When I was a robot

 kw: psychology, artificial intelligence, simulated intelligence, manufactured intelligence, memoirs

I must be the poster child for late bloomers. Although an IQ test I was given in second grade indicated an IQ of 170, when I look back I think I had an EQ (emotional quotient) in Moron territory. Not much changed for several years.

I had thrust upon me an opportunity to look back and to look in the mirror, psychologically speaking, at the age of twelve. My parents were very concerned about my intense self-focus and tendency to keep to myself. For several months I was sent for psychoanalysis with a Freudian psychoanalyst who was a member of the church we attended at the time. She was older than my parents, but not old enough to be my grandmother. Her son was my age. Her husband was also a doctor.

All I knew at the time was that I was "withdrawn" and needed to "come out of my shell." I suppose these days I would be assigned to some location on the "autism spectrum" (It is far from a spectrum, but several related conditions, and only a few of them should be considered maladies). Now that more than 65 years have passed, I judge that it took more than thirty years for me to "come out of my shell" and put it (mostly) behind me.

As a pre-teen and teenager, I studied those around me. I concluded that I didn't have much in the way of a personality. I was cold, often indifferent, and I could be cruel. I decided it would be worthwhile, not to escape whatever "my shell" was, but to take control of it and enhance it, to construct the simulation of a nicer and more social person. Strategically, I figured that if I really had an IQ of 170, I could afford to spend 10-20 IQ points upon an alternative "person" in me. I never gave this person a name, but now it seems appropriate to call it MI, for "manufactured intelligence".

Was MI a robot, or a "Waldo", a teleoperated mechanism? Probably the latter, but I think of MI as a robot, an artificial friend I could rely on to relate to the world for me. Perhaps an avatar.

Creating and maintaining MI required a lot of close observation of other people, how they related to each other and what reactions various actions elicited. It was a lot of work and took a lot of time, but I gradually gained the ability to turn things over to MI and retreat, watchfully, into the background.

A lot happened in the following few decades. By about the age of fifty, I had been married more than twenty years, I had a pre-teen son, I was in mid-career at Dupont, and I was quite involved leading a church (I became a Christian at the age of 19, and "got more serious about the Lord" at age 24). My manager at Dupont decided to send me to a Technical Leadership Development Training course, which lasted a few weeks and took place at a conference center on the shore of Chesapeake Bay in Maryland. This was a big turning point.

Part of the preparation for TLDT was filling out a few questionnaires and surveys, and having a few colleagues fill out a personality scoring questionnaire that I had also filled out, twice. When I filled out that one in particular—I don't recall its title, so I'll call it Analog—it was to be filled out slowly and thoughtfully. After two weeks I was to fill it out again, answering each question as quickly as possible.

Another of the items was a Myers-Briggs Type Indicator test, a personality assessment. To jump to the chase on this one, my MBTI is INTP, Introverted+iNtuitive+Thinker+Perceiver. This is the least common MBTI type. However, I noticed that my numerical scores indicated strong tension on all four axes, and that the position on each axis was closer to the middle than to either end. For example, on the Thinking-Feeling axis, I scored 5 in the T direction; the range is 50F to 50T, which really means I have strong feelings but I'm stronger as a thinker, so 05T really means 50T-45F. That's not mathematical, but positional.

The Analog Test results precipitated a crisis within me. The "slow" and "fast" versions of my own sets of answers were quite different, and usually opposite. I realized that the "slow" results were for "inside" and that the "fast" answers were from MI. I had trained MI to be reactive, giving me leisure to think things over behind the scenes. After we all had a look at our personal results, we were given the results from our colleagues (three that each of us had chosen). The results from my colleagues matched well with the answers from MI! My three colleagues were unaware of the "real" me. I remember thinking, "Boy, do I have them fooled." Somehow, I found myself getting depressed.

A day or two later we all went home for two weeks, then returned. During those two weeks I did a lot of "inside work." I was greatly helped by my relationship with God. I discovered, deeper within me, that something had been growing very slowly over the years and decades. I was mostly able to shed both the "unpleasant me" I had been hiding, and MI, or most of MI. I have a "real Me" that knows God, knows people better than I ever had, that reacts a little slower than MI had but more thoughtfully. Most importantly, realizing I had been living a lie, I found that God is more pleased than before.

Midway through my decades of living behind MI, a friend said something insightful. I had developed very steady habits in many ways. Observing some of these, day after day, one day he said, "You're like a machine." I must admit, he had a point.

When we returned for the final week of training, I said to some of my colleagues, and to the instructor, "I realized that you can't build a tree." I didn't explain. Maybe they figured it out. I do know that MI wasn't a person but a shell, a mediator, even a translator. Now I didn't need MI any more. There is a real Me, and that is just who I am.

I am not sorry that I was a robot for so long. MI protected something deep inside me as it slowly grew into a mature person with a real, human personality. A personality strong enough to shed much of the unpleasant "old me" I'd been hiding.

This gives me some perspective on current trends around AI, which I prefer to call SI, for Simulated Intelligence. Large Language Models (LLMs) are hollow. They are shells. They are being trained, or "grown", into reactive systems with certain useful powers. But they don't have any right to be given autonomy. Furthermore, they do not stand alone. 

At the large companies that develop and train LLMs, thousands of coders and other computer scientists labor upon them. Only a small number of them are needed to train them. The rest are busy writing code that does what? The tendency of early LLMs to frequently "hallucinate" (that is, go off the rails) has kept numerous coders busy adding various guardrails and snippets of "real world" and "real physics" code to steer them. The Transformer code that converts a prompt into a string of tokens, and that reinterprets the results into human language, is a huge part of the system. More recent LLMs that can do limited agentic actions such as making focused Internet searches and database queries to build a response are doing a lot more than "predicting the next word."

Think of it: the big LLMs now have billions or perhaps a trillion or more "weights", which represent probabilities of certain reactions when a set of pathways through the tree of weights is taken. There are only about 100,000 English words in common use, and about a million in total (every other human language is much smaller except perhaps Chinese). The relationship matrix between all those words is very sparse; a particular word's chance of being in some way related to another word chosen at random is usually zero. The weights are not just for single tokens but for phrases, and the presence of certain kinds of phrases in a prompt (or 'conversation') triggers things like database queries and Internet searches. When you get a long answer from an LLM, you can count on big portions of the text being snatched verbatim from some of the sources it used to formulate its answer. You may know the student's maxim, "Copying from one source is plagiarism; copying from many sources is research." That principle is most likely solidly encoded into every LLM's structure.

Can any LLM or other manifestation of SI (or AI) become conscious? Can one become an ASI, an artificial superintelligence? Consider MI. I never thought of MI as a whole person. Close to thirty years ago I "harvested" MI for parts, one might say, and let the real Me within become the kind of person that I had constructed MI to simulate. MI was a simulation. Of the 15-20 billion neurons and quadrillions of neural synapses in my cerebral cortex, I suspect that MI was embodied in a few percent. After all, our entire emotional persona is focused in our limbic system, a set of mid-brain structures that include about a billion neurons and some thousand or so synapses per neuron, well-attached to the cortex (MI made lots of use of my limbic system). But our limbic system isn't all there is to any of us.

So far I see no hint that any of the AI tools out there have anything like a limbic system. Without that, there is on intentionality, no matter what kinds of statements have been made by various LLMs. At best, they are quoting literary characters who say certain things with certain emotional nuances in the source documents. But in the LLM, there is no "there" there.

Let's keep it that way.

I am a happier person, having become whole after hiding who I really am for so long. I am no longer robotic. In fact, one of my favorite Bible verses is John 3:8, "The wind blows where it wills, and you hear the sound of it, but you do not know where it comes from and where it goes; so is everyone who is born of the Spirit."

Is one percent of a mind still a mind?

kw: book reviews, nonfiction, psychology, zoology, animals, experience

The title and cover art (a Leafy Dragon, a kind of seahorse) of MetaZoa: Animal Life and the Birth of the Mind, by Peter Godfrey-Smith promise good thing inside, and that promise is abundantly kept. Thinking about thinking is the highest human art, and while Sturgeon's Dictum ("90% of everything is junk") holds especially true in this field, when the right ideas come together, the synergy is wonderful.

Dr. Godfrey-Smith has a prior book particularly on the mind of the octopus, Other Minds, and the work there is a springboard to his thinking about the full range of cognition, from the first evolution of neurons onward. MetaZoa begins with the eukaryotic cell—it could have begun with prokaryotes, but that would have added little and taken much more space—, a cell that senses and reacts to the environment, and is complex in its own right. However, there seems to be nothing we can do (so far) to determine whether amoebas, or critters like Euglena and Paramecium, have "experiences" or a "sense of being" in any way comparable to ours. Thus, the discussion proper begins with the simplest metazoans, those without nervous systems (so far as we know): sponges and placozoans.

A sponge is a metazoan—a multicellular creature—at its most basic: a collection of cells of three (some say four) types of cells, that produce spicules composed of either calcite or silica to stiffen a roughly vase-shaped "body". There seems to be a very simple system of cell-to-cell communication that allows the animal to react, quite slowly, to certain stimuli, perhaps including light. We still don't know much about sponges. Working with them is very difficult. 

