
mosquitoes and Plasmodium. 250 - 500 million people are
infected each year with malaria and one million die.
Malaria |
Peter Medawar writes about key historic events in the evolution
of medical science.
Medical science events |
Using John Holland's theory of adaptation in complex
systems Baldwin and Clark propose an evolutionary theory of
design. They show how this can limit the interdependencies
that generate complexity
within systems. They do this through a focus on
modularity.
Modular designed systems |
Lou Gerstner describes the challenges he faced and the
strategies he used to successfully restructure the computer
company IBM.
Compartmented systems |
Grady Booch advocates an object oriented approach to computer
software design.
Object based systems |
Bertrand Meyer develops arguments, principles and strategies for
creating modular software. He concludes that abstract data
types and inheritence make object orientation a superior
methodology for software construction. Complex adaptive
system (CAS) theory suggests agents provide an alternative strategy
to the use of objects.
Software construction |
Tools and the businesses that produce them have evolved
dramatically. W Brian Arthur shows how this occurred.
Tools |
Matt Ridley demonstrates the creative effect of man on the
World. He highlights:
- A list of
preconditions resulting in
- Additional niche
capture & more free time
- Building a network
to interconnect memes processes & tools which
- Enabling inter-generational
transfers
- Innovations
that help reduce environmental stress even as they leverage fossil
fuels
Memetic trading networks |
E O. Wilson argues that campfire gatherings on the savanna supported
the emergence of human creativity. This resulted in man
building cultures and
later exploring them, and their creator, through the humanities. Wilson
identifies the transformative events, but he notes many of these
are presently ignored by the humanities. So he calls for a
change of approach.
He:
- Explores creativity:
how it emerged from the benefits of becoming an omnivore hunter-gatherer,
enabled by language & its catalysis of invention, through stories told in the
evening around the campfire. He notes the power of
fine art, but suggests music provides the most revealing
signature of aesthetic
surprise.
- Looks at the current limitations of the
humanities, as they have suffered through years of neglect.
- Reviews the evolutionary processes of heredity and
culture:
- Ultimate causes viewed
through art, & music
- The bedrock of:
- Ape senses and emotions,
- Creative arts, language, dance, song typically studied
by humanities,
&
- Exponential change in science and
technology.
- How the breakthrough from
our primate past occurred, powered by eating meat,
supporting: a bigger brain, expanded memory &
language.
- Accelerating changes now driven by genetic cultural coevolution.
- The impact on human nature.
- Considers our emotional attachment to the natural world: hunting, gardens; we are
destroying.
- Reviews our love of metaphor, archetypes,
exploration, irony, and
considers the potential for a third enlightenment,
supported by cooperative
action of humanities and science
Following our summary of his arguments RSS frames these from the
perspective of complex adaptive system (CAS) theory:
- The humanities are seen to be a functionalist framework
for representing the cultural CAS while
- Wilson's desire
to integrate the humanities and science gains support from
viewing the endeavor as a network of layered CAS.
Evening campfire rituals |
Brynjolfsson and McAfee explore the effects of Moore's law on the
economy. They argue it has generated exponential
growth. This has been due to innovation.
It has created a huge bounty of
additional wealth.
But the wealth is spread unevenly across
society. They look at the short and long term implications of
the innovation bounty and spread
and the possible future of
technology.
Following our summary of their arguments RSS comments from the
perspective of CAS theory.
Brilliant technologies |
Salman Khan argues that the evolved global education system is
inefficient and organized around constraining and corralling
students into accepting dubious ratings that lead to mundane
roles. He highlights a radical and already proven
alternative which offers effective self-paced deep learning
processes supported by technology and freed up attention of
teams of teachers. Building on his personal experience of
helping overcome the unjustified failing grade of a relative,
Khan:
- Iteratively learns how to teach: Starting with Nadia, Leveraging
short videos focused on content,
Converging on mastery,
With the help of
neuroscience, and filling
in dependent gaps; resulting in a different approach
to the mainstream method.
- Assesses the broken US education system: Set in its ways, Designed for the 1800s,
Inducing holes that
are hidden by tests, Tests
which ignore creativity.
The resulting teaching process is so inefficient it needs to
be supplemented with homework.
Instead teachers were encouraging their pupils to use his tools at home so
they could mentor them while they attended school, an
inversion that significantly improves the economics.
- Enters the real world: Builds a scalable service,
Working with a
real classroom, Trying stealth
learning, At Khan Academy full time, In the curriculum at
Los Altos, Supporting life-long
learning.
- Develops The One World Schoolhouse: Back to the future with
a one
room school, a robust
teaching team, and creativity enabled;
so with some catalysis
even the poorest can
become educated and earn credentials
for current jobs.
- Wishes he could also correct: Summer holidays, Transcript based
assessments, College
education;
- Concludes it is now possible to provide the infrastructure
for creativity to
emerge and to support risk taking.
Following our summary of his arguments RSS frames them from the
perspective of complex adaptive system (CAS) theory. Disruption is a powerful force for
change but if its force is used to support the current teachers
to adopt new processes can it overcome the extended phenotypic alignment and evolutionary amplifiers sustaining the
current educational network?
Education versus guilds |
Amy Chua and Jed Rubenfeld's New York Times opinion based on The
Triple Package is summarized. Their ideas are then framed
by CAS theory and reviewed.
What drives success |
Peter Turchin describes how major pre-industrial empires
developed due to effects of geographic boundaries constraining
the empires and their neighbors' interactions. Turchin
shows how the asymmetries of breeding rates and resource growth
rates results in dynamic cycles within cycles. After the
summary of Turchin's book complex adaptive system (CAS) theory
is used to augment Turchins findings.
Warrior groups |
Through the operation of three different food chains Michael
Pollan explores their relative merits. The application of
complex adaptive system (CAS)
theory highlights the value of evolutionary
testing of the food chain.
Natural systems |
E. O. Wilson & Bert Holldobler illustrate how bundled cooperative strategies can
take hold. Various social insects have developed
strategies which have allowed them to capture the most valuable
available niches. Like humans they invest in
specialization and cooperate to subdue larger, well equipped
competitors.
Insect superorganisms |
Computational
theory of the mind and evolutionary
psychology provide Steven Pinker with a framework on which
to develop his psychological arguments about the mind and its
relationship to the brain. Humans captured a cognitive niche by
natural selection 'building out'
specialized aspects of their bodies and brains resulting in a system of mental organs
we call the mind.
He garnishes and defends the framework with findings from
psychology regarding: The visual
system - an example of natural
selections solutions to the sensory challenges
of inverse
modeling of our
environment; Intensions - where
he highlights the challenges of hunter-gatherers -
making sense of the objects
they perceive and predicting what they imply and natural
selections powerful solutions; Emotions - which Pinker argues are
essential to human prioritizing and decision making; Relationships - natural selection's
strategies for coping with the most dangerous competitors, other
people. He helps us understand marriage, friendships and war.
These conclusions allow him to understand the development and
maintenance of higher callings: Art, Music, Literature, Humor,
Religion, & Philosophy; and develop a position on the meaning of life.
Complex adaptive system (CAS) modeling allows RSS to frame Pinker's arguments
within humanity's current situation, induced by powerful evolved
amplifiers: Globalization,
Cliodynamics, The green revolution
and resource
bottlenecks; melding his powerful predictions of the
drivers of human behavior with system wide constraints.
The implications are discussed.
Computationally adapted mind |
The stages of development of the human female, including how her brain changes and the
impacts of this on her 'reality' across a full life span:
conception, infantile
puberty, girlhood,
juvenile pause, adolescence, dating years, motherhood, post-menopause; are
described. Brizendine notes the significant difference in
how emotions are processed
by women compared to men.
Complex adaptive system (CAS) theory associates the stages with
the evolutionary under-pinning, psychological implications and
behavioral CAS.
Evolved female brain |
The complexity of behavior is explored through Sapolsky
developing scenarios of our best and worst behaviors across time
spans, and scientific subjects including: anthropology,
psychology, neuroscience, sociology. The rich network of adaptive flows he
outlines provides insights and highlight challenges for
scientific research on behavior.
Complex adaptive system (CAS) theory builds on Sapolsky's
details highlighting the strategies that evolution has captured
to successfully enter niches we now occupy.
CAS behavior |
Carlo Rovelli resolves the paradox of time.
Rovelli initially explains that low level physics does not
include time:
- A present that is common throughout the universe does not exist
- Events are only partially ordered. The present is
localized
- The difference between past and future is not foundational.
It occurs because of state that through our blurring appears
particular to us
- Time passes at different speeds dependent on where we are and how fast we travel
- Time's rhythms are due to
the gravitational field
- Our quantized physics shows neither
space nor time, just processes transforming physical
variables.
- Fundamentally there is no time. The basic equations
evolve together with events, not things
Then he
explains how in a physical world without time its perception can
emerge:
- Our familiar time emerges
- Our interaction with the world is partial, blurred,
quantum indeterminate
- The ignorance determines the existence of thermal time
and entropy that quantifies our uncertainty
- Directionality of time is real
but perspectival. The entropy of the world in
relation to us increases with our thermal time. The
growth of entropy distinguishes past from future: resulting in
traces and memories
- Each human is a
unified being because: we reflect the world, we
formed an image of a unified entity by
interacting with our kind, and because of the perspective
of memory
- The variable time: is one
of the variables of the gravitational field.
With our scale we don't
register quantum fluctuations, making space-time
appear determined. At our speed we don't perceive
differences in time of different clocks, so we experience
a single time: universal, uniform, ordered; which is
helpful to our decisions
Emergence of time |
Consciousness has confounded philosophers and scientists for
centuries. Now it is finally being characterized
scientifically. That required a transformation of
approach.
Realizing that consciousness was ill-defined neuroscientist
Stanislas Dehaene and others characterized and focused on conscious access.
In the book he outlines the limitations of previous
psychological dogma. Instead his use of subjective
assessments opened the
window to contrast totally unconscious
brain activity with those
including consciousness.
He describes the research methods. He explains the
contribution of new sensors and probes that allowed the
psychological findings to be correlated, and causally related to
specific neural activity.
He describes the theory of the brain he uses, the 'global neuronal
workspace' to position all the experimental details into a
whole.
He reviews how both theory and practice support diagnosis and
treatment of real world mental illnesses.
The implications of Dehaene's findings for subsequent
consciousness research are outlined.
Complex adaptive system (CAS) models of the brain's development and
operation introduce constraints which are discussed.
Conscious access |
Reading and writing present a conundrum. The reader's
brain contains neural networks tuned to reading. With
imaging a written word can be followed as it progresses from the
retina through a functional chain that asks: Are these letters?
What do they look like? Are they a word? What does it sound
like? How is it pronounced? What does it mean? Dehaene
explains the importance of
education in tuning the brain's networks for reading as
well as good strategies for teaching reading and countering dyslexia. But
he notes the reading
networks developed far too recently to have directly evolved.
And Dehaene asks why humans are unique in developing
reading and culture.
He explains the cultural
engineering that shaped writing to human vision and the exaptations and neuronal structures that
enable and constrain reading and culture.
Dehaene's arguments show how cellular, whole animal and cultural
complex adaptive system (CAS) are
related. We review his explanations in CAS terms and use
his insights to link cultural CAS that emerged based on reading
and writing with other levels of CAS from which they emerge.
Evolved reading |
Read Montague explores how brains make decisions. In
particular he explains how:
- Evolution can create indirect abstract models, such as the dopamine system, that
allow
- Life changing real-time
decisions to be made, and how
- Schematic structures provide
encodings of computable control
structures which operate through and on incomputable,
schematically encoded, physically active structures and
operationally associated production
functions.
Receptor indirection |
Daniel Goleman and Richard Davidson describe a scientific
investigation of meditation's
impact on the brain. They introduce
the book by describing their experiences with meditation,
science and the research establishment, their friendship, how
meditation is now used in two distinct ways: deep - leading to altered
traits & wide - that can reach the multitudes; which
the book reviews as it critiques the claims and research used to
back them up.
Goleman and Davidson describe meeting as Harvard psychology
graduate students, interested in consciousness, and how minds
work. They rebel against the behavioral orthodoxy, visit Asia and discover the Eastern
tradition of exploring and altering the mind.
Goleman had travelled to Sri Lanka to understand an Asian model
of the mind, which he presented to the undergraduates at
Harvard. Goleman and Davidson developed it into a shared vision of
consciousness. It took over twenty years for
scientific theory and experimental data to catch up and align
with this model. Much of the prior
experimental data had to be abandoned.
They introduce meditation's
impact on the amygdala
responding to pain and stress.
They look at the changes in:
- Stress
- Compassion
- Attention
- Self-awareness; and the
potential for use of mediation
in psychiatry.
And they warn of the occurrence of dark
nights.
They detail how scientists were able to study the brains of Tibetan meditation masters,
starting with Mingyur Rinpoche,
and detect meditation altering
traits.
Finally they discuss the potential
benefits of meditation and strategies to distribute it
broadly to a busy America.
Meditating neurons |
Tara Brach was worried from
a young age that there was something terribly wrong with
her: she like many others felt unworthy. She responded
by developing Radical
Acceptance. Brach then explains the steps in
applying it: pause,
greet what happens next with unconditional
friendliness; allowing us to:
- Initially attend to the sensations
of our body,
- Accept the
wanting self and discover its source of boundless
love.
- Welcome
fear with a widening
attention, accept the pain of death and become
free.
- Use adversity as a gateway to limitless compassion for ourselves
and others.
- Focus on
our basic goodness to counter Western culture turning anger, at being betrayed,
towards ourselves. Extend observing this goodness in
everyone. This enables the use of loving-kindness.
- Leverage
friendships to understand more about our shared nature
and strengthen Radical Acceptance.
- Realize our Buddha nature.
Complex adaptive system (CAS) theory describes the emergence of
the dualistic self and the tree of life linked by the genetic
code and machinery. It provides an analog of the Buddhist
presence.
Compassionate CAS |
The influence of childhood on behavior is significant.
Enneagrams define personality
types: Reformer, Helper, Achiever,
Individualist, Investigator, Loyalist, Enthusiast,
Challenger and Peacemaker; based on the impact of
childhood driven wounds.
The Enneagram becomes
a tool to enable interested people to transform from the
emotionally wounded base, hidden within
the armor of the type, to the liberated underlying essence.
Childhood leaves each of us with some environmentally specific Basic Fear. In response each
of us adopts an induced Basic Desire
of the type. But as we develop the inner observer, it will
support presence and
undermine the identification
that supports the armor of the type.
The Enneagram reveals three sets of relations about our type
armor:
- Triadic self
revealing: Instinctive,
feeling, thinking; childhood needs
that became significant wounds
- Social style
groupings: Assertive, compliant, withdrawn; strategies for
managing inner conflict
- Coping styles: Positive outlook, competency, reactive; strategies for
defending childhood wounds
Riso and Hudson augment the Enneagram with instinctual
distortions reflected in the interests of the variants.
