IBM's Watson

Well, so much for being employed to answer phones and type indeterminate nothings into some computer - Watson has me covered. Phones always freaked me out anyway - some sort of mojo with spirit voices talking to me - I actually can't make any sense out of why they are so unpleasant to me, but my god they are. At least I have been delivered from them, all thanks to Watson. Once Watson can run on something resembling standard hardware the better part of all cubicle rodents will no longer be needed. So much for my hopes for some sort of simple job that didn't involve mopping floors or stacking boxes.

Watson would be an actual AI if he were hooked up to a neural net of something like a sea slug, (which I remember reading had 200 neurons or so, easily emulated). Plug this in so that he experiences pleasure when he gets an answer right and pain when he gets an answer wrong and off he will go, a real honest to god AI.

I wondered what it would be like inside a mind of this sort, tried to visualize it. Here's what I saw: Everything is in its assigned drawer in there. Think of any fact and it is instantly there, exactly as requested, nothing more, nothing less. There would never be a moment when you half remember something, a moment when you've got a picture forming in your mind, but not clear enough to make out what you were trying to remember. Also, most likely never a picture appearing in your mind that suggests something you hadn't thought of. Metaphors would probably seem nonsensical to this mind. They make sense to us partly because our minds are filled with fragmentary pictures which immediately jump to other fragmentary pictures... while any picture which appeared in this mind would be exactly the image which it had intended to retrieve. It would make none of the arbitrary connections which are built into the very structure of our memories. Buddhists will be happy to know that Watson will still be bound to the wheel of suffering, however. I don't think any sort of self-directed mind can exist without pleasure and pain.

Nobel Prize for Medicine - Reflections

Hearing about this prize brought back several memories from many years ago. I remember a Sunday school class with my mother sometime in the early Seventies. We were going to a church of fairly liberal persuasion, probably Presbyterian. This was something done, "for the children," since my parents at the time, did not believe at all. We were following through a workbook, answering various hypothetical moral questions, one of which was, "Would a test-tube baby be moral?" My mother was of the opinion that they simply could not be. I was arguing the counter. She had the idea that something might be left out, some indeterminate something, which could not really be known in advance - and how could one take that risk? I was arguing that everything was completely known, or could be, in the abundant certainty of youth. My view has apparently won the day entirely, so that even she would not remember arguing to the contrary at the time, but actually, there was considerable doubt over the idea right up to the actual fact.

What sort of thing might be left out, one might wonder? Fairly obviously it would be something spiritual, the soul most likely. Indeed, in the Tibetan Book of the Dead, the soul finds the womb it will be reborn in by the smell of the sex act, which it finds particularly attractive, and is drawn to irresistibly. (At least this is my memory, it is years since I have read the text). Saint Augustine also has something to say about the matter, Original Sin is passed along from generation in the semen. So it would appear that in vitro fertilization would create people who had no souls, but were free from Original Sin.

I was unlocking the door to the bike shed at my apartment perhaps two years ago when a thought occurred to me. There are actually only two kinds of locks -- those which require secret knowledge, i.e., combination locks, and mechanical ward locks, for instance a key and tumbler lock. On the computer, however, the only sort of lock one can find is the secret knowledge type, (at least implemented as software). I wondered if it would be possible to conceive of a key lock that was entirely implemented in software? I thought and thought but couldn't come up with anything that didn't involve translating some physical quantity into a number, "secret knowledge," and then employing that in the software. If one captured the "secret knowledge" in some way, one could in principle access the locked data, whether or not one had the locking device. I know my thinking isn't sufficient to prove the matter absolutely impossible, but I began to suspect it was showing me a fundamental philosophical problem, something which simply couldn't be solved.

Epi-genetics Implications

I read a bit in the current issue of Scientific American about inherited epi-genetic changes. This possibility suggested several things to me. These changes, methylation of particular genetic regions to prevent transcription and thus shut off expression of a gene can evidently be transmitted through the process of meiosis. The changes are supposed to be removed in the process of forming germ cells, but more likely, there is a signalling process to control removal or preservation in my opinion. Epigenetic changes can be controlled by signals and events received from the environment, but they potentially control expression of what would be pure genetic traits. This would make it possible for the for the trait to follow and arc of expression, or be turned on or off, and then this state passed on to offspring. Something rather like Lamarkian evolution would be possible.

I went out to a bar that opened recently in this town. I fought my way through to the bar. Two women languishing there looked at me. Don't look at me I thought. Got to have my brain properly anesthetized before I can deal with having this many people around. They were not so happy with the most likely crazy person standing there waiting for a beer and saying nothing. After I got my beer, I stepped back from the bar and had a look around while guarding my beer from all the crowd of people who were seemingly determined to run into it and pour it down the front of me. Band doing greasy renditions of 80's tunes, check. People milling about endlessly, check. Everyone in some state of somewhat desperate display, check. This is a meat market. I would have thought the town was too small for this sort of thing. Everyone here must know everyone else's business - how could you go out and pick up someone without it being universal knowledge to everyone at Sunday School? Somehow, whenever I stand in an empty spot in these places, this becomes the spot everyone absolutely must, absolutely must walk through, even if it is a corner leading nowhere. I migrated here and there and eventually ended up behind the two women once again. A fellow walked up to them in full conviction of his excellence. This was not looking so convincing to me, but no trace of doubt was troubling him. He spoke to them for some time, but inevitably was found to be unworthy and sent away, no trace of a dent on his own inherent excellence to be seen. Afterwords it was of course necessary to discuss the exact nature and details of his unworthiness, a conversation that I was perhaps fortunately too far away to hear over the band. The guardians of the gates of paradise, as they seemingly style themselves in these places, are very particular. They are evidently seeking some very particular magic incantation which must delivered in exactly the right form. I see no chance that I will ever guess the words, and if I do, I shall surely pause a little too long, or not quite long enough, or stutter ever so slightly.

Lyrics:

In the gaze of an unknown
person on the street I see
a blind slow thing
has marked my scent
If I am quiet
it may yet pass me by
It does not quite yet know
just who it seeks

Chorus:
Progress of illusions
oh solid dreaming
you make the world
we wander through
this is all there is
this is everything
I thought I saw you
I saw only dreams
I saw only mist

The figure is alone
on the road
its landscape
It will approach you
as you walk towards it
It is faceless
as are you
as are you

People all made of destinations
wander to and fro
wander to and fro
We are revealed and consumed
turned out from underneath
our leaves and stones
For small translucent grubs
the light is not easy
shining through us like
tissue paper
The light is not easy

Coming to terms with my particular muse has been an arduous journey. I believe in the romantic notion of a muse, for it is certainly not me who produces any of the things I create, at least those with any merit, and it is she as well with certainty. I have certainly been a great disappointment to her, for my fingers are too clumsy to play the melodies she generously bestows upon me, and she is very impatient, never repeating anything if not caught the first time. She has little interest or time for words, though I insist on lyrics, she grants them sparingly, and only in fragments.