A placozoan is one of nature's great secrets: an animal typically smaller than one millimeter in diameter and 1/10 millimeter thick, that creeps among sand and silt grains using cilia for locomotion. This also implies some kind of cell-to-cell communication to coordinate the cilia. There are no cells with long projections that could serve as nerves for longer-range communication across the body. They eat by creeping atop a bit of algae and excreting enzymes to digest it outside the body, absorbing the products of digestion directly. These are even harder to work with than sponges.

The book doesn't discuss that favorite of experimenters, the nematode Caenorhabditis elegans (usually C. elegans), which is less than 1/10th the mass of a placozoan but is much better organized. About a third of its 959 cells constitute its nervous system, including a 56-cell brain. The author chose instead to move right along to coral polyps and to cnidarians in general, which have a minimal nervous system (in terms of percent of body mass), a neural net (no brain) that coordinates swimming motions in swimming polyps and grasping motions in sessile polyps, and also feeding behaviors.

A point the author makes repeatedly in the first several chapters: we shouldn't think of sponges, placozoans, corals or jellyfish (or any other animals) as "primitive". They have four billion years of evolution in their history, the same as we do. They are successful in their environments, or they'd have been eliminated.

With these simple animals, their similarities and contrasts, we begin a journey around (not necessarily "up"!) the tree (or network) of life. The author wished to puzzle out the origin of experience. Looking from "our" end of things, we, and a number of other animals (maybe a very large number), have something we call "consciousness", sometimes described as a "here I am" feeling. Are there animals that don't have this feeling? The smaller an animal is, the less we think it is "like us", and therefore capable of consciousness. Is this so?

Our pet calico cat is rather touchy, even peevish: it doesn't take much of a transgression on my part for her to give me a hurt look and stalk off. Another cat I had long ago would run across a carpeted room onto the linoleum in the hallway, and find himself skidding past the turn into the bedroom. Once he came to a stop, he would stroll, the picture of dignity, in the direction of the skid, as though he'd intended to go there all along. Unflappable aplomb! These animals have a definite sense of being "who they are". I call it consciousness, even if it is simpler than a human's.

Now, let us jump almost to the other extreme. A honeybee has much more brain than a nematode, about a million neurons. Even though the bee brain is tinier than a pinhead, it is well organized. This drawing, from an article in ResearchGate by Eleni Vasilaki and others, has this title: 

"Basic anatomy of the honey bee brain showing the major pathways involved in odor classification and olfactory learning."

Think about that: olfactory learning. It sounds like a lot can go on in the brain of a honeybee. But does the bee have a sense of "here I am" or "this is me"? While it cannot have such a sense at a human level, or even a mammal level, perhaps it does.

An aspect that Dr. Godfrey-Smith turns to in the last two chapters is gradualism. My statement above, "…even if it is simpler…" is along this line. Much is made of the phrase, "the lights are on". Some claim consciousness is like pregnancy: "Can you be a little bit pregnant?" I think to take such a purist attitude is misguided. 

There may be a threshold effect. Is the neural net of a coral polyp (there is no brain) enough to generate a sense of presence, of "I am here"? Are the 56 neurons of a C. elegans brain enough? The million neurons of a honeybee's brain? Right in the middle of such a spectrum is the octopus, which has half a billion neurons.

The octopus's brain is quite different from a vertebrate brain. A ring of nerve tissue surrounding the gullet contains about 140 million neurons. A ganglion near the big end of each arm has about 45 million; those 360 million (45x8) plus those in the ring brain add up to 500 million. There is a lot of text in MetaZoa about whether this is a 1+1 situation, or 1+8, because the eight arms seem to act semi-independently. As I read, I remembered that 75% or more of human brain neurons are in the cerebellum, which runs the body, the "autonomic system". Our vaunted reasoning abilities, plus systems for vision, speech, sound, and the interpretation of our senses use 20% or so (16-18 billion neurons), and our emotions primarily reside in the limbic system, which has around a billion neurons. That in itself indicates that, if our feelings are entirely in the neurons, and primarily those of the limbic system (this is by no means certain), we use two whole octopus nervous systems to run our emotional being. So of course, octopus emotions (and they definitely have some!), belong to a much smaller set of neurons. But the octopus does behave as we'd expect of an animal that has a sense of self. Does a fish, or a bee? We can't say "Definitely not." Not yet, anyway.

Here I lean a lot on a concept I developed over many years. It is not anthropomorphism to attribute feelings and thoughts to animals. I look at it from the other end. The reason humans have feelings, thoughts, a sense of presence, and so forth is because our genetic ancestors had them, as do the other descendants of those ancestors. Have we developed all these things further than the rest? Some of them, at least, but perhaps not all!

This sense of being we have, which I consider belongs also to many animals, how far back does it go? When did an animal first experience it? We get a hint from electrical activity in brains themselves. When any neuron-containing animal is idle, a kind of synchronized cycling occurs throughout the nervous system. In humans, when we close our eyes we soon enter a state called "alpha", characterized by an overall brain rhythm around 10 Hz (it ranges from 8-13). Open the eyes, and the frequency roughly doubles to the "beta" rhythm. Pay attention to something, or get into problem-solving mode, and it doubles again, or more; the "delta" rhythm ranges from 30-140 Hz, usually centering around 40Hz. Do these patterns have meaning?

I immediately thought of regeneration and superregeneration in radio receivers (I am a radio amateur). Regeneration occurs when a tuned system oscillates in the absence of a signal. That is bad for radio reception, though it is what we want to happen in the signal generator of a radio transmitter. Regeneration also happens if a weak signal arrives in a system tuned to nearly self-oscillate; it is quickly triggered to oscillate. The stronger the incoming signal is, the more rapidly the oscillation begins. A superregenerative radio receiver is set to just barely self-oscillate, but the power supply is interrupted frequently (in old CB radios, this "squelch" occurred 30,000 times per second). During each short period, the oscillation's strength depends on the strength of the weak signal the receiver is tuned to detect. The resulting series of little peaks is filtered to remove the high frequencies (usually, above 5,000 or 10,000 Hz), and what comes through the filter is the audio that was carried on the incoming signal. This may sound complicated, but it is a cheap way to make a very sensitive receiver. It is an example of the use of a "keep alive" signal to enhance the system's performance. I suspect the various brain rhythms are akin to this, the beta rhythm being the main "detector". It is well known that our basic reception is limited to noticing fewer than 20 things per second, and the beta rhythm may be why.

I want to comment on one other matter. Vertebrate brains in particular are divided, at least in their upper sections, the cortex in mammals for example (the limbic system is only partly divided). When the connections between the cerebral hemispheres are cut, as is sometimes done to treat epilepsy, a split-brain person sometimes behaves as if there are two minds in one body. Certainly, if the brain of any smaller animal has sufficient "heft" to support a mind, there is room in half a human brain for a distinct mind. In an endnote to the chapter on the octopus, the author mentions a neuroscientist, Semir Zeki, who defends the view that we have several, or even many, distinct consciousnesses. Whether that is so, it does open the door to considering what happens in dissociation, in which a person develops "extra personae" as a response to extreme abuse. This used to be called multiple-personality disorder, but is now called dissociative disorder. The notion of true multiple personalities is mostly pooh-poohed, but it does seem to exist in some cases.

This and all notions that one brain can host multiple consciousnesses lend weight to gradualism. If there is a threshold below which a brain cannot support consciousness, it must be less than one-third of the 16-18 billion neurons of the typical human cortex, based on The Three Faces of Eve by Thigpen and Cleckley. I wouldn't have a clue where to place such a threshold, and Dr. Godfrey-Smith also declines to do so. He points out that, if lab rats and other smaller animals have a sense of self, we need to develop a better set of ethical standards for how we treat them. We have come a long, long way from the day René Descartes kicked a dog at a lecture and claimed that its cries of distress were "automatic" and did not signal pain or suffering.

It is worth considering that a smaller brain may actually be capable of thoughts that we would consider very high level, but they just take a lot longer to occur, given the smaller amount of "machinery" involved. However, time and time again our author expresses that more is going on than raw computation, and he explicitly denies strong AI, and equally denies that "uploading" the contents of a brain to a supercomputer will allow someone's consciousness to continue to run, unimpeded by having been removed from the body. Maybe we must have the computer also simulate all the rest of the body (endocrine systems at least!) for uploading to work, but I don't think so even then. That is a philosophical end of things that gets beyond how the mind came to be. It'll take another book (I hope he will) to delve into the future of the mind.

Been Shrunk?

kw: book reviews, nonfiction, science, medicine, psychology, psychiatry, psychiatrists

I am pretty sure the number of psychiatrists I have engaged approaches ten. Only two were "normal", whatever that might mean. I have also had talk therapy with several other psychologists, and I remember only one who was someone I'd be willing to befriend.

Over the years I did, finally, come to understand that a psychologist or therapist is empowered only to offer talk therapy, while a psychiatrist, who may also conduct talk therapy, is an MD who can prescribe medication if needed, or prescribe visits to a therapist. I was rather slow on the uptake. I thought of them all under the derogatory heading "head shrinkers."