The Enneagram also offers tools for understanding a person's level of development:
unhealthy, average, healthy,
liberation; including their
current center of gravity,
steriotypical social role,
wake-up call, leaden rule, red
flag, and direction
of integration and disintegration.
Complex adaptive system (CAS) theory associates the models
presented by the Enneagram with evolved behaviors and structures
in the mind: feelings, emotions, social behaviors, ideas; driven
by genetic and cultural evolution and the constraints of family
and social life. Emergent evolved amplifers can be
constrained by Riso and Hudson's awareness strategies.
Enneagram strategies |
Antonio Damasio argues
that ancient
& fundamental homeostatic processes,
built into
behaviors and updated by evolution
have resulted in the emergence
of nervous systems and feelings. These
feelings, representing the state of the viscera, and represented with general
systems supporting enteric
operation, are later ubiquitously
integrated into the 'images'
built by the minds of higher animals
including humans.
Damasio highlights the separate
development of the body frame in the building of
minds.
Damasio explains that this integration of feelings by minds
supports the development of subjectivity and consciousness. His chain of
emergence suggests the 'order of things.' He stresses the
end-to-end
integration of the organism which undermines dualism. And he reviews Chalmers
hard problem of consciousness.
Damasio reviews the emergence of cultures
and sees feelings, integrated with reason, as the judges of the
cultural creative process, linking culture to
homeostasis. He sees cultures as supporting the
development of tools
to improve our lives. But the results of the
creative process have added
stresses to our lives.
Following our summary of his arguments RSS frames his arguments from
the perspective of complex adaptive system (CAS) theory.
Each of the [super]organisms
discussed is a CAS reflecting the theory of such systems:
- Damasio's proposals about homeostasis routed signalling, aligns
well with CAS theory.
- Damasio's ideas on cultural stresses are elaborated by CAS
examples.
Emergence of feelings |
Robert Coram highlights the noble life of John Boyd. John
spent a lot of time alone
during his childhood.
He: excelled at swimming and was a lifeguard, enlisted in the
Army Air Corp while at school which rejected him for pilot
training, was part of the Japan occupation force where he swam;
so the US paid for him to attend University
of Iowa, where he: joined the Air Force Officers' training
corps, was accepted to be an Air Force pilot, and got engaged to
Mary Bruce.
Boyd trained at Nellis AFB to become a
combat ready pilot in
the Korean War.
While the US Air Force focused on
Strategic bombing, Boyd loved
dogfights. His exceptional tactical ability was
rewarded with becoming an instructor. Boyd created new
ways to think about dogfighting and beat all-comers
by using them in the F-100.
He was noticed and enabled by Spradling. As he trained, and defeated the top
pilots from around the US and allied base network, his
reputation spread. But he needed to get
nearer to the hot spring in Georgia, and when his move to
Tyndall AFB was blocked he used the AFIT to train in engineering at
Georgia tech. While preparing to move he documented his FWS training
and mentored Ronald Catton.
While there he first realized the
link between energy
and maneuverability.
At Eglin, in partnership with Tom Christie,
he developed tools to model the link. They developed
comparisons of US and Soviet aircraft which showed the US
aircraft performing poorly. Eventually General Sweeney
was briefed on
the theory and issues with the F-105, F-4, and F-111.
Sent to the Pentagon
to help save the F-X budget, Boyd joined forces with Pierre Sprey to
pressure procurement into designing and
building tactically exceptional aircraft: a CAS tank killer and a
lightweight maneuverable
fighter. The navy aligned with
Senators of states with navy bases, prepared to sink the
F-X and force the F-14 on
the Air Force. Boyd saved
the plane from the Navy and the budget from Congress, ensuring
the Air Force executive and its career focused hierarchy had the
freedom to compromise
on a budget expanding over-stuffed F-X (F-15). Boyd requested to
retire, in disgust.
Amid mounting hostility from the organizational hierarchy Boyd
and Sprey secretly
developed specifications for building prototype lightweight
fighters with General Dynamics: YF-16;
and Northrop: YF-17; and enabled by Everest Riccioni.
David Packard
announced a budget of $200 million for the services to spend on
prototypes. Pierre Sprey's friend Lyle Cameron picked a
short takeoff and landing transport aircraft and Boyd's lightweight fighter to
prototype.
Boyd was transferred to Thailand
as Vice Commander of Task
Force Alpha, inspector general and equal opportunity
training officer; roles in which he excelled. And he
started working on his analysis of creativity: Destruction
and Creation. But on completion of the tour Boyd was
apparently abandoned and sent to run
a dead end office at the Pentagon.
The power hierarchy moved to protect the F-15, but: Boyd,
Christie, Schlesinger,
and the Air Force chief of staff; kept the
lightweight fighter budgeted and aligned with Boyd's
requirements in a covert campaign. The Air Force
threw a phalanx of developers at the F-16, distorting Boyd's
concept. He accepted he had lost the fight and retired
from the Air Force.
Shifting to scholarship Boyd reflects on how rigidity must be destroyed to enable
creative new assemblies. He uses the idea to explain
the operational success of the YF16 and F-86 fighters, and then
highlights how the pilot can take advantage of their
infrastructure advantage with rapid decision making he
explains with the O-O-D-A Loop.
Boyd encouraged Chuck Spinney
to expose the systemic cost overruns
of the military procurement process. The military
hierarchy moved to undermine the
Spinney Report and understand the
nature of the reformers. Boyd acted as a progressive
mentor to Michael
Wyly, who taught the
Marine Corps about maneuver
warfare, and Jim Burton.
Finally, after the military hierarchy appears to have
beaten him, Boyd's ideas are tested during
the First Gulf War.
Following our summary of his main points, RSS frames the details from the
perspective of complex adaptive system (CAS) theory. Boyd was Darwinesque, placing the art of
air-to-air combat within a CAS framework.
Air warrior |
Alfred Nemeczek reveals the chaotic, stressful life of Vincent
van Gogh in Arles.
Nemeczek shows that Vincent was driven
to create, and successfully
invented new methods of representing feeling in paintings, and
especially portraits. Vincent
worked hard to allow artists like him-self
to innovate. But
Vincent failed in this goal, collapsing into psychosis.
Nemeczek also provides a brief history of
Vincent's life.
Following our summary of his main points, RSS frames the details from the
perspective of complex adaptive system (CAS) theory.
Vincent creates |
Reginald Dwight, better known as Elton John, writes a hilarious
memoir, full of anecdotal and sometimes morbid humor and gossip, which describes his
immediate family, upbringing, development as a singer
songwriter, stardom and its support for his problems, collapse
and eventual recovery.
Elton stresses the serendipitous nature
of his emergence as a musician. He describes
the contributions of his parents, Stanley & Sheila, mother's
sister, and her mother Ivy;
who formed his early
childhood proximate environment which prepared
him for a job in entertainment: he
developed his performance in the club circuits, setup a
commercial partnership with Bernie Taupin to write songs;
entering a network based around Dick James Music.
And he almost got married.
DJM focused Elton and Bernie's initial song writing
while they studied the songs they admired and Elton did session
work, tightening his performance skills and paying for the
food. A first album supported touring and the formation of
a band. A second one sent them to the US where Elton became an
overnight sensation. And during this period of time
Elton's testosterone
level ramped. Life changed
dramatically.
Stardom provided many rewards but there
were still life's problems to deal with. Elton was
befriended by his idol, John Lennon; he achieved new heights of
success but, sensitive to any hint of failure and fraud, suicidally disassociated.
His career crested, he struggled with loneliness and drugs, and
foresaw a fearful vision of his future, as fame caged him idly
in hotels between concerts. His hair abandoned him.
But he was saved by the challenge of
transforming the collapsed Watford football club. He
retired from touring which allowed him the time to reconstruct his life.
Empowered by success, supported by the removal of constraints,
Elton dominates - limiting feedback, doing whatever he
hopes will bring him happiness:
trying new options, expanding the range and increasing the
quantity of mind altering substances; eventually hitting John Reid and marrying
Renata.
He allows his drug use to enter the recording studio. Problems stress him. He is
frightened by a cancer
scare, AIDS, inspired by
Ryan White, angered by the
Sun, and saddened at
breaking Renata's heart. But he was there for Ryan White's
final days. And his lover Hugh Williams confronted Elton
about his string of addictions.
Elton finally agreed he had a problem.
He went to rehab, stopped hating himself,
gave up his current addictions, accepted the influence of a
higher force, and began admiring the everyday world and other
people.
It seemed the higher force was
supporting Elton's progress: he wrote the music for the
Lion King, met David Furnish who accepted Elton warts and all;
they both enjoyed a friendship with Gianni Versace; until Gianni
was murdered. Princess Diana
died soon after, and Elton performed at the funeral.
He toured with Billy Joel and aimed to do the same with Tina
Turner. While his new records sold well he found
himself in debt and terminated the management relationship
with John Reid
Enterprises.
Elton and Bernie improved their
situations: Elton started writing film scores, he helped
turn the film Billy Elliot into a musical, Bernie lobbied Elton
to improve the way they were making records, Elton and David
entered into a civil partnership, and Elton made a record with
his seminal influence: Leon
Russell.
Elton and David became parents of
two boys: Zachary and Elijah; using their sperm a surrogate
mother and network in California. They quietly get married
when the UK allows.
Elton's mum remains
difficult and cruel to him, but he is sad when she dies, and many
at the funeral recall her fun side with him. Being parents
increases the long-term
stresses on their lives, forcing them to adjust, so they can be there for their boys.
But Elton needs to go out with a bang!
And everyone helps.
Following our summary of his main points, RSS frames the details
of the creative process from the perspective of complex
adaptive system (CAS) theory.
My song |
Richard Feynman
outlines a series of amusing vignettes, as he reviews his life story.
Richard's personality
encouraged him to patiently
seek out fun: performing Shewhart cycles
with electricity, in his childhood laboratory, and aligning theory, and
practice through building and fixing radios.
Leonardo's life inspired him to try
innovation, which he
concluded was hard. He played
with the emotion
in communications, a skill
which he used later at
Caltech. And he made a game of avoiding following
orders at MIT. Working during
the holidays revealed the benefit of joining theory and
practice.
Feynman enrolled as a graduate
student at Princeton, where the successful
approach to science was just like his.
His approach was based on
patience and fun: he used his home lab and other tools for
qualitative exploration. Overtime he added experimental
techniques. He would test
the assertions in articles with amusing investigations;
with his mind aligned by
feelings of joy. Everyone at Princeton heard he would want to be hypnotized.
He was driven to compare the challenges of complex subjects being
taught at Princeton to his current pick. In his summer
recess he explored biology.
Gathering problems in challenging areas of science, and then picking one to solve, supported his
creativity. And his practical
orientation and situation when growing up in Far Rockaway,
supported his desire for choices
and adolescent dislike for purely intellectual and cultural
pursuits. Being mostly self-taught, he
developed different approaches to problems than the
standard strategies provided by mass education.
Richard saw his skill set as very different to that exhibited by his father. But are they very
different?
While Richard was at Princeton, America became concerned about
the implications of the European war. After a friend
enlisted he decided to dedicate his
summer holiday to helping the war effort. Feynman got involved in the
Manhattan Project, and went to Los Alamos where he
experienced constraints, applied by: the military, the
physics of the project, him on Niels
Bohr; but was
freed from them by Von
Neumann. The records & reports of the project
were kept in filing cabinets. Richard explored the weaknesses of
the locks and safes deployed to secure these
secrets. Just after the war he was called up by the draft
board for a medical but was rejected for being mentally
unfit.
After the war, Richard was asked to become a professor at Cornell.
He initially struggled in this role: Too young to match
expectations, stressed by the demands of his new job and his
recent experiences; until he adopted an approach that focused on
fun. He enjoyed knowing
about numbers: using, learning about them and the tools to
use them, and competing with others; to calculate, interpolate
and approximate a value the fastest.
Traveling to Buffalo in a light plane once a week to give a
physics lecture before flying back the next morning wasn't much
fun for Richard. So he used
the stipend to visit a bar after each lecture to meet
beautiful women. Richard liked bars and nightclubs, spending a summer in Albuquerque
frequenting one, and later
ones in Las Vegas, as he explored how to get the girls he
drank with to sleep with him.
Richard reflects on various times when he made government
officials obey their parts of contracts: patent fees, limits on red tape;
Richard became frustrated with his life at Cornell, seeing more
things that interested him on the sunny west coast at Caltech. Both
institutions, and Chicago, offered him incentives to help his decision making,
but Richard began to find reevaluating the alternatives a waste
of time and he saw risks in
a really high salary, deciding he would move to Caltech
and stay there.
Richard is invited to attend a scientific symposium in
Japan. Each of the US attendees is asked to learn a little
Japanese. Richard takes lessons, persists, can converse
effectively, but stops when he
finds the cultural parts of the language conflict with his
individualism.
Richard was unhappy with his achievements in physics. He
felt: slower than his peers, not keeping up or understanding the
latest details, fearful that
he could not cope; as the community
worked to understand the laws of beta decay. But
Martin Block pushed him to question the troubling parity
premise. Encouraged by Oppenheimer the community focused
on parity and failures were discovered in a cascade of
reports. Richard attended a meeting where Lee & Yang
discussed a failure and a theory to explain it. Richard
felt terrified and could not understand what they said.
His sister pushed him to change his attitude: act like a student
having fun, read every
line and equation of their paper; he would understand it.
And he did, as well as developing additional insights about what
was happening and what still seemed conflicted. He
reported his ideas back to the community. After Richard
returned from Brazil he reviewed the confusion of facts with
Caltech's experimental physicists who made him aware of
Gell-mann abandoning another former premise of Beta decay.
Feynman realized his ideas were consistent: fully and simply
describing the details of beta decay. He had identified
the workings of a fundamental law. Years later he was awarded the Nobel
prize for physics. He was conflicted about the prize
and attending the ceremony, but eventually enjoyed the trip,
where he discussed cultural achievement with the Japanese
ambassador.
Richard was interested in the operation of the brain, modeling
it on a digital computer. He explored hallucinations and the reality of
experiences.
Richard lobbies for integrity
in science.
In aspects of his life that weren't focused directly on science,
Richard was quirky. He would tease those who asked for his
help: pushing bargains to their logical conclusion; insisting on everyone keeping to
their part of the agreement. And he paid no attention to the
logistical details of planning. He loved percussion,
playing: drums, bongos, baskets, tables, Frigideira; and became quite a success. He
eventually discovered art could be
fun, and tried to express his joy at the underlying
mathematical beauty of the physical world. He had a great
art teacher. But he discovered although he could
eventually draw well he did not understand art.