Up front disclaimer: I am considered "crazy" by many, and looked at askance by many more. The label I've earned is Bipolar 2: I am a middle-of-the-road mood cycler. Bipolar 1 is the more extreme version and shades into what I call Bipolar Zero: someone with maniacal energy for a few weeks at a time, followed by months of melancholy and reclusiveness, culminating in deep depression and perhaps a suicide attempt (or several); only to pop back into mania almost overnight. That is one pattern of the classic Manic-Depressive syndrome. My "mania" is called "hypomania", meaning sorta-kinda-manic, and my depressive periods are more a kind of introversion and withdrawal. I also cycle rapidly, with several cycles yearly rather than one or at most two, the more usual pattern. I suspected this about myself beginning about age 30, but it was more of an "I wonder" sort of idea for a long time.

At about age 55 I saw a psychiatrist and it was confirmed. This was the wise and lovely Dr. Valentine (I don't mind using her name; I'll defer for the others). She confirmed that I was Bipolar 2, and discussed several courses of action with me. I had gone to her when a short stint using Zoloft had the unexpected (to me) result of triggering full-blown mania. My GP, who had suggested trying Zoloft because I felt very depressed (more than my usual month-or-two-of moodiness), saw that I was manic when I saw him after taking Zoloft for two weeks. I was interrupting him—heck, I was interrupting myself!—and making all sorts of grandiose statements. At my most effusive, I had not been so grandiose before. Dr. Valentine prescribed a mild mood stabilizer. I don't remember which one (this was almost 20 years ago).

The drug eventually had side effects I didn't want to cope with, including the need for a daily nap. However, when I called for an appointment I found Dr. Valentine had moved her practice to another state. The mental health appointments were being paid for through a program at DuPont called Employee Assistance Program (EAP), which contracted work through ComPsych. I had to go through them to find an in-network doctor. No doctor I saw after this came even close to the combination of caring and expertise. Though they were competent, they were all rather off-center, and some were downright looney. I realized that ComPsych draws mostly from the bottom of the barrel: doctors who need the referrals because they couldn't stay in business otherwise. I could seldom stay with a doctor for more than a year or two, sometimes because I wanted someone less crazy than myself, and sometimes because they left the business or moved elsewhere. I live in an area that is poorly served because state laws are not very doctor-friendly. That means, whether a family doctor, a psychiatrist, or any specialist, about half the doctors around here are really altruists, serving where they know they are needed, and the rest are here because they couldn't make it in a more competitive environment. I have had some of both, in all areas (Luckily for me, when I needed cancer surgery, I got a true expert! But that's a story for another day).

I have to mention one example of "barrel bottom" psychiatry. I was sent to a psychiatrist because I had a suicidal episode. I was stopping a drug that made me gain weight and didn't help with depression all that much anyway. After a short, almost cursory interview, the doctor prescribed Depakote and gave me a bag with some samples. I was shocked. A friend of mine, who has more severe Bipolar than I, had been on Depakote and gained 90 pounds. I already weighed about 30 pounds more than I liked. I started to leave, and then I put the bag back on the desk and said, "You must be insane. This medication will make me even fatter than I am already. How will that improve my depression?" I walked out and I didn't pay the copay.

With many decades of experience with psychiatrists and psychologists under my belt (starting at age 12, but with significant gaps before middle age), I was quite interested to see Shrink Rap: Three Psychiatrists Explain Their Work, by Drs. Dinah Miller, Annette Hanson, and Steven Ray Daviss. The book is based upon the blog Shrink Wrap and the podcast My Three Shrinks, but it is much more than a simple compilation.

Each chapter uses one or two example "patients" to illustrate various facets of the work of the three doctors. Each "patient" is a composite, so as not to expose too much about any one person, who might be harmed by public exposure. Considering that some of the "cases" are mild, while others are quite severe, this is a valid concern. Consider "Josh", who is mostly pretty ordinary but has had some reverses. It is quite usual these days for an extended period of depression to prompt a doctor to prescribe Zoloft. "Josh" and his doctor found out what I and my doctor did: hidden Bipolar gets manifested by the general mood-lifting action of Zoloft. Josh's experience was more extreme than mine. And then, when he had a medical condition that was treated with steroids, he went full-blown manic, and needed to be hospitalized for a while. He missed a semester of college. The doctors who treated him had quite a job on their hands. It is kind of like accidentally starting a raging fire, and then trying to put it out without drowning everybody. And this was one of the milder cases.

I've had experience with clinical and therapeutic psychiatry. I was most interested in the discussions around forensic psychiatry. Previously I knew nothing about it. The word "forensic" conjures up doctors sifting for clues to a crime, or using DNA to confirm an identity, or not. "Forensic" is derived from an old word for "legal", so forensic psychiatry is its practice related to legal matters, such as determining the competence of a defendant whose lawyer is claiming an insanity defense, or judging the fitness of a parent in a divorce case who is accused of criminal abuse (if there is no criminal complaint, a different psychiatric specialist is consulted). A forensic psychiatrist will also interview a newly-arrested suspect who exhibits abnormal behavior.

There are a couple of chapters that weigh the relative merits of talk therapy versus medications. Both have their uses, but it is often quite a puzzle to determine which might be more effective. It has been said that the human brain is so complex that if there were only one human brain in the universe, it would contain within itself more than half the total complexity of the universe. Dealing with brain malfunction is thus the most difficult task of all. For many decades people have been studying human personality and its ills (actually, many millennia, though we usually set the starting point "only" two millennia ago with Aristotle). The study intensified in the past two centuries, beginning with Freud and Jung. Now in the early 21st Century, we are about an inch beyond the starting line in a "race" to figure out how to help people with emotional, personality, and brain malfunctions.

There is a lot more I could go into, and it is all very interesting, but I will bow out here. The book is like a textbook in some ways, though it is mercifully brief by comparison, and yet comprehensive. I came away with a better appreciation for the complex decisions that these doctors must make, and the great gulfs of unknown they must navigate. Heart surgery has been likened to doing an engine overhaul while the engine is running. Psychiatry is similar, except you can't even lift the hood to get at the engine. That limits things. I am glad that not every psychiatrist I dealt with was a bottom feeder; at least two or three were very helpful to me, in different ways and quite different times. The three authors of the book are based in the Baltimore area. If I need a shrink again (I hope I don't; I manage well without medication now), I might contact one of them!

Are we making ourselves into techno-monsters?

kw: book reviews, nonfiction, psychology, parenting, education, technology

It took me an incredible amount of time to read i-Minds: How and Why Constant Connectivity is Rewiring our Brains and What to Do About It, Second Edition (AKA i-Minds 2.0), by Mari K. Swingle, PhD. Other than a brief post 14 days ago, which came 9 days after the prior "real" book review, I have utterly neglected this blog. To those few who follow it, I apologize.

This book is so big, 498 pages of 9-pt. type, and covers so much ground, it is hard to take it all in. The author is a therapist whose work begins when a "problem child" (or young adult) is brought to her, and she performs an EEG study. She can discern quite a number of odd things going on in the brain from the EEG, and she explains a few of them. One of the most important is "disregulation". A person gets out of control because the brain cannot self-control or self-regulate. An i-addicted person can only self-regulate when looking at their screen of choice. Children of all ages may throw tantrums for a number of reasons, but some of the most frightening tantrums occur when a child who spends too long with the laptop, phone, or tablet, is kept from using it for a time. In adults, tantrums are replaced by other kinds of misbehavior, some of which can land one in jail.

Side note: Recently the electrical grid failed in most of Texas for three days, parts of it for longer. I wonder how many homes were host to an extreme form of "cabin fever" when all the batteries ran down?

Although the book is very big, I could have read it faster if it were better written. The author presents a great deal of good and useful information and advice, very badly! Soon after I began reading, I was ready to drop it entirely. It just seemed she was so impressed with herself she had to write every fleeting thought. The writing style swings between clinical and colloquial. Just as I'd get going at a good clip, I'd encounter a word such as neuroatypicality or psychoneurophysiology, or a sentence with missing prepositions, or a half sentence ending in a period, only to find it taken up again after a subordinate clause with its own period. I guess the author took to heart the advice to avoid run-on sentences, somewhat too literally! By the way, look at the way I used a comma in the prior sentence. Try covering the comma with the corner of a piece of paper and reading it again. There is a difference in connotation. In this book commas are sometimes overused and sometimes neglected. My advice to the author: Before preparing version 3.0, hire two people in sequence: Firstly, a good copy editor, and then secondly, pass the edited copy to someone who can produce Reader's Digest Condensed Books and have it condensed. Most of the content of this book could have been said in half the space or less.