Many of the artists he met were fakers, and even the powerful,
who were interested in integrating art and science, did not
understand either subject. He found the situation was
similar in other complex adaptive systems: philosophy, religion and
economics; which he dabbled in for a while but found the
strategies of other people practicing the study of such subjects
made him angry and
disturbed, so he avoided participating in them. It seemed
ironic that he was eventually asked to help in bringing
culture to the physicists!
He discusses issues in teaching creative physics in Brazil. He gets
involved in the California public school text
book selection process which he concluded was totally
broken, but also reveals how his father
provided him with a vision of how our world works,
inspiring his interest in experimentation and physical
theory.
Following our summary of his main points, RSS reviews how his personality, family and cultural history supported
his creative development from the perspective of complex
adaptive system (CAS) theory.
Richard draws |
Desmond & Moore paint a picture of Charles Darwin's life,
expanded from his own highlights:
- His naughty
childhood,
- Wasted
schooldays,
- Apprenticeship with Grant,
- His extramural
activities at Cambridge, walks with Henslow,
life with FitzRoy on the
Beagle,
- His growing
love for science,
- London: geology, journal and Lyell.
- Moving from
Gower Street to Down and writing Origin and other
books.
- He reviewed his position on
religion: the long
dispute with Emma, his
slow collapse of belief
- damnation for unbelievers like his father and brother, inward conviction
being evolved and unreliable, regretting he had ignored his father's
advice; while describing Emma's side of the
argument. He felt happy with his decision to dedicate
his life to science. He closed by asserting after Self &
Cross-fertilization his strength will be
exhausted.
Following our summary of their main points, RSS frames the details from the
perspective of complex adaptive system (CAS) theory. Darwin placed
evolution within a CAS framework, and built a network of supporters whose
complementary skills helped drive the innovation.
Darwin emerges |
Richard Dawkin's explores how nature has created implementations
of designs, without any need for planning or design, through the
accumulation of small advantageous changes.
Accumulating small changes |
Russ Abbott explores the impact on science of epiphenomena and
the emergence of agents.
Autonomous emergence |
Terrence Deacon explores how constraints on dynamic flows can
induce emergent phenomena
which can do real work. He shows how these phenomena are
sustained. The mechanism enables
the development of Darwinian competition.
Constraint based phenomena |
|
|
Associatively integrated robots
Summary
Haikonen juxtaposes the philosophy and psychology of
consciousness with engineering practice to refine the debate on
the hard problem of consciousness. During the journey he
describes the architecture of a robot that highlights the
potential and challenges of associative neural
networks.
Complex adaptive system (CAS) theory is then used to illustrate the
additional requirements and constraints of self-assembling
evolved conscious animals. It will be seen that
Haikonen's neural
architecture, This page describes the Adaptive Web framework (AWF) test system
and the agent programming framework (Smiley) that supports its
operation.
Example test system statements are included.
To begin a test a test statement is loaded into Smiley while
Smiley executes on the Perl
interpreter.
Part of Smiley's Perl code focused on setting up the
infrastructure is included bellow.
The setup includes:
- Loading the 'Meta file'
specification,
- Initializing the Slipnet,
and Workspaces and loading them
- So that the Coderack
can be called.
The Coderack, which is the focus of a separate
page of the Perl frame then schedules and runs the codelets
that are invoked by the test statement structures.
Smiley's Copycat
architecture and molecular biology's intracellular
architecture leverage the same associative properties.
Consciousness
and Robot Sentience
In Pentti O Haikonen's book
'Consciousness and Robot Sentience' he describes his experiments
with building robots which are operated by motors integrated
with sensors by associative neural networks.
Haikonen
argues that machines do not understand because they do not
operate with meaning. Meaning he asserts, comes from
interacting with the everyday environment and learning how
things are. We see and understand the environment directly
and readily interact with it - because we are conscious:
- Imitating consciousness is not enough
- Philosophers and psychologists have not explained
consciousness. Haikonen raises the mind/body problem is an assumed separation of the mind and body. It has a long history. Descartes's Cartesian dualism assumes the mind and body are two clocks in synchrony but otherwise unrelated. John Locke commented 'It is impossible to conceive that matter, either with or without motion, could have, originally, in and from itself, sense, perception, and knowledge; as is evident from hence, that then sense, perception, and knowledge, must be a property eternally separable from matter and every particle of it.' Chalmers describes this explanatory gap as the hard problem of consciousness. Damasio explains that the construction of feelings requires there be no duality, and he shows how it then emerged due to the structure of affect in humans.
.
Haikonen's hypothesis is that consciousness is a system
property. It is neither energy nor matter and can't be
explained by physical laws about energy and
matter.
Haikonen's book presents an engineering approach to
understanding consciousness. Conscious robots must know of
their own existence and what they are doing. Having
described the problems, theory, architecture and implementation
details of a robot operated by motors integrated with sensors by
associative neural networks, the final chapter of the book
summarizes Haikonen's explanation of consciousness.
Haikonen suggests there is only one real problem of
consciousness 'the hard problem' - related to qualia are the direct qualities of percepts according to Haikonen. He argues they do not require interpretation or any evocation of meaning. Colors are colors and pain is pain. The human visual hierarchy seems at odds with this interpretation with meaning being associated with letters by signalling from the letterbox to the frontal lobes and used in the feedback flows that identify and prime morphemes. Damasio suggests qualia are a type of provoked feeling, triggered by stimuli like taste or vision, which results in an emotive response. based perception
which he writes is a mandatory precondition of human-like
consciousness - which is obtaining the required combination of
symbolic and sub-symbolic information processing.
Associative information processing with associative neuronal
networks and distributed signal representations inherently
facilitates the natural transition from sub-symbolic to
symbolic.
Sentient robots must also have information integration and
sensory motor integration. That Haikonen argues is
achieved through architecture with the Haikonen Cognitive is the ability to orchestrate thought and action in accordance with internal goals according to Princeton's Jonathan Cohen. Architecture (HCA).
He compares this
architecture to Baar's global
workspace is an architecture for consciousness based on a network of neural assemblies, extending from the brain stem to the thalamus and cerebral cortex, performing on a theater stage for an unconscious audience. It is a type of blackboard architecture. Baars argues consciousness involves broadcasting of previously unconscious information throughout the cortex. and Shanahan's
global workspace is an architecture for consciousness which leverages Baars model but avoids the homunculus issues of a theater. Instead the workspace is a communication infrastructure that interconnects the: sensory cortex, motor cortex, affect, working memory and episodic memory. .
Haikonen aims to use the development of a sentient robot based
on the HCA and constructed using Haikonen neurons
to answer three questions:
- How does neural activity appear internally as a subjective
experience? Consciousness is the presence of internal
appearances which become percepts are internal appearences of the external world and the body according to Haikonen. RSS views them as evolved models that are:
- Associated schematically with the signals generated in response to epi-phenomena detected by sensory receptors and
- Acted on by emergent agents.
of the external world and the body, qualia. Haikonen
suggests qualia are externalized after sensor based
exploration of the external location allows
association.
- How does the subject become aware of its mental
content? Haikonen argues only percepts can have
internal appearance. So thoughts and imagination are
made virtual percepts via association with feedback loops
from actual percepts. Inner speech is viewed as
particularly powerful.
- How does 'I', the self, arise? Perceptions of the
body and its sensations and mental content are not
changing. Haikonen views these unchanging percepts as
the self.
The problem of consciousness
Haikonen frames his experiments with robots by reviewing the
problem of consciousness. Can mental programs be executed
by neural hardware? If engineers could design such
hardware they would know what a mind is. He asserts that
the mind is not an execution of any such program. The real
problem of consciousness is that the mind emerges from within
the brain. Ideas are not the real material things that
they represent.
Haikonen laments that philosophy contributed to the
confusion. Cartesian
dualism is an assumed separation of the mind and body. It has a long history. Descartes's Cartesian dualism assumes the mind and body are two clocks in synchrony but otherwise unrelated. John Locke commented 'It is impossible to conceive that matter, either with or without motion, could have, originally, in and from itself, sense, perception, and knowledge; as is evident from hence, that then sense, perception, and knowledge, must be a property eternally separable from matter and every particle of it.' Chalmers describes this explanatory gap as the hard problem of consciousness. Damasio explains that the construction of feelings requires there be no duality, and he shows how it then emerged due to the structure of affect in humans. implies that machines can't think. Instead a
homunculus appears in the
mind! Property
dualism rejects the soul of cartesian dualism. Instead it is argued there exists the physical material substance with its material events. Some of these physical aspects induce supervenient emergent mental properties. But property dualism does not explain the emergent mechanism. 's unexplained emergence similarly provides no help
with engineering a sentient robot. Identity theory is Frances Crick's astonishing hypothesis that neurons are the substrate of the mind, with no emergent phenomena needed. ,
troubles Haikonen since it has not been able to identify the top
level conscious neuronal, specialized eukaryotic cells include channels which control flows of sodium and potassium ions across the massively extended cell membrane supporting an electro-chemical wave which is then converted into an outgoing chemical signal transmission from synapses which target nearby neuron or muscle cell receptors. Neurons are supported by glial cells. Neurons include a: - Receptive element - dendrites
- Transmitting element - axon and synaptic terminals. The axon may be myelinated, focusing the signals through synaptic transmission, or unmyelinated - where crosstalk is leveraged.
- Highly variable DNA schema using transposons.
structures that allow some neural activity is perceived while
the rest is not. In recognition of this issue identity
theory allows that some neuronal states correspond to mental
content due to an additional layer of mental properties.
Haikonen sees this as the uninstructive insertion of unexplained
emergence just as in property dualism.
Haikonen sees value in Chalmers's
hard problem of consciousness - the explanatory gap between
physical processes and subjective experience. Haikonen
argues there must be a phenomenon, process or system property
that causes some neural activity to appear internally as the
subjective experience. Finding out the practical details
of what this mechanism is, is the core mind-body problem needed
to build sentient robots.
Consciousness and subjective experience
Boltuc described three types of consciousness:
- H - Hard subjective phenomena of the explanatory
gap such as the qualia are the direct qualities of percepts according to Haikonen. He argues they do not require interpretation or any evocation of meaning. Colors are colors and pain is pain. The human visual hierarchy seems at odds with this interpretation with meaning being associated with letters by signalling from the letterbox to the frontal lobes and used in the feedback flows that identify and prime morphemes. Damasio suggests qualia are a type of provoked feeling, triggered by stimuli like taste or vision, which results in an emotive response.
of a painful emerged as a mental experience, Damasio asserts, constructed by the mind using mapping structures and events provided by nervous systems. But feeling pain is supported by older biological functions that support homeostasis. These capabilities reflect the organism's underlying emotive processes that respond to wounds: antibacterial and analgesic chemical deployment, flinching and evading actions; that occur in organisms without nervous systems. Later in evolution, after organisms with nervous systems were able to map non-neural events, the components of this complex response were 'imageable'. Today, a wound induced by an internal disease is reported by old, unmyelinated C nerve fibers. A wound created by an external cut is signalled by evolutionarily recent myelinated fibers that result in a sharp well-localized report, that initially flows to the dorsal root ganglia, then to the spinal cord, where the signals are mixed within the dorsal and ventral horns, and then are transmitted to the brain stem nuclei, thalamus and cerebral cortex. The pain of a cut is located, but it is also felt through an emotive response that stops us in our tracks. Pain amplifies the aggression response of people by interoceptive signalling of brain regions providing social emotions including the PAG projecting to the amygdala; making aggressive people more so and less aggressive people less so. Fear of pain is a significant contributor to female anxiety. Pain is the main reason people visit the ED in the US. Pain is mediated by the thalamus and nucleus accumbens, unless undermined by sleep deprivation.
stimulus.
- P - Functional aspects such as removing your hand from a
painful stimulus
- A - Access is, argues Stanislas Dehaene, when some attended information eventually enters our awareness and becomes reportable to others.
Subjective experience includes: emotional feelings are subjective models: sad, glad, mad, scared, surprised, and compassionate; of the organism and its proximate environment, including ratings of situations signalled by broadly distributed chemicals and neural circuits. These feelings become highly salient inputs, evolutionarily associated, to higher level emotions encoded in neural circuits: amygdala, and insula. Deacon shows James' conception of feeling can build sentience. Damasio, similarly, asserts feelings reveal to the conscious mind the subjective status of life: good, bad, in between; within a higher organism. They especially indicate the affective situation within the old interior world of the viscera located in the abdomen, thorax and thick of the skin - so smiling makes one feel happy; but augmented with the reports from the situation of the new interior world of voluntary muscles. Repeated experiences build intermediate narratives, in the mind, which reduce the salience. Damasio concludes feelings relate closely and consistently with homeostasis, acting as its mental deputies once organisms developed 'nervous systems' about 600 million years ago, and building on the precursor regulatory devices supplied by evolution to social insects and prokaryotes and leveraging analogous dynamic constraints. Damasio suggests feelings contribute to the development of culture: - As motives for intellectual creation: prompting detection and diagnosis of homeostatic deficiencies, identifying desirable states worthy of creative effort.
- As monitors of the success and failure of cultural instruments and practices
- As participants in the negotiation of adjustments required by the cultural process over time
, imagination,
situation awareness (background feel), intentionality and
'aboutness'; not the neural physiology that supports the
experience.
The internal appearance of neural activity can be detected with
instrumentation but not with the mind's subjective
attention. Instead that presents subjective experience:
seen items, heard sounds, smell etc. The mind externalizes
the visual and auditory sensory percepts of the world, so they
appear as the external world. Internal percepts are
externalized. The internal percepts are only available to
the subject. Meanings are associated.
Internal appearances do not emerge automatically.
Additional conditions are necessary that are critical to the
development of conscious robots.
Perception and Qualia
Haikonen asks what
a percept is. Perception provides content to the conscious
mind. Receptors, sensitive to specific external stimuli,
transduce into common forms of neural signals.
The signals are pre-processed into forms of representation that
allow subsequent content detection and meaning to be
associated.
The output of preprocessing is a series of resolved details
which must be filtered by attention, correlated with current
context, experience and expectations to identify any match,
mismatch or novelty in the set of resolved details possibly
resulting in a conscious percept.
Recognition, Haikonen argues, is split into two aspects:
- Identifying continuity,
- The ability to evoke memorized experiences relating to the
perceived object is a collection of: happenings, occurrences and processes; including emergent entities, as required by relativity, explains Rovelli. But natural selection has improved our fitness by representing this perception, in our minds, as an unchanging thing, as explained by Pinker. Dehaene explains the object modeling and construction process within the unconscious and conscious brain. Mathematicians view anything that can be defined and used in deductive reasoning and mathematical proofs as an object. These mathematical objects can be values of variables, allowing them to be used in formulas.
.
Haikonen notes that the perception
process leverages essential
features to identify associations. He further argues
that imagination fills in the potential, but missing details
that allow perception to proceed. It is not the same as
recognition and so his robot will not use simple recognizers to
drive perception.
Haikonen argues that qualia are the direct qualities of percepts according to Haikonen. He argues they do not require interpretation or any evocation of meaning. Colors are colors and pain is pain. The human visual hierarchy seems at odds with this interpretation with meaning being associated with letters by signalling from the letterbox to the frontal lobes and used in the feedback flows that identify and prime morphemes. Damasio suggests qualia are a type of provoked feeling, triggered by stimuli like taste or vision, which results in an emotive response.
exist because of Chalmer's explanatory
gap. So he reviews them in detail:
Haikonen writes that a
percepts internal depiction is externalized. He suggests
the impression is an illusion. And since the details of
external position do not appear to be direct aspects of the
percepts signals he argues it is added via active exploratory
acts. This strategy is used in Haikonen's robots.
This method of association is flexible and can be applied to
body image.
From Perception to Consciousness
Haikonen suggests introspection justifies the claim of percepts are internal appearences of the external world and the body according to Haikonen. RSS views them as evolved models that are: - Associated schematically with the signals generated in response to epi-phenomena detected by sensory receptors and
- Acted on by emergent agents.
equating to qualia are the direct qualities of percepts according to Haikonen. He argues they do not require interpretation or any evocation of meaning. Colors are colors and pain is pain. The human visual hierarchy seems at odds with this interpretation with meaning being associated with letters by signalling from the letterbox to the frontal lobes and used in the feedback flows that identify and prime morphemes. Damasio suggests qualia are a type of provoked feeling, triggered by stimuli like taste or vision, which results in an emotive response. . He concludes
robots need qualia.
Attention is the mutli-faceted capability allowing access to consciousness. It includes selective attention, vigilance, allocating attention, goal focus, and meta-awareness. is an
important filter supporting consciousness. It acts as a
pinpointing device allowing correct association via temporal
coincidence. Mental selection can be sensory (pain emerged as a mental experience, Damasio asserts, constructed by the mind using mapping structures and events provided by nervous systems. But feeling pain is supported by older biological functions that support homeostasis. These capabilities reflect the organism's underlying emotive processes that respond to wounds: antibacterial and analgesic chemical deployment, flinching and evading actions; that occur in organisms without nervous systems. Later in evolution, after organisms with nervous systems were able to map non-neural events, the components of this complex response were 'imageable'. Today, a wound induced by an internal disease is reported by old, unmyelinated C nerve fibers. A wound created by an external cut is signalled by evolutionarily recent myelinated fibers that result in a sharp well-localized report, that initially flows to the dorsal root ganglia, then to the spinal cord, where the signals are mixed within the dorsal and ventral horns, and then are transmitted to the brain stem nuclei, thalamus and cerebral cortex. The pain of a cut is located, but it is also felt through an emotive response that stops us in our tracks. Pain amplifies the aggression response of people by interoceptive signalling of brain regions providing social emotions including the PAG projecting to the amygdala; making aggressive people more so and less aggressive people less so. Fear of pain is a significant contributor to female anxiety. Pain is the main reason people visit the ED in the US. Pain is mediated by the thalamus and nucleus accumbens, unless undermined by sleep deprivation. , pleasure is the outcome of the dopamine reward system, argues UCSF professor Robert Lustig. He, like the early Christians, contrasts [addiction oriented] pleasure with serotonin driven happiness & contentment. etc.) or
internal, based on context, emotional states &
motivation. Attention mechanisms first engage a percept,
then sustain it and finally disengage. They bring objects is a collection of: happenings, occurrences and processes; including emergent entities, as required by relativity, explains Rovelli. But natural selection has improved our fitness by representing this perception, in our minds, as an unchanging thing, as explained by Pinker. Dehaene explains the object modeling and construction process within the unconscious and conscious brain. Mathematicians view anything that can be defined and used in deductive reasoning and mathematical proofs as an object. These mathematical objects can be values of variables, allowing them to be used in formulas. into perceptual is a dominant function of the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex and the areas it connects with. Prefrontal neurons implement an active memory continuing to fire after the signal is gone for potentially dozens of seconds from the inferior temporal cortex (multi-sensory integration area) and lower level sensory neurons characterized by Hubel & Weisel, while the short-term memory task continues. If the prefrontal cortex gets distracted the memory is lost from consciousness. Earl Miller argues the prefrontal cortex implements the rules that decide which working memory neurons will fire (Spring 2017). Working memory develops from childhood through the late teens, and depends on pyramidal neurons within the PFC.
short-term memory in the brain includes functionally different types: Declarative, or explicit, (episodic and semantic), Implicit, Procedural, Spatial, Temporal, Verbal; Hebb suggested that glutamate receptive neurons learn by (NMDA channel based) synaptic strengthening: short term memory. This was shown to happen for explicit memory formation in the hippocampus. This strengthening is sustained by subsequent LTP. The non-real-time learning and planning processes operate through consciousness using the working memory structures, and then via sleep, the salient ones are consolidated while the rest are destroyed and garbage collected. from
where they can be broadcast and memorized.
Haikonen concludes attention, like qualia, are important for
robot consciousness. He speculates that conscious
perception allows information integration. It activates
connections that allow reporting, recalling, evoking of
associated meaning and response generation.
Haikonen explores if consciousness is the cross connection of a
global workspace. Many consciousness models assume this
but Haikonen asserts that qualia based internal appearance is a
key requirement because of the explanatory
gap.
A conscious agent differs from a non-conscious one in one
respect; the subjective qualia based internal appearance.
David Hume commented "I can observe nothing but
perception." The contents of consciousness & cognitive is the ability to orchestrate thought and action in accordance with internal goals according to Princeton's Jonathan Cohen. functions are
not explanations of consciousness. They don't cross the
explanatory gap. Algorithms are not related to qualia
based internal experience. Fitting together neural
processes and subjective appearances will explain
consciousness.
Emotions and
consciousness
Consciousness is the feelings are subjective models: sad, glad, mad, scared, surprised, and compassionate; of the organism and its proximate environment, including ratings of situations signalled by broadly distributed chemicals and neural circuits. These feelings become highly salient inputs, evolutionarily associated, to higher level emotions encoded in neural circuits: amygdala, and insula. Deacon shows James' conception of feeling can build sentience. Damasio, similarly, asserts feelings reveal to the conscious mind the subjective status of life: good, bad, in between; within a higher organism. They especially indicate the affective situation within the old interior world of the viscera located in the abdomen, thorax and thick of the skin - so smiling makes one feel happy; but augmented with the reports from the situation of the new interior world of voluntary muscles. Repeated experiences build intermediate narratives, in the mind, which reduce the salience. Damasio concludes feelings relate closely and consistently with homeostasis, acting as its mental deputies once organisms developed 'nervous systems' about 600 million years ago, and building on the precursor regulatory devices supplied by evolution to social insects and prokaryotes and leveraging analogous dynamic constraints. Damasio suggests feelings contribute to the development of culture: - As motives for intellectual creation: prompting detection and diagnosis of homeostatic deficiencies, identifying desirable states worthy of creative effort.
- As monitors of the success and failure of cultural instruments and practices
- As participants in the negotiation of adjustments required by the cultural process over time
of being alive. Physiological symptoms trigger emotions are low level fast unconscious agents distributed across the brain and body which associate, via the amygdala and rich club hubs, important environmental signals with encoded high speed sensors, and distributed programs of action to model: predict, prioritize guidance signals, select and respond effectively, coherently and rapidly to the initial signal. The majority of emotion centered brain regions interface to the midbrain through the hypothalamus. The cerebellum and basal ganglia support the integration of emotion and motor functions, rewarding rhythmic movement. The most accessible signs of emotions are the hard to control and universal facial expressions. Emotions provide prioritization for conscious access given that an animal has only one body, but possibly many cells, with which to achieve its highest level goals. Because of this, base emotions clash with group goals and are disparaged by the powerful. Pinker notes a set of group selected emotions which he classes as: other-condemning, other-praising, other-suffering and self-conscious emotions. Evolutionary psychology argues evolution shaped human emotions during the long period of hunter-gatherer existence in the African savanna. Human emotions are universal and include: Anger, Appreciation of natural beauty, Contempt, Disgust, Embarrassment, Fear, Gratitude, Grief, Guilt, Happiness, Honor, Jealousy, Liking, Love, Moral awe, Rage, Romantic love, Lust for revenge, Passion, Sadness, Self-control, Shame, Sympathy, Surprise; and the sham emotions and distrust induced by reciprocal altruism. . Haikonen
is not sure why the physiological symptoms would be useful in a
robot.
Emotions are internal states of the mind. Haikonen follows
James with emotional states being equivalent to perceptions of
related body sensations. Percepts gain positive, negative
or neutral emotional significance. The physiological
routes are well understood. LeDoux describes two routes for
emotional stimuli: There is a low, fast, direct route from the thalamus has all the main inputs to the cortex passing through it. It is massively supplied with return innervations from the cortical regions it routes too. It does not stand on the route of the main exits from the cortex. The parafascicular nucleus of the rat thalamus contains relatively high levels of D5 dopamine receptors. For human vision the primary system connects to the neocortex via, a small part of the thalamus, the LGN. to the amygdala contains > 12 distinct areas: Central, Lateral. It receives simple signals from the lower parts of the brain: pain from the PAG; and abstract complex information from the highest areas: Disgust, heart rate, and suffering from the insula cortex, allowing it to orchestrate emotion. It connects strongly to attention focusing networks. It sends signals to almost every other part of the brain, including to the decision making circuitry of the frontal lobes. It has high levels of D(1) dopamine receptors. During extreme fear the amygdala drives the hippocampus into fear learning. It outputs directly to subcortical reflexive motor pathways when speed is required. Its central nucleus projects to the BNST. It signals the locus ceruleus. It directly signals area 25. The amygdala: - Promotes aggression. Stimulating the amygdala promotes rage. It converts anger into aggression and when impaired it impacts the ability to detect angry facial expressions.
- Participates in disgust
- Perceives fear promoting stimuli, focusing our attention on these. In PTSD sufferers the Amygdala overreacts to mildly fearful stimuli and is slow to calm down and the amygdala expands in size over a period of months. Fear is processed by the lateral nucleus which serves as the input from various senses, and the central nucleus which outputs to the brain stem (central grey - freezing, lateral hypothalamus - blood pressure, activates paraventricular hypothalamus => crf -> hormone adjustments).
- Has lots of receptors for and is highly sensitive to glucocorticoids. Stress inhibits the GABA interneurons in the basolateral amygdala (BLA) allowing the excitatory glutamate releasing neurons to excite more.
- Is sensitive to unsettling/uncertain social situations where it promotes anxiety and makes us distracted. It is also interested in uncertain but potentially painful situations. The amygdala contributes to social and emotional decision making where the BLA supports rejecting an unacceptable offer, as allowed in the Ultimatum Game, by injecting implicit mistrust and vigilance, generating an anger driven rejection that is used as punishment. The amygdala is very rapidly excited by subliminal signals from the thalamus of outgroup skin color. The amygdala subsequently tips social emotions against outgroups unless restrained by the frontal lobe or influenced by subliminal priming to prioritize inclusion. The fast path from the thalamus rapidly but inaccurately signals its identified a weapon.
- Sees suffering of others as increasingly salient with loving-kindness meditation practice, Goleman & Davidson explain.
- Promotes male, but not female, sexual motivation when it is an uncertain potential pleasure.
- Responds to the longing for uncertain potential pleasures and fear that the reward will not be worth it if it happens. The amygdala turns off during orgasm.
- Uses but is not directly involved in vision.
and a high route
from the thalamus through the cortex includes the paleocortex a thin sheet of cells that mostly process smell, archicortex and the neocortex. The cerebral cortex is a pair of large folded sheets of brain tissue, one on either side of the top of the head connected by the corpus callosum. It includes the occipital, parietal, temporal and frontal lobes. to the
amygdala.
Haikonen argues that the physiological symptoms take the form of
emotional qualia are the direct qualities of percepts according to Haikonen. He argues they do not require interpretation or any evocation of meaning. Colors are colors and pain is pain. The human visual hierarchy seems at odds with this interpretation with meaning being associated with letters by signalling from the letterbox to the frontal lobes and used in the feedback flows that identify and prime morphemes. Damasio suggests qualia are a type of provoked feeling, triggered by stimuli like taste or vision, which results in an emotive response. .
Physiological states (hunger, thirst, temperature, boredom) are
internal causes. Pain emerged as a mental experience, Damasio asserts, constructed by the mind using mapping structures and events provided by nervous systems. But feeling pain is supported by older biological functions that support homeostasis. These capabilities reflect the organism's underlying emotive processes that respond to wounds: antibacterial and analgesic chemical deployment, flinching and evading actions; that occur in organisms without nervous systems. Later in evolution, after organisms with nervous systems were able to map non-neural events, the components of this complex response were 'imageable'. Today, a wound induced by an internal disease is reported by old, unmyelinated C nerve fibers. A wound created by an external cut is signalled by evolutionarily recent myelinated fibers that result in a sharp well-localized report, that initially flows to the dorsal root ganglia, then to the spinal cord, where the signals are mixed within the dorsal and ventral horns, and then are transmitted to the brain stem nuclei, thalamus and cerebral cortex. The pain of a cut is located, but it is also felt through an emotive response that stops us in our tracks. Pain amplifies the aggression response of people by interoceptive signalling of brain regions providing social emotions including the PAG projecting to the amygdala; making aggressive people more so and less aggressive people less so. Fear of pain is a significant contributor to female anxiety. Pain is the main reason people visit the ED in the US. Pain is mediated by the thalamus and nucleus accumbens, unless undermined by sleep deprivation.
and reward are external causes. Emotions are motivational
factors.
Digital
computers do not need motivation. They have a scheduler
that executes whatever is programmed. But Haikonen asserts
an artificial cognitive is the ability to orchestrate thought and action in accordance with internal goals according to Princeton's Jonathan Cohen.
agent is not governed by a program. Attention would not be
handled by a program. Another means of action planning is
necessary. Motivation would be key.
Haikonen notes that consciousness is typically viewed as
providing free will is the subjective assessment of one's ability to make decisions and perform independent actions. Philosophers note that causal chains linking physical phenomena with conscious decisions would undermine the idea of independent free will. RSS views the architecture of CAS agency as requiring indirect associations between phenomena and agent's models. Evolution captures these associations within the genetic structures of the emergent agents, removing any epistemological or complementarity constraints. Sapolsky concludes that this evolved agency severely limits the potential contribution of free will. .