Herewith, to save space, I will do little more than reproduce my notes and comment on them:

• ch 6, "Boxed In – Anxiety in the Masses", on collecting hobbies. She is derogatory. She doesn't distinguish actual field collectors from "silver pickers". I am a collector of several categories of things, so perhaps my reaction is to my own ox being gored. The more sedentary things I collect are stamps and coins (world variety, not gold/silver coins). But in each case, I make it social by belonging to stamp and coin clubs, and even going to auctions (to be resumed after the pandemic), both as a buyer and seller, but usually a kibitzer. I also collect photographs, which gets me out and around, though I do spend a lot of time with "digital darkroom". My first love is rock collecting. "Silver picking" is buying mineral or fossil specimens from others. I've never bought a rock, though I traded for a few. I prefer to get out there and hit rocks. Any of these hobbies can be conducted without ever turning on a computer or looking at a phone. A cousin of mine's main hobby is long-distance high-altitude hang gliding (sometimes oxygen is needed!). Try doing that on your phone!
• p108, ch 8, "The Narrowing of Minds", on children who grow up gaming more than playing: "Today, many kids don't lose the creativity, they never find it!" Further, a "grouping quiz" example: 3 yellow squares of different sizes, then the choice of "which is the most similar?" a pink square or a banana? Is it the banana? Yes, according to the test the author saw, because it is the right color. If a child chooses the pink square, the ugly beep and WRONG appear, even though the shape is right. Who is to say that color supersedes shape? Particularly if no other information is given, either with this "question" or in the context of the rest of the "test".
• p140, ch 10, "Of Systems and Process", on writing (scribing) versus keyboarding, "…studies clearly show that we remember more, and significantly more, by writing than by keyboarding." I used to visit a typesetting shop. The proprietor was able to typeset in Spanish while conversing with me in English. Clearly, he could not possibly retain anything of the Spanish document. In my own case, though I can type very fast, I find I retain more by taking sketchy handwritten notes than by taking a laptop to a lecture and transcribing chunks of it verbatim.
• p202, ch 13, "Learning, Play, and Parenting", compares nature with "screen stuff, summarized in a keen table. I imaged the entire page, which is inserted here without further comment. Tap or click to see it larger, or to download it.

• p263 +/-, ch 17, "The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly – Esports and the Business of Gaming", on the relabling of i-games as "eSports": a cynical attempt to coopt the positive image of sports. The author decries "…the deviant brilliance of early game design ensuring that children legitimately would be penalized for leaving a game mid-play (or not returning…". This triggers extreme peer pressure. When a child (of any age less than 200 years) cries, "But I HAVE TO!!", he or she fears becoming a pariah more than death. It is time for some extreme re-training.
• p296-7, ch 19, "Breaking the Trance", "Ten things parents learned in science class the gaming industry wants them to forget (aka Lost Lessons from Research 101)". I scanned this pair of pages also, but I'd better not include them here. Put an e-mail address in a comment and I'll send you the image. The "Ten things" boil down to ten of the most popular fallacies of logic, exploited by the game-writing-and-selling industry to keep regulators at bay.
• p310, ch 20, "i-Tech and Healthcare – To Care or i-Care", "Why do we want to replace ourselves with interactive technologies? Why do we want i-tech taking care of our children and … our elders?" This fosters dissociation and vanquishes healthy attachment. Isaac Asimov foresaw this, blurrily, in his very early story "Robbie", about a robot babysitter to which the child became attached, moreso than to the parents. But Asimov's point was introducing the concepts that became his "3 laws of robotics", so he sidestepped whether the child in question was in any way harmed; I suspect he thought not, as he was himself famously neurotic and might have preferred a robot caretaker to a human nurse.
• p 356, erratum, "Zukerberg" for "Zuckerberg". Spelled correctly in other places. [grammatical errors and other solecisms would have filled pages]
• p394, ch 26, "Community, Communication, Digital Mediation, and Friendship", to txt or not to txt? Are emojis replacing facial expressions such that we no longer can read actual faces? A factor tending towards autism. I have long asserted that I get along with machines better than people. But I recognize it and have taken steps for 60+ years to learn to relate to people in spite of my own autistic tendencies. I fear that, had I been born in 2020 rather than the 1940's, I'd have become a clear case of Aspergerism, or "high-functioning autism", or worse. We can all exhibit autistic behaviors under stress, such as the autistic rocking of someone who has suddenly lost their beloved spouse, child, or pet. Such should be rare.
• p459-50, ch 31, "i-Addiction and i-Life", levels of i-addiction:

1. Generalized Internet Addiction: "Excess internet use is not an addiction in itself, but rather, the internet is the space where an individual can engage in addictive behavior." The Net facilitates access to one's fetish, but does not create the addiction.
2. Fantasy Internet Addiction: Addictive behaviors that would otherwise not occur, such as engaging in role-playing games (less frenetic games such as Dungeons & Dragons, that can be played as a board game, came after their online counterparts); and chat rooms and similar sites with pseudonymous interaction including cybersex.
3. Technological Internet Addiction: The technology itself is the addicting element. The Poster Child is compulsive follow-the-white-rabbit searching, which for some people can consume hour after hour, even day after day. [unbounded exploration] Here process itself is the bait on the hook.

• p463, same chapter, "Scientific Corner" [a feature found scattered throughout the book], an introduction to IAT, the Internet Addiction Test [search for "Internet Addiction Test Young" to find one you can take online. Many versions are behind a paywall]. My score is 18 (out of 72, see below). Paradoxically, many of the most addicted persons who are single young men have a lower score than you'd expect on the IAT, because all the questions about their relationships are answered with "no effect" or "not relevant", because they have no relationships!

• p491, ch 33, "Our Future Our Selves", The coolness factor is overcoming prudence in applying technologies that are dehumanizing us. [Many parents who work for Google, FB, etc., send their own children to private schools where screens of any kind may not be used prior to 8th grade, and the school strongly encourages that the home environment ought to be nearly screen-free. What do they know that the rest of us don't?]

Human intelligence, like all natural intelligence, is embodied. The body is a part of nature. Send your kids outdoors! Free-range children grow up the best adjusted! To grow up as an appendage of digital culture is to become more like the machine than like a human.

You have what you need from what is written above. For the research and references, do get the book, but be prepared to use it as a resource. Only read it through if you're as much a glutton for punishment as I was, reading the whole thing! I hated the presentation, but content kept me going.

Critical thinking - needed now more than ever!

kw: book reviews, nonfiction, critical thinking, psychology, sociology

As I write this, a Kangaroo Court is being conducted in a Congressional committee, to hear "testimony" from a convicted perjurer. Such testimony is intended to, at the very least, embarrass the President of the United States; hopefully, to convince a larger segment of the public that said President is a liar, bigot, and general bad guy; even possibly ("Please, please!", you can almost hear them begging), to gather material that will allow Articles of Impeachment to be drawn up. P.T. Barnum would be proud (Google the two words Barnum and sucker).

So, mini-quiz:

1. Do you know what verse in the Bible states, "Money is the root of all evil."?
2. Do you believe the Moon landings of 1969-1972 were faked?
3. Do you expect part of California to "fall into the ocean"?

My analysis (feel free to disagree):

1. First Timothy 6:10 states, in the King James Version, "For the love of money is the root of all evil: which while some coveted after, they have erred from the faith, and pierced themselves through with many sorrows." Note that it is "love of money" not just "money". The New International Version, usually more accurate in colloquial English, renders the first phrase, "For the love of money is a root of all kinds of evil." Here it is "all kinds of evil", not just "all evil." Big difference.
2. If you believe NASA faked the Moon landings, you're in good company if you're British (52% of Britons think so), but only 7% of Americans think the landings were faked. U.S. Government hype about the Moon program is definitely worth taking with a grain of salt, but in my view, it would be harder to fake than to actually do it!
3. This was a popular belief 40-50 years ago, when everyone was waiting for a "big one" earthquake on the San Andreas Fault. In the half-century since, there have been several "nearly big one" earthquakes, which seem to have relieved the geological strain…for now. But, the S.A. Fault moves sideways, not up and down. The western side is creeping northward. If you wait long enough (40 million years), Los Angeles and San Francisco will be "sister cities", right across the Fault from one another. After a further 100 million years or so, the L.A. area will begin to descend beneath Alaska somewhere along the Aleutian Trench. That's when it will "fall" into the ocean.

Item #1 above is in the "everybody knows" category, at least for Americans brought up in a nominally Christian environment. But what most of "everybody" knows, isn't what was really written by the apostle Paul. Item #2 is a "grand conspiracy" belief. Those who believe it, can't be convinced into not believing it. And #3 takes advantage of general ignorance of geology (which direction the fault moves) and our small time horizon. It isn't just that we only live a century or less; most of us get impatient waiting for the microwave oven to heat a cup of water to make instant coffee! Even H.G. Wells's Time Machine only takes the fellow 800,000 years into the future (except for one scene, at an unknown remove, when the Sun is becoming a red giant).

When I was in college, I took a course in the English department, but it really belonged in the Philosophy department. We read articles in lots of journals of all kinds. We were to figure out what was the bias of the article, and by reading editorials or other articles in the same journal, what was the bias of the journal as a whole. So, the Wall Street Journal was, and still is, quite conservative, while Commonweal was and is liberal, bordering on progressive, and with a Roman Catholic viewpoint. There were five or six others. Near the end of the course we were to read editorials from several local and near-local newspapers, plus the New York Times. It was obvious to all of us that, without exception, the papers were exclusively left-wing. This was in the 1960's! Looking back and comparing with editorials in the local papers now, those would be considered hide-bound conservative (Jack Kennedy was fondly looked upon as a liberal, but today would be to the right of nearly everyone in Congress).