Haikonen argues against free will but looks at determinism and decision making integrates situational context, state and signals to prioritize among strategies and respond in a timely manner. It occurs in all animals, including us and our organizations: - Individual human decision making includes conscious and unconscious aspects. Situational context is highly influential: supplying meaning to our general mechanisms, & for robots too. Emotions are important in providing a balanced judgement. The adaptive unconscious interprets percepts quickly supporting 'fast' decision making. Conscious decision making, supported by the: DLPFC, vmPFC and limbic system; can use slower autonomy. The amygdala, during unsettling or uncertain social situations, signals the decision making regions of the frontal lobe, including the orbitofrontal cortex. The BLA supports rejecting unacceptable offers. Moral decisions are influenced by a moral decision switch. Sleeping before making an important decision is useful in obtaining the support of the unconscious in developing a preference. Word framing demonstrates the limitations of our fast intuitive decision making processes. And prior positive associations detected by the hippocampus, can be reactivated with the support of the striatum linking it to the memory of a reward, inducing a bias into our choices. Prior to the development of the PFC, the ventral striatum supports adolescent decision making. Neurons involved in decision making in the association areas of the cortex are active for much longer than neurons participating in the sensory areas of the cortex. This allows them to link perceptions with a provisional action plan. Association neurons can track probabilities connected to a choice. As evidence is accumulated and a threshold is reached a choice is made, making fast thinking highly adaptive. Diseases including: schizophrenia and anorexia; highlight aspects of human decision making.
- Organisations often struggle to balance top down and distributed decision making: parliamentry government must use a process, health care is attempting to improve the process: checklists, end-to-end care; and include more participants, but has systemic issues, business leaders struggle with strategy.
.
He sees the primary factor in decision making being the
situation which he judges causal. The current state of the
agent is a secondary factor. And social pressures and the
demands of others can provide external influence. The
secondary factors provide the appearance of free will.
Haikonen concludes a robot could have a general value system
that would help the robot choose what to do.
Inner speech and consciousness
Haikonen has developed an associative model of language based on
his view of natural languages as symbol systems with real world
grounding of meaning.
The meaning of words is grounded in percepts of various
modalities and an inner situation model based on real world
situations rather than an abstract grammar and text alone.
Abstract meanings arise from their associative connections to
larger context and their style of use.
Inner speech can use feedback loops to allow qualia are the direct qualities of percepts according to Haikonen. He argues they do not require interpretation or any evocation of meaning. Colors are colors and pain is pain. The human visual hierarchy seems at odds with this interpretation with meaning being associated with letters by signalling from the letterbox to the frontal lobes and used in the feedback flows that identify and prime morphemes. Damasio suggests qualia are a type of provoked feeling, triggered by stimuli like taste or vision, which results in an emotive response. associated with percepts are internal appearences of the external world and the body according to Haikonen. RSS views them as evolved models that are: - Associated schematically with the signals generated in response to epi-phenomena detected by sensory receptors and
- Acted on by emergent agents.
to be fed to the
input neurons of sensory modalities, where they can excite
sensory feature signal patterns allowing conscious introspection
of the qualia of inner speech.
Qualia and
machine consciousness
Haikonen compares human and machine consciousness - arguing that
in the human mind the perceived world, and internal content,
presents itself as qualia are the direct qualities of percepts according to Haikonen. He argues they do not require interpretation or any evocation of meaning. Colors are colors and pain is pain. The human visual hierarchy seems at odds with this interpretation with meaning being associated with letters by signalling from the letterbox to the frontal lobes and used in the feedback flows that identify and prime morphemes. Damasio suggests qualia are a type of provoked feeling, triggered by stimuli like taste or vision, which results in an emotive response.
and that conscious execution by cognitive is the ability to orchestrate thought and action in accordance with internal goals according to Princeton's Jonathan Cohen. functions is
driven by qualia-based internal appearances. He asserts
this is also a good structure for conscious machines. But
the qualia of
these machines don't have to be similar to human
qualia. Contemporary computers don't have qualia and are
not conscious.
Haikonen argues machine qualia need to be:
- Direct, so not represented symbolically
- Perceived in the carried information with the carrier
transparent
- Representative of amodal qualities
of features
- Externalized with the association of feedback from
exploratory actions.
Testing consciousness
Haikonen identifies requirements for effective tests of
consciousness:
- They must generate responses to the ongoing situation
- Checks for memory in the brain includes functionally different types: Declarative, or explicit, (episodic and semantic), Implicit, Procedural, Spatial, Temporal, Verbal; Hebb suggested that glutamate receptive neurons learn by (NMDA channel based) synaptic strengthening: short term memory. This was shown to happen for explicit memory formation in the hippocampus. This strengthening is sustained by subsequent LTP. The non-real-time learning and planning processes operate through consciousness using the working memory structures, and then via sleep, the salient ones are consolidated while the rest are destroyed and garbage collected.
- Checks for attention is the mutli-faceted capability allowing access to consciousness. It includes selective attention, vigilance, allocating attention, goal focus, and meta-awareness.
- Checks that the system provides the ability to introspect
- Checks for presence of mental content
- Checks for support of direct perception
He then reviews historic tests of consciousness:
Haikonen then considers self-consciousness and tests of
it.
Tests of self-consciousness include:
- Mirror test is passed if the system is aware it is itself
that it sees in the mirror.
- Name test is passed if the system is aware of its
name. But Haikonen warns that animals may just be
associating the reward that often follows it with the name
rather than being self-conscious.
- Ownership test checks for awareness that the system is
responsible for the actions. This is a helpful test
since ownership awareness can often be inferred from
subsequent responses.
- The cross examination test can be applied.
Haikonen also reviews tests for machine consciousness detailed
in literature:
Artificial conscious cognition
Over Carlo Rovelli resolves the paradox of time.
Rovelli initially explains that low level physics does not
include time:
- A present that is common throughout the universe does not exist
- Events are only partially ordered. The present is
localized
- The difference between past and future is not foundational.
It occurs because of state that through our blurring appears
particular to us
- Time passes at different speeds dependent on where we are and how fast we travel
- Time's rhythms are due to
the gravitational field
- Our quantized physics shows neither
space nor time, just processes transforming physical
variables.
- Fundamentally there is no time. The basic equations
evolve together with events, not things
Then he
explains how in a physical world without time its perception can
emerge:
- Our familiar time emerges
- Our interaction with the world is partial, blurred,
quantum indeterminate
- The ignorance determines the existence of thermal time
and entropy that quantifies our uncertainty
- Directionality of time is real
but perspectival. The entropy of the world in
relation to us increases with our thermal time. The
growth of entropy distinguishes past from future: resulting in
traces and memories
- Each human is a
unified being because: we reflect the world, we
formed an image of a unified entity by
interacting with our kind, and because of the perspective
of memory
- The variable time: is one
of the variables of the gravitational field.
With our scale we don't
register quantum fluctuations, making space-time
appear determined. At our speed we don't perceive
differences in time of different clocks, so we experience
a single time: universal, uniform, ordered; which is
helpful to our decisions
time various analogies have
been used as models of artificial cognition:
- Switch board
- Computer
- Hierarchical classifier
- Controller
- Predictor
- Simulator
- Search engine
- Time Machine
Haikonen argues all the models have some merit, but all need to
be part of an integrated whole. And Haikonen insists that
the brain uses neural representation for sub-symbolic qualia and
for computational symbolic representations supported via
associations.
Haikonen reviews cognitive is the ability to orchestrate thought and action in accordance with internal goals according to Princeton's Jonathan Cohen.
architectures and their capabilities:
- Cognitive architectures depict system arrangements for
producing human-like cognition is the ability to orchestrate thought and action in accordance with internal goals according to Princeton's Jonathan Cohen.
- Combine and implement cognitive functions: Perception,
Attention, Prediction, Learning, Memory in the brain includes functionally different types: Declarative, or explicit, (episodic and semantic), Implicit, Procedural, Spatial, Temporal, Verbal; Hebb suggested that glutamate receptive neurons learn by (NMDA channel based) synaptic strengthening: short term memory. This was shown to happen for explicit memory formation in the hippocampus. This strengthening is sustained by subsequent LTP. The non-real-time learning and planning processes operate through consciousness using the working memory structures, and then via sleep, the salient ones are consolidated while the rest are destroyed and garbage collected. , Imagination,
Planning, judgment, Reasoning, General intelligence enables the achievement of goals in the face of obstacles. The goals are sub-goals of genes' survival and reproduction and include:
- Obtaining and eating food
- Sex
- Finding and maintaining shelter
- Fighting for resources - in the preferred hunter-gatherer environment loss of resources was critical while possession was often transient.
- Understanding the proximate environment
- Securing the cooperation of others
, Emotions are low level fast unconscious agents distributed across the brain and body which associate, via the amygdala and rich club hubs, important environmental signals with encoded high speed sensors, and distributed programs of action to model: predict, prioritize guidance signals, select and respond effectively, coherently and rapidly to the initial signal. The majority of emotion centered brain regions interface to the midbrain through the hypothalamus. The cerebellum and basal ganglia support the integration of emotion and motor functions, rewarding rhythmic movement. The most accessible signs of emotions are the hard to control and universal facial expressions. Emotions provide prioritization for conscious access given that an animal has only one body, but possibly many cells, with which to achieve its highest level goals. Because of this, base emotions clash with group goals and are disparaged by the powerful. Pinker notes a set of group selected emotions which he classes as: other-condemning, other-praising, other-suffering and self-conscious emotions. Evolutionary psychology argues evolution shaped human emotions during the long period of hunter-gatherer existence in the African savanna. Human emotions are universal and include: Anger, Appreciation of natural beauty, Contempt, Disgust, Embarrassment, Fear, Gratitude, Grief, Guilt, Happiness, Honor, Jealousy, Liking, Love, Moral awe, Rage, Romantic love, Lust for revenge, Passion, Sadness, Self-control, Shame, Sympathy, Surprise; and the sham emotions and distrust induced by reciprocal altruism. , Natural
language, Motor action control;
- Consciousness, self-consciousness, subjective experience
and qualia.
- Produce human-like responses, actions and behavior.
- Know and understand what it is doing
- Should be able to act autonomously in meaningful ways in
new situations
- Learn and accumulate experience
Haikonen argues
there are three approaches to cognitive is the ability to orchestrate thought and action in accordance with internal goals according to Princeton's Jonathan Cohen. architecture:
- High-level symbolic approach - is the traditional
artificial intelligence (A.I.) approach, where cognitive
functions are implemented directly in discrete function
blocks. The blocks are then logically connected
together.
- Low-level sub-symbolic approach - is the connectionist
approach, where artificial neurons and synapses are defined
and the functions of interconnected neurons and neuron
groups are defined to produce a traditional artificial
neural network.
- Associative symbolic neural network approach - is
Haikonen's approach, starts with low level neural components
but uses neurons and neuron groups that are associative,
allowing the association of signals and signal patterns with
each other in a direct way. This allows association of
meaning and symbols and supports the transition from
sub-symbolic to symbolic level.
Associative
information processing
Haikonen notes that the challenge for an associative system is
stopping everything becoming associated with everything
else. He includes a selective
mechanism within his associative nodes to constrain
association formation.
Haikonen reviews three types of association:
- Pavlovian conditioning - builds a simple association
between two signals that are temporarily linked by a signal
such as a reward or threat.
- Hebbian conditioning - builds an association between
neurons that are active together by synaptic
strengthening.
- Auto association and hetero association. These
association types allow:
- Sub pattern signals can cause the whole pattern to be
linked to.
- Pavlovian conditioning can have meaning and symbols
associated.
- Temporal associations can form sequences of
patterns.
- A prior temporal sequence can auto associatively
generate a prediction of a later pattern.
- Prior temporal sequences can hetero associate future
different sequences.
Associative
information representation
Information can be represented through content detection being
associated with meaning by building distributed representations
of signals and using learned experience to associate meaning
(machine qualia). The distributed representation method
will:
- Directly tell something about the content
- Allow easy association of meaning
- Allow easy modification and combination of the
representations to enable imagination and creativity.
- Work with imperfect representations
- Tolerate errors and distortion.
Neural
realization of associative processing
Haikonen notes that real neurons develop a representation using
spiking transmissions. Machine neurons can more easily
leverage block signals. And he asserts that simple models
of neurons simulating the information model suffice for building
information processing logic. To just represent the
information flows block signals of varying intensity can be
used.
Haikonen
associative neuron
The Haikonen neuron includes:
- Main input signal - meaning is conserved at the
output. In some situations the main signal must also
pass in which case the main input signal is summed to the
synapse outputs and forwarded to the threshold
circuit.
- Output signal
- Associative vector input (one synapse per signal).
It can evoke the output signal dependent on the state of the
synapses.
- Inhibit input
- Synapses that provide coincidence of main signal and
associative input signal to control the output signal.
Synapse includes a coincidence detector (with learning
control input), one bit memory and a synaptic switch.
The associative synapse can execute simple Hebbian learning
based on simultaneous occurrence of the main signal and the
associative signal. With different learning controls
alternative synaptic associations become available:
- Simple Hebbian learning in given groups of neurons takes
place only at suitable occasions determined by the focus
of attention. This is facilitated by the learning
control signal.
- Correlative Hebbian synapse allows for auto and hetero
associative logic.
Winner takes all (WTA) output
threshold circuit is a group of neurons where only the neuron(s)
that has the highest synaptic excitation sum is allowed to send
its output signal. WTA adds comparators and output
switches to allow comparison of input signal with threshold and
if the input is larger than the threshold, allowing these
outputs to flow.
Associative neuron groups
The Operation of an Associative Neuron Group is used to evoke
one signal from many possible ones. In an associative
neuron group:
- The associative inputs of the neurons in the
group are connected together so the same associative input
vector appears at the associative inputs of each
neuron.
- Each associative input vector may be associated with one
main signal. This main signal may be evoked if an
associative input vector matches closely the original input
vector.
- The output thresholds of the neurons are connected
together with WTA.
That will allow the output of the main signal evoked by the
closest matching associative vector.
- Haikonen recommends that the value of the output threshold
be floating and slightly less than the maximum evocation
strength value.
The Association of Vectors with Vectors is allowed by different
arrangements of input signal vectors to the associative neuron
group. The input vector is transformed into a single
signal representation and the associative input vector is
associated with one of the single signals. At the output
of the associative neuron group the single signal representation
is transformed back into the vector form. Haikonen notes
that subsequently the associative input vector will evoke the
associated output vector that is similar to the input vector
used in training.
Auto-associative Memory can be constructed by wiring the main
signal vector as the associative vector as well. This will
associate the input signal with itself. The auto
associative memory utilizes the SOFT-AND which allows the
evocation of the whole input vector as the output vector when a
small arbitrary subset, even with some distortions, is
introduced at the input.
Temporal Sequences are processed by transforming the serial
signals into parallel forms so that the signals become available
at the same Carlo Rovelli resolves the paradox of time.
Rovelli initially explains that low level physics does not
include time:
- A present that is common throughout the universe does not exist
- Events are only partially ordered. The present is
localized
- The difference between past and future is not foundational.
It occurs because of state that through our blurring appears
particular to us
- Time passes at different speeds dependent on where we are and how fast we travel
- Time's rhythms are due to
the gravitational field
- Our quantized physics shows neither
space nor time, just processes transforming physical
variables.