This points up two things. Firstly, I don't think any American college still has such a course in Critical Thinking. That wasn't its title, but it should have been. Secondly, baselines have shifted. Creeping leftism is one kind of "moving goal posts" trend. The fallacy of Moving Goal Posts is one matter taken up by the authors of The Skeptic's Guide to the Universe: How to Know What's Really Real in a World Increasingly Full of Fake, Dr. Steven Novella with Bob Novella, Cara Santa Maria, Jay Novella, and Evan Bernstein.

The authors, three brothers and two associates, are a core group of SGU (see book title), which produces podcasts and other materials on behalf of the New England Skeptical Society. They call themselves and their colleagues "rogue skeptics." Skeptic's Guide first discusses the many ways we can fool ourselves or be fooled by others, presents case studies from their experiences, and shows how to determine (to some degree; nothing is perfect) the veracity of the things we see and hear and read in the media. They have taken on a tall order, and the size of the book (nearly 500 pages) attests to that.

I began to read, with a niggling thought in the back of my mind, "I wonder if they'll make a full-on assault on faith?" I was relieved to find that they do not. They do criticize (rightly) young-earth creationism, anti-evolution beliefs, and the kind of "easy-believism" that attributes favorable coincidences to divine favor. In those areas, I happen to agree with them. Dr. Novella is a physician and educator. He reserved much greater disdain and his best ammunition for anti-vaccination activists and the "AIDS is not from HIV" folks, and most kinds of "alternative" medicine. As to religion, I would not call him an Atheist; that term has been taken over by evangelical anti-theists. I'd call him an honest non-theist. (Hey, Doc, I mean that as a compliment!)

Is it possible to be a Christian skeptic? Particularly for me, a Christian mystic. Let's define terms here: "mystic" means someone who has spiritual experiences; and "skeptic" means someone who withholds belief in claims not properly supported by evidence. The first half of the book points out all the ways that our "experiences" could be fallacious. Well and good. The experiences of me and my fellow believers may not make sense to the SGU folks. They'd say we have false premises. I say we have repeated and reliable experiences and based upon them, we are either crazy, or we are children of God, who know our God by direct experience. However, it is worth taking note that we have finite capacity, which does lead to our brain taking many short cuts with our perceptions. We need to be humble, which is mentioned frequently throughout the book.

So, I am a mystic, but I am also a scientist. I am a retired IT/IS computer scientist, who wrote software for geologists, biologists, chemists and physicists for 40 years. In retirement I work for a natural history museum (part time), where I use my knowledge of the workings of evolution and natural selection daily. I understand Deep Time (millions and billions of years) in a way not many people are equipped to comprehend. As a scientist, I am a skeptic. I am actually quite impressed by an argument the authors make, against the notion of "supernatural" events. If something happens, and it had a physical effect, particularly one that can be measured, it is by definition part of nature. Thus, if there is an entity that we call God, who—as theists believe, by definition—intervenes in the workings of humankind and particularly His believers, that God is part of nature. The Judaeo-Christian understanding of the creator takes that a step further, to say that "real nature", including God, is a lot bigger than the "nature" that human scientists have so far been studying.

I had a colleague at an engineering company where I worked in about 1975, who told me of his belief that God was a "super technologist". Maybe he was right. If what I believe about God is correct, I expect to have the chance to ask Him.

Back to the book. We are bombarded more than ever with "fake news". It is getting easier to fake. Even a century or more ago, some things could be faked. Have you heard of "retouching"? I have a photo from 1914 of a family reunion. I scanned it for my online family tree. In the scan, the oblique light of the scanner made the retouching more evident; I hadn't noticed it before. The photographer actually painted, right on the 8x10 inch print, to make certain of the faces more attractive, particularly one older man who had huge jowls, which are retouched to look more like a more ordinary elderly face. Photoshop was about 75 years in the future! Now such photo-editing can be done very easily and is undetectable without specialized software.

There's one spot in the book where I noticed the authors let an error (made by others) slip past them. On p.88, writing about altering perceptions by the way a fact is presented:

Another example is a survey showing that "62 percent of people disagreed with allowing 'public condemnation of democracy,' but only 46 percent of people agreed that it is right to 'forbid public condemnation of democracy.'" These are, again, the same outcome.

Actually, 62+46=108. Either there is a typo there, in the production of this book, or the source contained the typo. Considering the language used in the two statements, I suspect the latter figure was intended to be 38 percent. Now, this does little more than emphasize that I am a pretty good proof-reader. The point they are making is valid. If I say to you, "This chemotherapy is successful 2/3 of the time", it causes quite a different feeling than "1/3 of those who use this chemotherapy find it ineffective."

And I do want to say a word about selective attention. We can't pay attention to everything, so we are, by nature (natural selection, in which I do believe), fitted to discard nearly everything that enters our senses (90%? 99%? anyway, nearly all). Although we have a visual cortex with as many neurons as the entire brain of a gorilla, and it slurps up a 120-megapixel stereo image (about 8 mpx of color info), about 20 times per second, we must discard most of that. There isn't time or space to form lasting memories of everything. We actually "notice" a small number of "things" per minute, but there are upwards of 800 minutes in a waking day. By the end of the day, most of our "minute-memories" are long gone, and we remember only a few. Weeks later, we aren't sure which day we had eggs for breakfast, and which day we had Lucky Charms or Rice Krispies. We will, however, remember the fight we had with our spouse or the scare we got when a semi nearly ran us off the road…but we may not recall just which day it was. Instead, we'll remember what our spouse was wearing or the tree alongside the road that we narrowly missed.

Now, I could go into the techniques for avoiding being faked out by fake news. The book contains so many of them, you'd have to be the kind of specialist that the "rogue skeptics" are, to effectively use more than a handful. So I'll just mention a couple of things.

First, for many things we might encounter, when a viewpoint is presented, we need to ask, "Who benefits?" This principle is behind the phrase "conflict of interest." We are all prone to that! Secondly, when there are conflicting views of an event, it is useful to ask, "Who has the power?" or "Who is paying for this?"

When someone, for example, wishes to run for President, so as to move American toward Socialism, and that same someone has become filthy rich by taking advantage of Capitalism, I just have to say, "Well, his initials are B.S., and that's what he is feeding us!" But, who benefits? Socialism requires totalitarianism. Under the dictum of Marx, "From each according to his ability; to each according to his need," who gets to choose what "his ability" ought to be, and who gets to choose what "his need" is? In every Socialist nation that has been set up, the totalitarians benefit, a whole lot, at the expense of everybody else. Look at the fine suits the current (and I hope outgoing) President of Venezuela wears in his news conferences, compared to the rags worn by the people the Venezuelan troops are gunning down in the streets because they have the temerity to ask for "more". Every "Socialist experiment" has devolved into a kleptocracy.

So, for today's Kangaroo Court, who benefits? Why would Mr. Cohen volunteer to "tell all" to a Congressional committee? There must be a very lucrative book deal in it (as soon as he gets out of prison for perjury). Also, to me this smacks of revenge. That is another kind of benefit, to lots of people. And I would not be at all surprised if there are large behind-the-scenes kickbacks (suitably laundered) from some Congresspersons who are hoping for that "smoking gun" they need to proceed with an impeachment.

My default mode is to get news from numerous sources. It's just kinda hard to get anything but "leftie special", when 90+% of the media are leftists, and I don't have cable so I can't watch The Blaze or Fox. Luckily I can get conservative news from at least one radio station around here, to counterbalance the "radio Leningrad" I hear from the rest of them.

So, Dr. Novella has become a favorite author of mine, at least among the non-theists. The writing in the book is top-notch, and the thinking is clear, or at least a whole lot more clear than almost anything I see in the newspapers these days.

P.S. P.T. Barnum didn't actually say, "There's a sucker born every minute." An associate of his said he built his business on fooling suckers, "…because there's one born every minute." The geek in me just has to add: Today in America, there are 7.3 births each minute, and in Barnum's time it was pretty similar (more births per person though the population was smaller). So, it seems, 6/7 of us aren't suckers! Somehow that seems optimistic…

The mistake collector

kw: book reviews, nonfiction, psychology, neurology, errors, consciousness

Oliver Sack's fifteenth, and last, book is The River of Consciousness. He died just two weeks after completing the design of the book, composed of his essays in various medical and popular publications. I first came across his books three years ago; this is the third of his that I've read and reviewed in that time. He may be best known to the public for The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat, which I have yet to read…but it is on my short list.

As any good clinical "brain worker", he collected mistakes. Freud with his "slips" may be the one we know the best for elucidating the shortcuts our mind and brain use, from certain mistakes that we make. I find Dr. Sacks to be the best at explaining the usefulness of the categories of our errors to us.

Not all the chapters in the book are explicitly about "useful errors". The chapter "Speed", for example, attacks questions such as, "Just how fast can we think?" and "What is it like to think a hundred times faster, or slower?" We all have heard of phenomena such as having one's life flash by in a moment during severe emergencies, or of becoming so absorbed in minutiae that hours can pass with hardly a ripple on our thoughts. Sundry drugs can affect our time sense: I once began to take a prescription drug for systemic fungus, and on the fourth day managed to work up enough ambition to phone my doctor to say, "I just realized that the wallpaper texture in my office is so interesting that I've been looking at it for four hours." He recommended that I stop taking it, and dropping by for a different prescription!

The chapter "The Creative Self" dwells much on the apparently unconscious problem-solving abilities we have (you can call it "right brain" but it is more involved than that). For much of my career as a systems programmer, I relied on it: Near the end of a work day I would often set up a structure in my mind, of the current algorithmic problem I faced, and sort of give it a mental push. I could usually expect to awaken at 3:00 AM with a flowchart "sitting there," ready for me to spool out into working code. From the dancing flames that Kekulé was watching when the structure of Benzene suddenly sprang to mind, to the introduction to Das Rheingold that Wagner had been struggling with, and which erupted into his consciousness while he took a hike to take a break, creative "flashes", while not too common, are well enough known to us all. They do not really denote lightning inspiration, but rather, they culminate a long and laborious fitting and re-fitting of ideas that goes on in the background; it seems almost independent of our conscious problem-solving, and usually quite linear, processes.

I was also quite taken with the chapter "Scotoma: Forgetting and Neglect in Science." The author digs into the lore of "ideas born before their time." It is usually the case that such ideas enter an arena that is already full of competing theories, and in particular, they usually incite the ire of numerous and powerful figures whose work is threatened thereby. My father used to say, "Really good ideas often have to take Moses's way: 40 years in the wilderness for a generation to die off." Sometimes it is more like a century or two! The most extreme example is that Archimedes seems to have invented calculus nearly 19 centuries before Liebnitz and Newton (re)formulated it.

Rather than comment on every chapter, I'll leave it to the reader to enjoy the book.

Are you an Econ? Don't bet on it!

kw: book reviews, nonfiction, psychology, economics, errors, behavior, behavioral economics, memoirs

John Maynard Keynes developed early theories of economics and markets, and made a distinction that later economists neglected and then forgot. He stated that the actions people take are frequently prompted by "animal spirits", which he defined as "a spontaneous urge to action rather than inaction, and not as the outcome of a weighted average of quantitative benefits multiplied by quantitative probabilities." [Keynes, 1936: The General Theory of Employment, Interest, and Money] In other words, people do not always, or even usually, thoroughly calculate or deliberate upon their decisions.

Fast-forward forty years, from 1936 to 1976. Milton Friedman has become the twelfth Nobel laureate in Economic Sciences. Economic theories have been developing, even proliferating. Men (no woman won until 2009) labored for years to wring a new formula out of the growing mass of theory, a few became Nobelists, and the edifice thus built was indeed founded on the analysis of "quantitative benefits…" and so forth. Social scientists other than economists were beginning to protest that the "rational" decisions that were required for economic theory to work could not be realistically made by genuine human beings. Policies were arising that assumed everyone was capable of making near-instantaneous decisions using the very calculations that Nobel Prize-winning economists had labored for years to discover.

Friedman poured oil upon the roiled waters by invoking the "as if" argument, using an expert billiards player as an example. To summarize, an expert, or even pretty good cueman, does not calculate the outcome of a series of Newtonian physics collisions, but plays as if such calculations had been made. But others, who for the time being mostly kept their thoughts to themselves while they sought tenure (!), realized that this implied all of us have Olympic-level skills when we make economic decisions. Don't I wish!

One of these others was Richard H. Thaler, who began to use the term "Econs" to describe the fictitious super-rational beings (who could out-Spock Mr. Spock) upon which economic theory depended. He distinguished Econs from Humans, a term referring to genuine human beings, who are indeed not Vulcans, but have emotions, proclivities, life histories, and only in the most extreme cases act with unvarnished Reason. Econs never err. Humans seldom fail to err. Extracting useful theories from the reliable errors of Humans has been a major element of Dr. Thaler's work, as described in his memoir Misbehaving: The Making of Behavioral Economics.

Dr. Thaler might be a somewhat unusual economist, because he has befriended and worked with a number of psychologists, including Daniel Kahneman, whose book Thinking, Fast and Slow I reviewed a few months ago. Perhaps most economists fear too much exposure to psychology, because Humans are so complex. Yet it is that very complexity that must be studied, for policy that does not take it into account cannot succeed.

The main "policy" way to get people to do something is to tell them. If the matter is important, perhaps sanctions such as fines will be enacted. A simple example might be (Ladies, avert your eyes) putting a sign in the Men's Room, above the urinals: "Please Aim Accurately. Excess Cleaning is Costly". Such a sign is likely to result in even greater need for cleanup. What to do? Economics is the study of incentives as one aspect of motivation. What motivates Human males? Exhortations typically just rile them up. Of course, if there were no Humans, only Econs, no sign would be needed. Econs never miss. Humans seldom miss if they have an enticing target. Some years ago in Holland something new was tried: to etch the image of a fly just above the drain of the urinal. "Excess Cleaning" needs were reduced by 80%. Don't be surprised if you see a "fly" in a public urinal.

The title Misbehaving refers to anomalies that Dr. Thaler has been collecting for decades, anomalies that could not exist or persist if we were all Econs. The fly-target is just the simplest example. Others include violations of the "Efficient Market Hypothesis" (EMH). The most glaring is a case in which 3Com acquired Palm, then years later sought to divest it by a partial sale of stock, to be followed by successive sales until the whole was sold off. Early sales of Palm shares indicated that, if EMH were true, investors considered the residual value of 3Com to be negative, because the value of all Palm stock at that price would exceed the value of the combined company! This is a small example of a bubble. The existence of bubbles, such as the U.S. housing bubble that burst in 2008, is a huge anomaly contrary to EMH. Bubbles imply that things are wrongly priced, and so does all the talk on morning "business segment" shows about whether a "correction" is imminent. Econs never suffer bubbles or corrections. For them, the price is always right. Always. For Econs, the price they are willing to pay or receive for an equity exactly mirrors all the expected future value of the company and its dividends and even closure costs when it comes to an end. Econs are the ultimate Seers!!

Maybe at work you have access to a 401(k) retirement savings plan. Do you contribute? Does your company pay a matching contribution of the first few percent? For years, taking advantage of a 401(k) required filling out some paperwork, selecting a level of participation, and perhaps selecting one or more funds (including company stock and a few mutual funds) to put your money in, for the next 20-40 years. Making changes was not simple. Participation was low.

I guess I am more of an Econ than usual. I jumped at the chance, starting with 6% (which we could barely afford to sock away, but the company matched the first 6%, so it was like getting free money). Each time I got a raise, I added a percent or two, until I maxed it out. But I knew one guy who put in his 6% each year, but took it back out the following year and spent it. He got his free money, but was only accumulating half as much as someone who saved 6% and left it there with its match. I bet he wasn't nearly as well prepared to retire at 66 as I was. Even more puzzling, in those years, even with 3% or even 6% company matching, more than half of my co-workers never started their 401(k).

A dozen or so years ago, Dr. Thaler and others began convincing companies to switch from this opt-in method to an opt-out one. Employees were informed they would be automatically enrolled in a 401(k), with 3% of their earnings and 3% of company matching funds going into some default investment, usually a money market fund or company stock or a mix of both. If they really didn't want it, they had to sign a certain form and send it to the payroll office. Participation rates increased greatly. Then they devised a follow-on program called Save More Tomorrow: Each time an employee received a raise, half of it (or a different proportion that could be chosen) would be added to their participation rate, maybe raising an initial 3% to 4% or 5%, then to 6% after the next raise, and so forth, up to a ceiling such as the maximum allowed amount. Some companies, not wanting to write extra software to couple the payroll system with the retirement system, opted instead to simply add half a percent yearly to each participating employee's savings rate, unless, again, they sent in a form with differing instructions.

If you have access to a plan such as this, and it has resulted in your saving more toward retirement than you used to, you have Dr. Thaler and other "economics renegades" to thank. Reading such an entertaining, informative book, I was quite encouraged that, finally, some economists are looking at us as genuine Humans, who do things because we like to rather than because of some lengthy, Nobel-worthy calculation; who make decisions when we are happy or sad or mad that are often different from what we'd decide in a calmer mood; who wear green today and blue tomorrow and can't decide what color shirt to wear after that, so we ask our spouse, who likes mauve but we hate it so we grab an apricot-and-chartreuse print and wear that. Don't be surprised if the decision which house or car to buy is backed up by no more thought than that print shirt! We are Humans!!

Blue is better

kw: book reviews, nonfiction, psychology, water

People are so incredibly variable that no generalization holds absolutely. An old riddle points this up: What is the average number of legs? The answer: A little bit less than two. And if you think about it, that's not just because of amputations.

But one thing is pretty close to universal. We like water. Not just to drink, that's a life requirement. But we like to be near it, or in or on or under water. Thus the title of a refreshing (pun intended) book by Wallace J. Nichols, Blue Mind: The Surprising Science That Shows how Being Near, In, On or Under Water Can Make You Happier, Healthier, More Connected, and Better at What You Do. And I do believe that's the longest subtitle in my experience.

The opening image in the most beloved Psalm, #23, is "He leads me beside the still waters; He restores my soul." I don't care what denomination you belong to, if you went to church as a child, you probably memorized Psalm 23. The placement of this Psalm between 22 and 24 indicates that God intended it to evoke the experience of Jesus between his crucifixion and his resurrection. If ever a soul needed a rest beside still waters, it was His, then and there! The green pasture and still water restoring the soul are an image of paradise.