- Fundamentally there is no time. The basic equations
evolve together with events, not things
Then he
explains how in a physical world without time its perception can
emerge:
- Our familiar time emerges
- Our interaction with the world is partial, blurred,
quantum indeterminate
- The ignorance determines the existence of thermal time
and entropy that quantifies our uncertainty
- Directionality of time is real
but perspectival. The entropy of the world in
relation to us increases with our thermal time. The
growth of entropy distinguishes past from future: resulting in
traces and memories
- Each human is a
unified being because: we reflect the world, we
formed an image of a unified entity by
interacting with our kind, and because of the perspective
of memory
- The variable time: is one
of the variables of the gravitational field.
With our scale we don't
register quantum fluctuations, making space-time
appear determined. At our speed we don't perceive
differences in time of different clocks, so we experience
a single time: universal, uniform, ordered; which is
helpful to our decisions
time.
Haikonen uses short-term memories and delay lines for
this. Associative neuron groups are then used to associate
the various delayed temporal parts with a cue vector. The
cue vector will evoke the parts in parallel but the delay lines
transform them back into a temporal stream.
Designing a cognitive perception system
Haikonen argues a model perception system will be:
- Stimuli - phenomena
- Sensor - transduced
- Internal Format - electric signals
- Pre-processing feature detection - Basic meaning, content
detection, requirements from qualia
- Distributed representation - raw percepts
- Feedback combination - Attention, context, prediction,
match/mismatch, introspection applied top down
- Percept signals - Accepted percepts
- Broadcast
Haikonen reviews the feedback process. The feature signals
from the sensory pre-process are forwarded to the feedback
neurons. These feedback neurons also receive internal
information: expectation, prediction, introspection,
match/mismatch/novelty; allowing this association to generate
output percepts.
A complete cognitive is the ability to orchestrate thought and action in accordance with internal goals according to Princeton's Jonathan Cohen.
system has a number of perception/response feedback loops, which
are associatively cross-linked to each other. The input
thresholds of the neuron groups determine, which broadcasts, if
any, are accepted at the present moment. The groups learn
associative connections between the percept signals and the
received broadcast signals including temporal sequences.
The feedback loop re-circulates and sustains percepts, acting as
a short term working
memory is a dominant function of the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex and the areas it connects with. Prefrontal neurons implement an active memory continuing to fire after the signal is gone for potentially dozens of seconds from the inferior temporal cortex (multi-sensory integration area) and lower level sensory neurons characterized by Hubel & Weisel, while the short-term memory task continues. If the prefrontal cortex gets distracted the memory is lost from consciousness. Earl Miller argues the prefrontal cortex implements the rules that decide which working memory neurons will fire (Spring 2017). Working memory develops from childhood through the late teens, and depends on pyramidal neurons within the PFC. .
Match, Mismatch and Novelty feedback are resolved at the
feedback neuron group comparing the feedback and the sensory
feature signal vector. It is necessary for prediction,
attention control, search operations, answering yes or no to
questions of the form 'is this ??" and for emotions.
Haikonen describes various examples of perception response
feedback loops.
The transition to Symbolic Processing
Haikonen considers the inclusion of natural language within a
robot to be important for two reasons:
- The robot will be far more useful if it can interact with
humans using a shared understanding of language.
- Philosophers consider natural language processing to be a
core aspect of a cognitive is the ability to orchestrate thought and action in accordance with internal goals according to Princeton's Jonathan Cohen.
architecture.
Higher cognition is the ability to orchestrate thought and action in accordance with internal goals according to Princeton's Jonathan Cohen. calls
for symbolic presentations. Words can be sounded and text
visualized.
The vocabulary of a cognitive agent is a set of words with
associated meanings conveyed by associative connections.
The meanings of the words are grounded to perceived entities are, according to Abbott, a class including people, families, corporations, hurricanes. They implement abstract designs and are demarcatable by their reduced entropy relative to their components. Rovelli notes entities are a collection of relations and events, but memory and our continuous process of anticipation, organizes the series of quantized interactions we perceive into an illusion of permanent objects flowing from past to future. Abbott identifies two types of entity: - At equilibrium entities,
- Autonomous entities, which can control how they are affected by outside forces;
and situations of
the external world and body. Haikonen concludes there is a
requirement of a perceiving system with associative learning and
associative processing of information.
Haikonen's
strategy is to learn words with point-able simple meanings
first. In this process the sub-symbolic signal patterns of
the pointed entities are, according to Abbott, a class including people, families, corporations, hurricanes. They implement abstract designs and are demarcatable by their reduced entropy relative to their components. Rovelli notes entities are a collection of relations and events, but memory and our continuous process of anticipation, organizes the series of quantized interactions we perceive into an illusion of permanent objects flowing from past to future. Abbott identifies two types of entity: - At equilibrium entities,
- Autonomous entities, which can control how they are affected by outside forces;
and
those of the given word are associated with each other, so that
afterwards the signal patterns of the word can act as a symbol
for the named entity.
Symbols depict entities not inherently related to them.
They have representation that extends beyond the direct meaning
of the constituting features. The additional meaning is
based on convention. It can be included by
association.
Associations can integrate meaning and different
modalities. Associative cross-connections are used during
associative learning to forward percepts from a modality to the
others. Simple two way labeling can take place.
Information integration with multiple modules
Haikonen uses the example of 'find cherry' to illustrate the
flows between different modules of his cognitive is the ability to orchestrate thought and action in accordance with internal goals according to Princeton's Jonathan Cohen.
architecture. Four modules interact; through associative
interconnects, iteratively to develop a viable strategy:
- Motor
- Visual color
- Visual pattern
- Linguistic auditory
'Find' is of interest to the motor module.
'Cherry' is of interest to the visual color module obtaining a
match with red.
'Cherry' is of interest to the visual pattern module obtaining a
match with round.
'Cherry' is of interest to the linguistic auditory module
accepting 'cherry'.
'Red' and 'Round' are fed back to the motor module which is able
to generate 'find' movements that drive towards the 'red'
'round' cherry.
Sensorimotor Integration
Haikonen explains how he leverages externalization of the
appearance of sensory information. It allows seamless
sensorimotor integration. Externalization adds the sense
of direction and distance to the perceived object is a collection of: happenings, occurrences and processes; including emergent entities, as required by relativity, explains Rovelli. But natural selection has improved our fitness by representing this perception, in our minds, as an unchanging thing, as explained by Pinker. Dehaene explains the object modeling and construction process within the unconscious and conscious brain. Mathematicians view anything that can be defined and used in deductive reasoning and mathematical proofs as an object. These mathematical objects can be values of variables, allowing them to be used in formulas. . "The
perception of the external position of objects within our reach
is seamlessly coupled to the neural circuits that control the
motion of our hands and body."
Since robots use conventional parts, such as electric motors,
without associative interfaces they must be specifically
integrated. Haikonen describes the feedback control loops
that are required. They are arranged in a hierarchy.
Hierarchical Control Loops
Haikonen asserts that control of motor actions is
hierarchic. This allows the architecture to overcome the
incompatibility between the details of the feedback loops for
different perception/response modalities. Intermediate
neuron groups can use associative learning to map between the
signals and feedback in one modality and another.
This structure ensures that proprioceptive is the sense of awareness of the relative position of adjacent body parts.
representations can result in actual action by motors integrated
with visual percepts allowing seamless sensorimotor
integration.
Emotional
Significance of Percepts
Haikonen explains how the problem of combinatorial explosion
requires the space of choice of stimuli in an associative system
to be limited.
Attention is the mutli-faceted capability allowing access to consciousness. It includes selective attention, vigilance, allocating attention, goal focus, and meta-awareness. provides both
a filter and a mechanism to change context.
Emotional evaluation of percepts are internal appearences of the external world and the body according to Haikonen. RSS views them as evolved models that are: - Associated schematically with the signals generated in response to epi-phenomena detected by sensory receptors and
- Acted on by emergent agents.
allows for attention to be allocated to internal percepts.
Pain emerged as a mental experience, Damasio asserts, constructed by the mind using mapping structures and events provided by nervous systems. But feeling pain is supported by older biological functions that support homeostasis. These capabilities reflect the organism's underlying emotive processes that respond to wounds: antibacterial and analgesic chemical deployment, flinching and evading actions; that occur in organisms without nervous systems. Later in evolution, after organisms with nervous systems were able to map non-neural events, the components of this complex response were 'imageable'. Today, a wound induced by an internal disease is reported by old, unmyelinated C nerve fibers. A wound created by an external cut is signalled by evolutionarily recent myelinated fibers that result in a sharp well-localized report, that initially flows to the dorsal root ganglia, then to the spinal cord, where the signals are mixed within the dorsal and ventral horns, and then are transmitted to the brain stem nuclei, thalamus and cerebral cortex. The pain of a cut is located, but it is also felt through an emotive response that stops us in our tracks. Pain amplifies the aggression response of people by interoceptive signalling of brain regions providing social emotions including the PAG projecting to the amygdala; making aggressive people more so and less aggressive people less so. Fear of pain is a significant contributor to female anxiety. Pain is the main reason people visit the ED in the US. Pain is mediated by the thalamus and nucleus accumbens, unless undermined by sleep deprivation. and pleasure is the outcome of the dopamine reward system, argues UCSF professor Robert Lustig. He, like the early Christians, contrasts [addiction oriented] pleasure with serotonin driven happiness & contentment. sensors provide
emotional signals. The intensity of emotional percepts
contributes to their prioritization.
The
outline of the Haikonen Cognitive Architecture (HCA)
Haikonen argues the HCA provides the dynamic system for the
production of conscious human like cognition is the ability to orchestrate thought and action in accordance with internal goals according to Princeton's Jonathan Cohen. .
It includes information flows between:
- Environment includes mechanical self receives effects from
motor actions; sends signals to sensors
- Sensors (Environmental, Self) - receive input from
environment and mechanical self; send signals to perception
and motor actions
- Perception - receives signals from sensors, and
associative feedback from mental process; sends signals to
mental process and motor actions
- Match/mismatch/novelty
- Emotional evaluation
- Mental process - receives signals from perception; sends
associative feedback to perception
- Motor actions - receives signals from sensors and
perception; sends effects to environment sensors and the
mechanical self
These flows allow for a variety of modes of operation of the
robot to satisfy the requirements of cognition at a general
level:
- Reflex reaction - between environment, sensors and motor
actions.
- Sub-conscious routines - between environment, sensors,
perception and motor actions.
- Deliberated actions - between environment, sensors,
perception (mental process), and motor actions
- Imagination - between introspective percept (perception)
and associative deliberation (mental process)
Haikonen's block diagram of the HCA includes a variety of
associatively cross-connected modules:
- Internal needs
- Pain emerged as a mental experience, Damasio asserts, constructed by the mind using mapping structures and events provided by nervous systems. But feeling pain is supported by older biological functions that support homeostasis. These capabilities reflect the organism's underlying emotive processes that respond to wounds: antibacterial and analgesic chemical deployment, flinching and evading actions; that occur in organisms without nervous systems. Later in evolution, after organisms with nervous systems were able to map non-neural events, the components of this complex response were 'imageable'. Today, a wound induced by an internal disease is reported by old, unmyelinated C nerve fibers. A wound created by an external cut is signalled by evolutionarily recent myelinated fibers that result in a sharp well-localized report, that initially flows to the dorsal root ganglia, then to the spinal cord, where the signals are mixed within the dorsal and ventral horns, and then are transmitted to the brain stem nuclei, thalamus and cerebral cortex. The pain of a cut is located, but it is also felt through an emotive response that stops us in our tracks. Pain amplifies the aggression response of people by interoceptive signalling of brain regions providing social emotions including the PAG projecting to the amygdala; making aggressive people more so and less aggressive people less so. Fear of pain is a significant contributor to female anxiety. Pain is the main reason people visit the ED in the US. Pain is mediated by the thalamus and nucleus accumbens, unless undermined by sleep deprivation.
& pleasure is the outcome of the dopamine reward system, argues UCSF professor Robert Lustig. He, like the early Christians, contrasts [addiction oriented] pleasure with serotonin driven happiness & contentment. sensors that
signal to the emotional evaluator which signals system
reactions
- Touch, visual, auditory, direction sensors which signal
feedback neurons which output a percept that is broadcast to
neuron groups with associative memory
- Proprioception is the sense of awareness of the relative position of adjacent body parts.
which is fed by effectors and signals feedback neurons which
output a percept that is broadcast to neuron groups with
associative memory
The inputs to the HCA robots are internal and external
events. The internal motivating factors include energy and
safe operating environment. The emotions module has hard
wired responses.
External factors such as an observed opportunity will trigger
imagination of execution of the opportunity.
The HCA allows broadcasts to share a coherent view with other
modules. But it also includes the facility to form
coalitions of modules. This allows independent cooperation
of modules to do tasks in parallel. The coalitions of
modules form on an ad hoc basis as required by the
situation.
The
Comparison of Some Cognitive Architectures
Haikonen compares the HCA with Baar's global
workspace is an architecture for consciousness based on a network of neural assemblies, extending from the brain stem to the thalamus and cerebral cortex, performing on a theater stage for an unconscious audience. It is a type of blackboard architecture. Baars argues consciousness involves broadcasting of previously unconscious information throughout the cortex. and Shanahan's
global workspace is an architecture for consciousness which leverages Baars model but avoids the homunculus issues of a theater. Instead the workspace is a communication infrastructure that interconnects the: sensory cortex, motor cortex, affect, working memory and episodic memory. .
Each of the architectures utilizes a number of unconscious
specialist modules. Baar's model interacts with them via
the 'theater stage'. Shanahan's model uses the global
communications infrastructure. In the HCA the modules
communicate directly with one another.
The autonomous unconscious modules in Baar's model compete to
post information to the global workspace's working memory.
A similar competition takes place in the Shanahan model.
Shanahan's communication infrastructure has limited bandwidth
and constrains the formation of only one coalition of processes
at a time. HCA modules broadcast directly to each
other. It is the recipient that decides if the information
is appropriate. A module may distribute cues that
facilitate the broadcast of information it is interested
in. HCA allows multiple coalitions to form and operate at
the same Carlo Rovelli resolves the paradox of time.
Rovelli initially explains that low level physics does not
include time:
- A present that is common throughout the universe does not exist
- Events are only partially ordered. The present is
localized
- The difference between past and future is not foundational.
It occurs because of state that through our blurring appears
particular to us
- Time passes at different speeds dependent on where we are and how fast we travel
- Time's rhythms are due to
the gravitational field
- Our quantized physics shows neither
space nor time, just processes transforming physical
variables.
- Fundamentally there is no time. The basic equations
evolve together with events, not things
Then he
explains how in a physical world without time its perception can
emerge:
- Our familiar time emerges
- Our interaction with the world is partial, blurred,
quantum indeterminate
- The ignorance determines the existence of thermal time
and entropy that quantifies our uncertainty
- Directionality of time is real
but perspectival. The entropy of the world in
relation to us increases with our thermal time. The
growth of entropy distinguishes past from future: resulting in
traces and memories
- Each human is a
unified being because: we reflect the world, we
formed an image of a unified entity by
interacting with our kind, and because of the perspective
of memory
- The variable time: is one
of the variables of the gravitational field.
With our scale we don't
register quantum fluctuations, making space-time
appear determined. At our speed we don't perceive
differences in time of different clocks, so we experience
a single time: universal, uniform, ordered; which is
helpful to our decisions
time. But only one of
the tasks may execute in a way that is conscious.
Unlike the other architectures the HCA does not have a global
workspace. All the HCA modules operate in the same way
independent of whether they are operating in consciousness or
not.
Baar and Shanahan models do not explain Chalmers's hard
problem of consciousness.
Complex adaptive system This page introduces the complex adaptive system (CAS) theory
frame. The theory provides an organizing framework that is
used by 'life.' It can be used to evaluate and rank models
that claim to describe our perceived reality. It catalogs
the laws and strategies which underpin the operation of systems
that are based on the interaction of emergent
agents. It highlights the
constraints that shape CAS and so predicts their form. A
proposal that does not conform is wrong.
John Holland's framework for representing complexity is
outlined. Links to other key aspects of CAS theory
discussed at the site are presented.
(CAS) theory
supports reasoning about consciousness and sentient robotic
systems.
CAS can only This page discusses the mechanisms and effects of emergence
underpinning any complex adaptive system (CAS). Physical forces and
constraints follow the rules of complexity. They generate
phenomena and support the indirect emergence of epiphenomena.
Flows of epiphenomena interact in events which support the
emergence of equilibrium and autonomous
entities. Autonomous entities enable evolution
to operate broadening the adjacent possible.
Key research is reviewed.
emerge when their environment provides
This page discusses the potential of the vast state space which
supports the emergence of complex
adaptive systems (CAS). Kauffman describes the mechanism
by which the system expands across the space.
many states including various
different potential niches. Haikonen's
robotic meaning corresponds in CAS systems to
Haikonen's description
of generating a percept is supported by Dehaene's detailed
descriptions of how we
read a set of words and how
the key detailed unconscious signals achieve conscious access
to become a perception.
Features
are subtle and are difficult for a CAS to identify. This page reviews the implications of selection, variation and
heredity in a complex adaptive system (CAS).
The mechanism and its emergence are
discussed.
Evolved The agents in complex adaptive
systems (CAS) must model their
environment to respond effectively to it. Evolution's
schematic operators and Samuel
modeling together support the indirect recording of past
successes and their strategic use by the current agent to learn
how to succeed in the proximate environment.
learning
uses Plans change in complex adaptive systems (CAS) due to the action of genetic
operations such as mutation, splitting and recombination.
The nature of the operations is described.
genetic algorithm defined The agents in complex adaptive
systems (CAS) must model their
environment to respond effectively to it. Evolution's
schematic operators and Samuel
modeling together support the indirect recording of past
successes and their strategic use by the current agent to learn
how to succeed in the proximate environment.
models and experimental activities to
Agents use sensors to detect events in their environment.
This page reviews how these events become signals associated
with beneficial responses in a complex adaptive system (CAS). CAS signals emerge from
the Darwinian information
model. Signals can indicate decision
summaries and level of uncertainty.
associate the most effective models
and strategies for the proximate environment, with clusters of
signals that we identify as features. The This page discusses a complex adaptive system (CAS) implementation of a genetic algorithm (GA), Melanie
Mitchell's robot-janitor built as a set of Copycat codelets
integrated using agent-based
programming. The improvement in the operation of the
robots over succeeding generations of applying the GA is graphed.
The CAS that generated, and operated the robot is reviewed,
including the implementation
details and codelet operational
program flow, and the challenges and limitations of this
implementation.
The schematic strings which make up
the robot's genotype, as
well as the signals which are sent
to the nucleus of the
robot's agents so
that the agents can deploy the appropriate response strings
(which activate codelets) are listed. The Slipnet configuration required by the
system to associate the schematic strings with programmatic
forces (codelets) is also listed.
The codelets and supporting perl are also listed.
In the conclusion the
limitations of the robot-janitor abstraction in studying emergence and creative evolution are discussed and
alternative experimental frameworks are proposed. One
such, the schematic cell is the subject of a separate page in this web frame.
virtual robot provides a simple
illustration.
Haikonen argues that qualia
are direct representations of sensory stimuli. CAS
theory implies this is unlikely. This page discusses the mechanisms and effects of emergence
underpinning any complex adaptive system (CAS). Physical forces and
constraints follow the rules of complexity. They generate
phenomena and support the indirect emergence of epiphenomena.
Flows of epiphenomena interact in events which support the
emergence of equilibrium and autonomous
entities. Autonomous entities enable evolution
to operate broadening the adjacent possible.
Key research is reviewed.
Emergent
self-assembly is based on a Plans emerge in complex adaptive
systems (CAS) to provide the
instructions that agents use to
perform actions. The component architecture and structure
of the plans is reviewed.
schematic
plan which is shared by every cell in the eukaryotic is a relatively large multi-component cell type. It initially emerged from prokaryotic archaea subsuming eubacteria, from which single and multi-celled plants, multi celled fungi, including single-cell variant yeast, drips, protozoa and metazoa, including humans, are constructed. A eukaryotic cell contains modules including a nucleus and production functions such as chloroplasts and mitochondria. body and
referenced by enzymatic, a protein with a structure which allows it to operate as a chemical catalyst and a control switch.
and cellular Plans are interpreted and implemented by agents. This page
discusses the properties of agents in a complex adaptive system
(CAS).
It then presents examples of agents in different CAS. The
examples include a computer program where modeling and actions
are performed by software agents. These software agents
are aggregates.
The participation of agents in flows is introduced and some
implications of this are outlined.
agents to transform This page discusses the potential of the vast state space which
supports the emergence of complex
adaptive systems (CAS). Kauffman describes the mechanism
by which the system expands across the space.
state and Agents use sensors to detect events in their environment.
This page reviews how these events become signals associated
with beneficial responses in a complex adaptive system (CAS). CAS signals emerge from
the Darwinian information
model. Signals can indicate decision
summaries and level of uncertainty.
signals
into actions. Indeed the foundation of a CAS depends on
indirect reference as Deacon
describes. Instead CAS theory suggests This page reviews the implications of selection, variation and
heredity in a complex adaptive system (CAS).
The mechanism and its emergence are
discussed.
evolution has ensured that the
selectively beneficial The agents in complex adaptive
systems (CAS) must model their
environment to respond effectively to it. Evolution's
schematic operators and Samuel
modeling together support the indirect recording of past
successes and their strategic use by the current agent to learn
how to succeed in the proximate environment.
models that
are qualia are the direct qualities of percepts according to Haikonen. He argues they do not require interpretation or any evocation of meaning. Colors are colors and pain is pain. The human visual hierarchy seems at odds with this interpretation with meaning being associated with letters by signalling from the letterbox to the frontal lobes and used in the feedback flows that identify and prime morphemes. Damasio suggests qualia are a type of provoked feeling, triggered by stimuli like taste or vision, which results in an emotive response. have become
more and more representative of the actual environment they
describe to the agents that use them:
Damasio
Antonio Damasio argues
that ancient
& fundamental homeostatic processes,
built into
behaviors and updated by evolution
have resulted in the emergence
of nervous systems and feelings. These
feelings, representing the state of the viscera, and represented with general
systems supporting enteric
operation, are later ubiquitously
integrated into the 'images'
built by the minds of higher animals
including humans.
Damasio highlights the separate
development of the body frame in the building of
minds.
Damasio explains that this integration of feelings by minds
supports the development of subjectivity and consciousness. His chain of
emergence suggests the 'order of things.' He stresses the
end-to-end
integration of the organism which undermines dualism. And he reviews Chalmers
hard problem of consciousness.
Damasio reviews the emergence of cultures
and sees feelings, integrated with reason, as the judges of the
cultural creative process, linking culture to
homeostasis. He sees cultures as supporting the
development of tools
to improve our lives. But the results of the
creative process have added
stresses to our lives.
Following our summary of his arguments RSS frames his arguments from
the perspective of complex adaptive system (CAS) theory.
Each of the [super]organisms
discussed is a CAS reflecting the theory of such systems:
- Damasio's proposals about homeostasis routed signalling, aligns
well with CAS theory.
- Damasio's ideas on cultural stresses are elaborated by CAS
examples.
provides a description of consciousness including
an affect framework that
explains the integration of qualia are the direct qualities of percepts according to Haikonen. He argues they do not require interpretation or any evocation of meaning. Colors are colors and pain is pain. The human visual hierarchy seems at odds with this interpretation with meaning being associated with letters by signalling from the letterbox to the frontal lobes and used in the feedback flows that identify and prime morphemes. Damasio suggests qualia are a type of provoked feeling, triggered by stimuli like taste or vision, which results in an emotive response. .
Haikonen's idea of a digital computer and its scheduling
architecture is widely held but is too constrained. He
asserts the
computer can not provide the facilities needed for a cognitive
agent. But Hofstadter
& Mitchell's Copycat
architecture provides the equivalent services on a digital
computer as Haikonen's hardware architecture, although probably
much more slowly. An artificial cognitive is the ability to orchestrate thought and action in accordance with internal goals according to Princeton's Jonathan Cohen. agent could be
built out of Copycat codelets executed stochastically on the
Copycat coderack.
Haikonen's robot uses associative and auto-associative neural
networks to augment the learning capabilities of classical artificial neural
networks are representational models that achieve high performance on difficult pattern recognition problems in vision and speech. But they need specialized training methods such as greedy layerwise pre-training or HF optimization. Researchers are gaining access to the participation of the individual 'neurons' using: visualization, attribution, dimensionality reduction, interpretability; (Mar 2018) with action oriented associations. By
associating Agents use sensors to detect events in their environment.
This page reviews how these events become signals associated
with beneficial responses in a complex adaptive system (CAS). CAS signals emerge from
the Darwinian information
model. Signals can indicate decision
summaries and level of uncertainty.
sensor and motor data
the robot can develop sophisticated behaviors. The
associative structures appear similar to AWF's This page describes the Adaptive Web framework (AWF) test system
and the agent programming framework (Smiley) that supports its
operation.
Example test system statements are included.
To begin a test a test statement is loaded into Smiley while
Smiley executes on the Perl
interpreter.
Part of Smiley's Perl code focused on setting up the
infrastructure is included bellow.
The setup includes:
- Loading the 'Meta file'
specification,
- Initializing the Slipnet,
and Workspaces and loading them
- So that the Coderack
can be called.
The Coderack, which is the focus of a separate
page of the Perl frame then schedules and runs the codelets
that are invoked by the test statement structures.
Smiley associations. Both architectures
have mechanisms to limit combinatorial explosion. Smiley's
evaluator codelets
limit the building of associative structures in the This page describes the Copycat
Workspace.
The specialized use of the Workspace by the adaptive web
framework's (AWF) Smiley is discussed.
How text and XML are imported into the Smiley Workspace is described.
Telomeric aging of schematic structures is introduced.
The internal data structure used to represent the state of each
workspace object is included.
The Workspace infrastructure functions are
included.
workspace.
In regard to thinking
machines Dawkin's
Richard Dawkin's explores how nature has created implementations
of designs, without any need for planning or design, through the
accumulation of small advantageous changes.
argues that the creation of life was
a hard problem and likely has only occurred once. Deacon Terrence Deacon explores how constraints on dynamic flows can
induce emergent phenomena
which can do real work. He shows how these phenomena are
sustained. The mechanism enables
the development of Darwinian competition.
describes a potential mechanism.
Once it had happened the laws of physics and chemistry were
augmented by the laws of CAS. These supported the
emergence of Consciousness has confounded philosophers and scientists for
centuries. Now it is finally being characterized
scientifically. That required a transformation of
approach.
Realizing that consciousness was ill-defined neuroscientist
Stanislas Dehaene and others characterized and focused on conscious access.
In the book he outlines the limitations of previous
psychological dogma. Instead his use of subjective
assessments opened the
window to contrast totally unconscious
brain activity with those
including consciousness.
He describes the research methods. He explains the
contribution of new sensors and probes that allowed the
psychological findings to be correlated, and causally related to
specific neural activity.
He describes the theory of the brain he uses, the 'global neuronal
workspace' to position all the experimental details into a
whole.
He reviews how both theory and practice support diagnosis and
treatment of real world mental illnesses.
The implications of Dehaene's findings for subsequent
consciousness research are outlined.
Complex adaptive system (CAS) models of the brain's development and
operation introduce constraints which are discussed.
consciousness and Reading and writing present a conundrum. The reader's
brain contains neural networks tuned to reading. With
imaging a written word can be followed as it progresses from the
retina through a functional chain that asks: Are these letters?
What do they look like? Are they a word? What does it sound
like? How is it pronounced? What does it mean? Dehaene
explains the importance of
education in tuning the brain's networks for reading as
well as good strategies for teaching reading and countering dyslexia. But
he notes the reading
networks developed far too recently to have directly evolved.
And Dehaene asks why humans are unique in developing
reading and culture.
He explains the cultural
engineering that shaped writing to human vision and the exaptations and neuronal structures that
enable and constrain reading and culture.
Dehaene's arguments show how cellular, whole animal and cultural
complex adaptive system (CAS) are
related. We review his explanations in CAS terms and use
his insights to link cultural CAS that emerged based on reading
and writing with other levels of CAS from which they emerge.
writing which both allow ideas to
become Plans emerge in complex adaptive
systems (CAS) to provide the
instructions that agents use to
perform actions. The component architecture and structure
of the plans is reviewed.
memetic structures and
subject to similar This page reviews the implications of selection, variation and
heredity in a complex adaptive system (CAS).
The mechanism and its emergence are
discussed.
evolutionary
pressures.
Hofstadter's
theoretical work on This page discusses the interdependence of perception and
representation in a complex adaptive system (CAS). Hofstadter
and Mitchell's research with Copycat is
reviewed. The bridging of a node from a network of 'well
known' percepts to a new representational instance is discussed
as it occurs in biochemistry, in consciousness and
abstractly.
perception and
representation and Neuroscientists such as Consciousness has confounded philosophers and scientists for
centuries. Now it is finally being characterized
scientifically. That required a transformation of
approach.
Realizing that consciousness was ill-defined neuroscientist
Stanislas Dehaene and others characterized and focused on conscious access.
In the book he outlines the limitations of previous
psychological dogma. Instead his use of subjective
assessments opened the
window to contrast totally unconscious
brain activity with those
including consciousness.
He describes the research methods. He explains the
contribution of new sensors and probes that allowed the
psychological findings to be correlated, and causally related to
specific neural activity.
He describes the theory of the brain he uses, the 'global neuronal
workspace' to position all the experimental details into a
whole.