Traditional "earth tones" are a bunch of browns. As this photo shows, those "earth tones" are really "desert tones". Only the Sahara at right center is any color besides blue, green or white. The browns that grade into red are the "dryest" colors of all.

Dr. Nichols, universally known as "J" to his friends, as Céline Costeau writes in her introduction, sets out to back up with science what we know from experience. Being by the water is nicer. And that "nicer" is worth a lot even in monetary terms. As he tells us in his chapter "The Water Premium", a tiny bungalow on the oceanfront in Del Mar, California was priced at more than $6 million in 2003 and had risen to about $9 million ten years later.

I just looked up Del Mar on Zillow.com. It is strung out along the coast north of Torrey Pines near San Diego. None of the town is further than a mile from the ocean, and none of the houses is valued at less than a million or so. But the ones on that last block next to the Pacific Ocean are priced twice as high as the others, and quite a few are $10-20 million. Out of curiosity I looked further up the coast, to Seal Beach southwest of Los Angeles. It is not quite as pricey as Del Mar, with homes a "mere" half million or so inland, but along the beach, most range around $2 million. The premium is definitely in effect there also.

Darn few of us can afford to live in view of the ocean, or even a lake, stream or river. And, as Hurricane Sandy showed us, that view comes with certain risks. I live a block from a nice little creek. The few houses that are right along it do tend to cost more than those a street back, by 30% or so. But they also pay rather incredible premiums for flood insurance, if they have it at all. But where we live, a close walk from the creek, it is easy for my wife and me to take a walk with the gurgle of the stream to backdrop our conversation, and views of the creek where it loops nearer the path.

The book contains a great deal of science, but told very readably. The results of MRI and other kinds of mind and brain tests are discussed, but J's writing is not off-putting like so many "science writers". And he tells of other findings that don't require big, noisy machines: how a picture of a mountain brook in a room where students take a test improves their scores; how teaching an autistic kid to surf can radically improve his communication skills; or how muted surf sounds really do make it easier for an insomniac to sleep (well known to merchants of "white noise" and "ocean noise" machines).

I don't recall anything in the book about the theory that we evolved from water apes, that is, apes that got lots of their sustenance by fishing and shelling. The various books and articles that make this contention are a further indication just how we are tied to water, not just to slake our thirst, but to slake the thirst of our souls for peace and comfort.

Now that my father lives near San Diego, and my brother has a condo a block from the beach, when I visit them, I make sure to spend some time beachcombing. Whether I keep the shells I find or not; whether I take any pictures or just enjoy the stroll, it makes the cross-country trip even more worth it. It really does restore my soul.

The author closes by telling us of his Blue Marbles. Some years ago, thinking about this photo of Earthrise from Apollo 8, often called the "Blue Marble Image", he handed out clear, blue marbles to everyone who came to one of his speaking engagements. At the end, he asked them all to look at the marble, to look through it, and to think about all the pleasant things about being with water. Then he asked them to give the marble to someone later on, with a similar explanation. Since then, the marbles have traveled everywhere, and others have obtained blue marbles on their own, and hand them out.

As I said at the beginning, people are incredibly variable. Some hate to swim, whether they can or not, and many refuse to learn. Some remain affected by some early trauma and cannot abide the sight of open water. I've known (and smelled) one or two folks who won't bathe or shower, and at best will just do a sponge bath every week or two. Aside from such rare cases, humans like water. Water we can walk beside, swim in, boat on, or just a good soak or shower to start or end the day. We didn't need science to tell us that. But it's interesting just how consistent the science findings are. Guess what my current screen saver slide show is? The fifty best waterfall pictures I could find.

Mental structures that lead us astray

kw: book reviews, nonfiction, psychology, economics, errors, systems 1 and 2

On a recent episode of Star Talk, the latest offering by Neil deGrasse Tyson on the National Geographic Channel, he discussed his interview with Penn Jillette of Penn and Teller. At one point Penn presented this scenario:

Suppose you're a 3-foot hominid such as Lucy, and you hear a rustling in the grass. If you think about it, there are two causes: the wind, or an approaching predator. If you assume it is a predator and run, but it really was the wind, you have lost little but some energy and sweat. But if you assume it is the wind and it is a predator, you're lunch. So it is safer to assume it is a predator, because even if you are wrong, you are alive.

I would add, if you take the time to think about it and weigh the "wind or predator" question, you are probably lunch also. That is why our defensive mechanisms work so fast, moving us out of harm's way before we have thought about it.

So we have two ways of thinking, fast and slow. The fast, reactive system is tuned to keeping us alive. The slow, contemplative system is tuned to revising our model of the world and to informing the faster system how to work more accurately, in a way that keeps us up-to-date more efficiently than waiting for evolution to re-tune our reactions. Daniel Kahneman calls these System 1 and System 2 in his new book, Thinking, Fast and Slow. Though Dr. Kahneman is a psychologist, his Nobel Prize is in Economics.

This is a good spot to emphasize that economics is about how people make choices, not just about how we use money. At several points in the book, the author mentions how psychology and economics, as disciplines, can each inform the other, though historically they are "stovepiped", with too little cross-communication.

The handful of folks who actually "follow" this blog may have wondered where I've been for more than two weeks. I have been reading this book with more than usual care. It is a big book, with the main text totaling 418 pages, but two large appendices (reprints of the seminal articles he and Adam Tversky wrote) and extensive end notes stretch that to 481. A book this big will naturally take me a while to finish. A book this good takes even longer! It has more fine ideas per pound than any other I've read in the past few years. The book is structured around three big ideas, and a host of subsidiary ideas are thus engendered. I really have space only to summarize the Big Three.

Idea 1: System 1 and System 2. These are our Reactive System and our Contemplative (or Calculative) System. System 1 in action: during our courtship, my future bride and I were walking in a park and strolled over to sit on some monkey bars. Such seating is none too secure, and I said, "Don't push me." She did push me, before I finished the sentence, and I grabbed a couple of handholds during the word "me". Her S1 was operating to focus my attention, and my S1 instantly kept me from falling. This was followed by some S2 activity: She grinned to emphasize her playful mood, and I took that in and boosted my "how lovable she is" score a notch. Human courtship, operating as it has for millennia.

• Our S1 does the things no computer does well: recognize who or what is around us, evaluate each on a hazard/help axis, and frequently prompt us to action, all within one or two tenths of a second. 
• Our S2 struggles to do things a computer does well: put together the puzzle of our existence and map the world around us, carry out calculations (Quick! What is 27x17?), and feed new insights back to S1. If you could do that "simple" multiplication (partial sums: 340 and 119; add to 459) in less than five seconds, your "horseback arithmetic" skills are at expert level.

I had a conversation a few years ago with a professor of philosophy. He talked a bit about his work on "formal errors of logic", such as broken syllogisms (look it up; it'll save time). I said at one point that I was quite interested in errors of informal logic. He snapped, "That isn't real philosophy," rather pettishly, I thought. His expertise was threatened by the chance the conversation would turn to an unfamiliar area, and his S1 snapped to attention to maintain dominance over me. I retained my integrity by walking off to find a more congenial conversationalist. My S2 intervened just quickly enough to prevent my S1 from answering rashly.

I was fascinated by Dr. Kahneman's reports of ways our body and mind work together. In one experiment, students were asked to work a page of simple arithmetic problems, all the while holding a pencil in their teeth so it stuck out both sides of the mouth. Another group did the same problems, but held the pencil by its eraser with their lips, so it pointed out the mouth. The first group, forced by the pencil to smile, did the problem sheet much faster and more accurately than the other group, forced by the pencil to frown. This gives credence to the adage, "Fake it 'til you make it." We smile, not only to reassure others we are with of our good intentions, but to reassure ourselves that all is, or soon will be, well. This is just one example of many.

Idea 2: Econs and Humans. Much of the theory of Economics is based on the notion of a Rational Actor. People are expected to make choices rationally, unaffected by emotional considerations. The work of Dr. Kahneman and others demonstrates that this is probably the unlikeliest foundation upon which to found a theory.  Our grandmothers knew we act without thinking, and we think—with some modicum of rationality—only when forced, even backed into a corner. Most of us pass most of the day without having one rational thought pass through our head. It is how you get to work, or back home, "on autopilot", particularly when you intended to run an errand on the way home, but arrived at your door wondering what it was you forgot.

Behavioral economist Richard Thaler calls the mythical Rational Agent an Econ, in contrast to the real agent that we all are, a Human. Econs do automatically what Humans typically cannot. I considered this analogy, which I make to distinguish faith from religion: A Religion is a checklist that you can hang on your wall. A robot could perform it all perfectly; you cannot. A Jewish friend told me of his study, in his youth, of the 611 laws in Leviticus, and how he sorted them into, "No problem", "Oh, maybe this is a bit sketchy", and "Who in his right mind would think this is possible?!?" In the wholly secular world, we are often told to "Count to ten first," but we find we've done something we can't undo before getting from one to two. A certain policeman is in the news these days, for shooting a youngster 16 times in 15 seconds, while six or seven of his colleagues were content to watch the young fellow from a step or two away and persuade him to put his little knife down and have a nice chat. Guess who belongs in quite a different line of work? And guess whose emotions take over some 10 to 100 times as quickly as more ordinary folk?

It seems every time someone designs an experiment to ferret out our rational and emotional responses to a situation, the rational mind is pretty hard to find. Later in the book, the author tells of ways to set up a situation so that we are more likely to give ourselves time for rationality, but he acknowledges that they are far from perfect. And he's been studying these things for 30+ years! What hope have we of any bit of rational behavior? Well, some hope, anyway, for we are Human after all, not Econ, and it is in our nature to hope, to try again, and sometimes to succeed a little.

Idea 3: Two Selves. Our memory, called here our Remembering Self, draws different conclusions from our experiences than our Experiencing Self does. The experiment here could not be more clear. Water colder than about 60°F hurts a little, and below 50°F it can hurt a lot, and quickly. A basin of water held at 57°F was provided, and students (nearly all experiments are done on college students! They come cheap) were asked to hold their hand in the water for 60 seconds. Then they reported how painful it was on the familiar ten point scale. After time to warm up, they were asked to repeat the experiment, but to hold their hand in the water for 90 seconds. After 60 seconds, water that was a few degrees warmer was let into the basin. Rather than report on a 1-to-10 scale, they were asked which experience was more painful. Nearly all reported that the first, shorter experience was more painful, even though they had endured a longer period of "torture" in the second experiment (It takes a few seconds for the warmer water to "take over"). The Experiencing Self may be queried during an experience and give you an accurate read on what things feel like "Right Now", but after the fact, the Remembering Self primarily remembers the last part of the experience more than all the rest. It's why we are advised to "go out with a bang"…as long as it is a favorable "bang"!

I suspect if the experiment were repeated in reverse, there would be a different outcome. I'd try this: Session 1, 60 seconds at 55°F. Session 2, 45 seconds at 60°F followed by 15 seconds as 52°F water is added. Maybe the exact temperatures would have to be tuned a little, but I am sure the Remembering Self would report the second session as more painful, even though the sum-total-torture was less. By the way, some experiments done for the Mythbusters TV program were done using a basin in which ice was floating, to hold the temperature at 32°F, and the duration was "as long as you can hold it", with a maximum of three minutes (180 sec.). Some participants held out the full three minutes, and lifted out their hand with ice sticking to the skin. So you can see that temperatures in the 50-60°F range will do no damage.

We think we are better at planning than we really are. All three of these things come together when we commit the Planning Fallacy. Chapter 23 of the book is entirely devoted to it. It is most evident in corporations that are having trouble. A new CEO will call together a team to "plan", and perhaps the plan will even be carried out to some extent. Do profits rise? Wonderful. The CEO gets a bonus. Does business remain "flat"? What a pity, the employees are defective and didn't carry out the plan as intended. Does business go down? Oh, my, "external factors" such as shifting currency ratios or a new and unexpected competitor must be to blame. Does the company tank? The CEO's "golden parachute" is activated, (s)he is booted out with a $10 million handshake, and a new CEO is brought in to repeat the process. As Yogi Berra said, "Predicting is hard, especially about the future." And Donald Rumsfeld warned us of the "Unknown unknowns", for which he was reviled, and then forgotten. Do you know anybody anywhere who strives to ferret out what "unknown unknowns" might become a factor, so as to deal with them?

One clear message of the book is that System 2 is lazy, pathologically lazy. It (we) typically accepts whatever "explanation" or "solution" is offered up in the instant that System 1 takes to perform its heuristic evaluation. Thinking is work, and we'd rather do almost anything else. And we typically do. My, it is a wonder that anything gets done!

Stuff our brain makes up

kw: book reviews, nonfiction, psychology, neuroscience, hallucination

To hallucinate is to be human…and, perhaps, to be any creature with a mind. As we read in Hallucinations by Oliver Sacks, a great many stresses and neurological disorders can lead to sensing (any of the "5 senses" may be involved) things that aren't there, but for many of us, so can a great many rather prosaic matters. For example, many people are like me: almost any time I can close my eyes and I will either see things—including persons—or hear voices that aren't there. Particularly when I am sleepy, these phantasms can be quite detailed: I'll either see entire scenes being enacted or hear entire conversations (though I can seldom understand the words), or music, and sometimes sight and sound go together. Also when I am sleepy or tired, I don't necessarily have to close my eyes to hallucinate. It is likely that these kinds of things happen at times for most of us. (I was once asked why I rarely listen to music. I replied that I have a sound track running almost all the time.)

Hallucinations could be considered both a travelogue and a catalog of hallucinatory perceptions. Dr. Sacks has migraine auras; he has experimented with sundry drugs; he has suffered griefs and stresses that led to several hallucinatory episodes. While many disease syndromes, from high fevers to Parkinsonism, lead to hallucinations, I was particularly interested in the more "normal" cases. It seems that the brain's pattern matching and recognition systems easily go into overdrive, as many of us experience when we look at clouds and see all kinds of fantasies. Static images get "over-recognized" rather easily. I have a painting of a seascape, with waves and rocks; one of the rocks one day looked just like a jaguar's head to me, and I can't see it any other way now. But we also experience things for which there is no apparent external trigger. Perhaps it is the lack of a trigger that triggers them, such as closing one's eyes.

By the way, the author mentions tinnitus, or "ringing in the ears" as a kind of hallucination caused by damage to the inner ear, and the brain hallucinates the sounds it is not receiving from the organ. This may be so in some cases, but certainly not all. I have low-level tinnitus, which gets louder if a pull my head back a certain distance. An audiologist used a tiny microphone in my ear to listen in, and said that pulling my head back changed the shape of the middle ear, which amplified the sound. The cause is the damaged hair cells vibrating in response to random noise (Brownian motion), not being damped as is normally the case. The inner ear may be a super-regenerative amplifier, which I'll discuss in a moment.

It may be that the only time most of us are free of hallucinations is when we are in a most ordinary state, not bored, not over-engaged, just "doing something" that fits well within our comfort zone, mentally and emotionally. I like the concept of the comfort zone, particularly in this context. Its boundary may be quite firm for some of us, and rather more nuanced for others. In my case, I think of the boundary as a wide zone of gradually increasing stress, and throughout most of this range any shift can release a mild hallucination of some sort. Thus the tendency to hallucinate in this "normal" way follows a sort of spectrum.

I think of a mechanical/electronic example. A kind of radio receiver, used in older CB radios, is "super-regenerative". It has three circuits in its detector portion. One is an extra-sensitive amplifier that will oscillate and almost blow itself out when any signal of the right frequency appears, including noise. It has extremely high positive feedback, but the key is that it "pops" faster the stronger the input signal. The second is a squelch circuit that allows the amplifier to "go crazy" for about 1/20,000th of a second, then very briefly cuts its power. The amount of squelch can be set by the operator. The third measures the maximum level achieved during each tiny time slice, and turns that series of measurements into an audio signal. So you can think of a hallucinating brain as a super-regenerative receiver with the squelch set too low.

A characteristic of most hallucinations is that you know it. A hallucination taken as real is a delusion. One question raised a few times in the book is whether the human tendency to religious faith is based entirely on hallucinations. Of course, to a total rationalist, all religion is delusional. But total rationalists are quite rare. According to Julian Jaynes (see The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind), half our brain informed the other half of its sensings and learnings via hallucinations that were thought to embody the voices or appearances of deities. Further evolution caused these two functions to become better integrated. Some say the tendency to generate divine apparitions and voices are a remainder of the bicameral mind, leading to every form of religious experience. I personally think that is an over-interpretation, and that there really is a God, but I'll forego theology in this review.

Hallucinations of all kinds are a class of experience that stands alongside dreams and imagination. They resemble dreams but can be much more detailed. Some dreams can be directed; this is called lucid dreaming. Hallucinations can't be directed, and usually play out as though the hallucinator is a spectator in someone else's theater. Imagination is nearly always directed but typically lacks the apparent veracity of a hallucination. We imagine something and may even speak of "seeing it in the mind's eye", but it doesn't appear to project into the world outside the way a hallucination does. Hallucination is also related to synesthesia, and perhaps this is its closest cousin. A synesthete might see colors attached to musical notes or printed numbers or letters; or to be able to taste the sound of certain words or songs.

But hallucination is more than mixed perception. It is perception without a perceived object, a result that is quite different from the stimulus that might produce it. For example, in a healthy person, grief can trigger the sight and/or sound of the lost loved one. This kind of hallucination is most directly related to a perceived object, or the memory of one. But the "sleepy-time" hallucinations I have aren't based on any proximal object, nor memory, except, I suppose, my general fund of memories about prior events. Thus, they might be waking dreams, though they differ from dreams during sleep, which are usually accompanied by a feeling of purpose. Hallucinations are typically purposeless.

I had a great time reading an earlier book by Oliver Sacks (reviewed in May). Hallucinations was a bit harder to read through. The writing is often more analytical, written at a higher level, and perhaps a bit more detailed at times than I had tolerance for. However, I don't want to commit the error of the king who told Mozart, "There are too many notes." Mozart rightly replied (so it is reported), "Majesty, which notes should have been left out?" This book can be read with profit by anyone, and will provide particular comfort to those who may be seeing or hearing "things", and fear they are crazy. No, you aren't crazy if you know your hallucination from what is really "out there". Or, if you are crazy, then so are we all.