He reviews how both theory and practice support diagnosis and
treatment of real world mental illnesses.
The implications of Dehaene's findings for subsequent
consciousness research are outlined.
Complex adaptive system (CAS) models of the brain's development and
operation introduce constraints which are discussed.
Dehaene's experiments on conscious access,
following Crick and Koch, show how the brain develops to
understand its local environment and then performs conscious
operations. Poggio's
comment "We do not yet understand how the brain gives rise
to intelligence enables the achievement of goals in the face of obstacles. The goals are sub-goals of genes' survival and reproduction and include: - Obtaining and eating food
- Sex
- Finding and maintaining shelter
- Fighting for resources - in the preferred hunter-gatherer environment loss of resources was critical while possession was often transient.
- Understanding the proximate environment
- Securing the cooperation of others
, nor
do we know how to build machines that are broadly intelligent as
we are" is being undermined.
The elucidation of these mechanisms illustrates how Bill Gates proposal 'to
sequence the human genome and replicate how nature did intelligence enables the achievement of goals in the face of obstacles. The goals are sub-goals of genes' survival and reproduction and include: - Obtaining and eating food
- Sex
- Finding and maintaining shelter
- Fighting for resources - in the preferred hunter-gatherer environment loss of resources was critical while possession was often transient.
- Understanding the proximate environment
- Securing the cooperation of others
in a
carbon based system' could be implemented. The
architecture of an Plans are interpreted and implemented by agents. This page
discusses the properties of agents in a complex adaptive system
(CAS).
It then presents examples of agents in different CAS. The
examples include a computer program where modeling and actions
are performed by software agents. These software agents
are aggregates.
The participation of agents in flows is introduced and some
implications of this are outlined.
agent is
'relatively' straight forward. Indeed Rob's strategy
studio (RSS) describes a This page discusses the interdependence of perception and
representation in a complex adaptive system (CAS). Hofstadter
and Mitchell's research with Copycat is
reviewed. The bridging of a node from a network of 'well
known' percepts to a new representational instance is discussed
as it occurs in biochemistry, in consciousness and
abstractly.
Copycat
based architecture used to enable the emergence of such agents
that execute on a standard Intel processor. But there are
major challenges:
Using the building of a robot limits the exploration of the developmental is a phase during the operation of a CAS agent. It allows for schematic strategies to be iteratively blended with environmental signals to solve the logistical issues of migrating newly built and transformed sub-agents. That is needed to achieve the adult configuration of the agent and optimize it for the proximate environment. Smiley includes examples of the developmental phase agents required in an emergent CAS. In situations where parents invest in the growth and memetic learning of their offspring the schematic grab bag can support optimizations to develop models, structures and actions to construct an adept adult. In humans, adolescence leverages neural plasticity, elder sibling advice and adult coaching to help prepare the deploying neuronal network and body to successfully compete. aspects
of animal systems. There are key Terrence Deacon explores how constraints on dynamic flows can
induce emergent phenomena
which can do real work. He shows how these phenomena are
sustained. The mechanism enables
the development of Darwinian competition.
constraints
and properties that This page discusses the mechanisms and effects of emergence
underpinning any complex adaptive system (CAS). Physical forces and
constraints follow the rules of complexity. They generate
phenomena and support the indirect emergence of epiphenomena.
Flows of epiphenomena interact in events which support the
emergence of equilibrium and autonomous
entities. Autonomous entities enable evolution
to operate broadening the adjacent possible.
Key research is reviewed.
emerge during
that development process.
In contrast to Haikonen's
use of observation and positional sensing to develop
self-awareness, systems that are built out of dividing,
self-assembling, growing cells, leverage local signals such as
chemical gradients and cell surface molecules to set the context
of their Plans emerge in complex adaptive
systems (CAS) to provide the
instructions that agents use to
perform actions. The component architecture and structure
of the plans is reviewed.
schema driven
operations. This origami like developmental activity
results in a physically defined position for all structural cell
types with neurons then seeking out muscle and skin cells based
on 'smell'. Sperry moved some of the structural embryonic
cells and demonstrated that a grown frog's response to touching
their moved skin is to scratch where the itch should be, rather
than the touched position where structural embryonic cells were
moved to.
The This page reviews the implications of reproduction initially
generating a single initialized child cell. For
multi-cellular organisms this 'cell' must contain all the germ-line schematic
structures including for organelles and multi-generational epi-genetic
state. Any microbiome
is subsequently integrated during the innovative deployment of
this creative event. Organisms with skeletal
infrastructure cannot complete the process of creation of an
associated adult mind, until the proximate environment has been
sampled during development.
The mechanism and resulting strategic options are
discussed.
single cell developmental bottleneck
ensures that the Plans emerge in complex adaptive
systems (CAS) to provide the
instructions that agents use to
perform actions. The component architecture and structure
of the plans is reviewed.
genetic plan
represents the competitive advantages that have been expressed
and successfully used. This page reviews the implications of selection, variation and
heredity in a complex adaptive system (CAS).
The mechanism and its emergence are
discussed.
Evolved
The agents in complex adaptive
systems (CAS) must model their
environment to respond effectively to it. Evolution's
schematic operators and Samuel
modeling together support the indirect recording of past
successes and their strategic use by the current agent to learn
how to succeed in the proximate environment.
learning is explicitly leveraged in
the application of a Plans change in complex adaptive systems (CAS) due to the action of genetic
operations such as mutation, splitting and recombination.
The nature of the operations is described.
genetic algorithm
in the Smiley based This page discusses a complex adaptive system (CAS) implementation of a genetic algorithm (GA), Melanie
Mitchell's robot-janitor built as a set of Copycat codelets
integrated using agent-based
programming. The improvement in the operation of the
robots over succeeding generations of applying the GA is graphed.
The CAS that generated, and operated the robot is reviewed,
including the implementation
details and codelet operational
program flow, and the challenges and limitations of this
implementation.
The schematic strings which make up
the robot's genotype, as
well as the signals which are sent
to the nucleus of the
robot's agents so
that the agents can deploy the appropriate response strings
(which activate codelets) are listed. The Slipnet configuration required by the
system to associate the schematic strings with programmatic
forces (codelets) is also listed.
The codelets and supporting perl are also listed.
In the conclusion the
limitations of the robot-janitor abstraction in studying emergence and creative evolution are discussed and
alternative experimental frameworks are proposed. One
such, the schematic cell is the subject of a separate page in this web frame.
virtual robot.
This evolutionary mechanism could apply to Haikonen's robot's
memetic word based plans.
While the self-assembled body can depend on relative cellular
positions defined in its cell's Plans emerge in complex adaptive
systems (CAS) to provide the
instructions that agents use to
perform actions. The component architecture and structure
of the plans is reviewed.
genetic
plan and generated developmentally, it is typically
beneficial to be aware of the local external environment.
During development, while the animal is offered some protection
by its parents, it can integrate evolved models of general
percepts with the situations that its sensors experience.
Reading is a clear
example. Other evolved models that are not
encountered over the developmental period are discarded to limit
combinatorial interference and regain resources. And due
to the pressure of competition the integration will leverage Representing state in emergent entities is essential but
difficult. Various structures are used to enhance the rate
and scope of state transitions. Examples are
discussed.
optimized structures ensuring rapid
awareness and response to significant percepts.
Consciousness has confounded philosophers and scientists for
centuries. Now it is finally being characterized
scientifically. That required a transformation of
approach.
Realizing that consciousness was ill-defined neuroscientist
Stanislas Dehaene and others characterized and focused on conscious access.
In the book he outlines the limitations of previous
psychological dogma. Instead his use of subjective
assessments opened the
window to contrast totally unconscious
brain activity with those
including consciousness.
He describes the research methods. He explains the
contribution of new sensors and probes that allowed the
psychological findings to be correlated, and causally related to
specific neural activity.
He describes the theory of the brain he uses, the 'global neuronal
workspace' to position all the experimental details into a
whole.
He reviews how both theory and practice support diagnosis and
treatment of real world mental illnesses.
The implications of Dehaene's findings for subsequent
consciousness research are outlined.
Complex adaptive system (CAS) models of the brain's development and
operation introduce constraints which are discussed.
Conscious access illustrates the two
stage process of:
- Discovery/slow repeated practice and
- Deployment of practiced episodic strategies into
unconscious structures associated with the cerebellum is involved with the efficiency of fine movement. It modulates the force and range of motion and is involved in motor coordination and the learning of motor skills. Damage to the cerebellum impairs standing, walking, or performance of coordinated movements. A virtuoso pianist or other performing musician depends on their cerebellum. The cerebellum receives visual, auditory, vestibular, and somatosensory information. It also receives information about individual muscular movements being directed by the brain. The cerebellum integrates this information and modifies the motor outflow, exerting a coordinating and smoothing effect on the movements. However, patients born without a cerebellum have survived reasonably well. The cerebellum is part of the implicit learning mechanism. It is required for the rabbit eye-blink to be classically conditioned to respond to a sound, and puff of air (threat to eye). It integrates the sound and puff and outputs the response to the motor area (blink). Levitin has shown the cerebellum participates in aspects of emotion and auditory processing. He found the cerebellum and basal ganglia were active throughout a session listening to music, modeling the beat, rewarding a match between the internal and external rhythm and integrating movement. And he notes the cerebellum providing Williams syndrome sufferers with their capability to play music. , spine
and muscle groups where fast activity can be
leveraged.
The non-real time conscious practice of a key activity is
supported by a subsequent period of sleep facilitates salient memory formation and removal of non-salient memories. The five different stages of the nightly sleep cycles support different aspects of memory formation. The sleep stages follow Pre-sleep and include: Stage one characterized by light sleep and lasting 10 minutes, Stage two where theta waves and sleep spindles occur, Stage three and Stage four together represent deep slow-wave sleep (SWS) with delta waves, Stage five is REM sleep; sleep cycles last between 90-110 minutes each and as the night progresses SWS times reduce and REM times increase. Sleep includes the operation of synapse synthesis and maintenance through DNA based activity including membrane trafficking, synaptic vesicle recycling, myelin structural protein formation and cholesterol and protein synthesis. Sleep also controls inflammation (Jan 2019) Sleep deprivation undermines the thalamus & nucleus accumbens management of pain. where these salient, Douglas Hofstadter controlled the amount of attention a Workspace object in Copycat would receive from codelets via its salience. The more descriptions, analogous to geons, an object has and the more highly activated the nodes involved therein, the more important the object is. Modulating this tendency is any relative lack of connections from the object to the rest of the objects in the Workspace. Salience is a dynamic number that takes into account both these factors. In Smiley the instantaneous salience of a Workspace's objects is calculated by itsalience. In the brain salience is modeled by the salience networks. details are
consolidated into the unconscious real time neuronal structures
and the rest are destroyed and garbage collected.
Place cells are neurons which fire whenever a higher animal occupies a certain location in space. Place cells are highly invariant over a variety of sensory cues, and they even maintain their space-selective firing as the animal wanders around in full darkness. They encode where the animal thinks it is. And the same cells associate a time stamp with the memories. provide a
model representation of episodic activity is the memory of conscious experiences. The entorhinal cortex's place cells record both space AND time details so that the memory stream can be reconstructed episodically. Damasio notes that feelings are indirect aspects of the recalled stream, and how positive or negative the memory is can alter over time.
including both Carlo Rovelli resolves the paradox of time.
Rovelli initially explains that low level physics does not
include time:
- A present that is common throughout the universe does not exist
- Events are only partially ordered. The present is
localized
- The difference between past and future is not foundational.
It occurs because of state that through our blurring appears
particular to us
- Time passes at different speeds dependent on where we are and how fast we travel
- Time's rhythms are due to
the gravitational field
- Our quantized physics shows neither
space nor time, just processes transforming physical
variables.
- Fundamentally there is no time. The basic equations
evolve together with events, not things
Then he
explains how in a physical world without time its perception can
emerge:
- Our familiar time emerges
- Our interaction with the world is partial, blurred,
quantum indeterminate
- The ignorance determines the existence of thermal time
and entropy that quantifies our uncertainty
- Directionality of time is real
but perspectival. The entropy of the world in
relation to us increases with our thermal time. The
growth of entropy distinguishes past from future: resulting in
traces and memories
- Each human is a
unified being because: we reflect the world, we
formed an image of a unified entity by
interacting with our kind, and because of the perspective
of memory
- The variable time: is one
of the variables of the gravitational field.
With our scale we don't
register quantum fluctuations, making space-time
appear determined. At our speed we don't perceive
differences in time of different clocks, so we experience
a single time: universal, uniform, ordered; which is
helpful to our decisions
time and space in the
memory trace recorded. Similarly time and space are
represented in the unconscious models built by the dorsal via the parietal cortex is primarily concerned with space and action. It attends to distance, position, speed, and orientation in space. It is not mirror symmetric. visual
pathway.
Haikonen argues that Crick
and Koch's identity theory does not explain effectively
why some neural processes are perceived as mental content, while
others are not. Crick searched unsuccessfully for a set of
neural structures that provide the equivalence of conscious
mental and neural states. But CAS theory suggests that the
The agents in complex adaptive
systems (CAS) must model their
environment to respond effectively to it. Evolution's
schematic operators and Samuel
modeling together support the indirect recording of past
successes and their strategic use by the current agent to learn
how to succeed in the proximate environment.
models that Haikonen views as
percepts need only be present when evolution retained them for
competitive reasons. The neurons, specialized eukaryotic cells include channels which control flows of sodium and potassium ions across the massively extended cell membrane supporting an electro-chemical wave which is then converted into an outgoing chemical signal transmission from synapses which target nearby neuron or muscle cell receptors. Neurons are supported by glial cells. Neurons include a: - Receptive element - dendrites
- Transmitting element - axon and synaptic terminals. The axon may be myelinated, focusing the signals through synaptic transmission, or unmyelinated - where crosstalk is leveraged.
- Highly variable DNA schema using transposons.
that represent
self-awareness may be distributed and difficult to
pinpoint. But they, or some equivalent, are necessary
since a self-model provides the The agents in complex adaptive
systems (CAS) must model their
environment to respond effectively to it. Evolution's
schematic operators and Samuel
modeling together support the indirect recording of past
successes and their strategic use by the current agent to learn
how to succeed in the proximate environment.
structural
bootstrapping for competitor models that we build and
perceive.
Haikonen's strategy
for a sentient robot learning reading is a basic analog of
Dehaene's
description of children learning
to read. But it is not clear how the robust
framework of genetic models recycled to support perception of
language and reading in children will be made available to the
robot.
Consciousness and Robot Sentience is an insightful book
highlighting key attributes of the control networks that
integrate the sensors and moving parts of conscious animals and
sentient robots.
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 Politics, Economics & Evolutionary Psychology |
Business Physics Nature and nurture drive the business eco-system Human nature Emerging structure and dynamic forces of adaptation |
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integrating quality appropriate for each market |
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