Emergence

Termite mound: Example of an emergence system.
(borrowed from getintravel.com)

The book I read for book club this month touched on something called emergence. And because it's so interesting to me I thought instead of trying to incorporate it into my book review I'd write a separate blog about.
Emergence has come up briefly in a couple other books I've read recently, and I'm pretty fascinated by it at the moment.(Like I was with strange attractors a couple years ago;) But what is it? To borrow the definition from Wikipedia emergence is:
"...the way complex systems and patters arise out of a multiplicity of relatively simple reactions."
What this means is that in many systems patterns will begin to emerge that could not be predicted beforehand by looking at any single component of the whole system. Saying it another way, emergence is the production of a pattern or a complex systems by many individual components that could never create anything on their own. Moreover, the system cannot work unless all of the components are in place. It's slightly more complicated than just that, since to create emergent properties a specific amount of energy must be added to the system, but I'll try to explain that below. This is a really cool thing, so I'm going to take a minute to give a couple examples.
Sand ripples: If you look at the components that form sand ripples in the bottom of a lake or ocean you have: Water, wave action (i.e. your energy source), and sand grains. If you  look closely at a sand grain, or a molecule of water, it is unlikely that you could predict how they could ever organize themselves into coherent rows of ripples. But they do. The thing is, they only do it when the right amount of energy (i.e. waves) are present. Too little energy and they will not form. Too much (think big crashing storm waves) and the ripples will be destroyed. But just the right amount, and suddenly sand grains can organize themselves into ripple patterns. Cool right?
Termite nests: This works for hives as well. The components to these systems are earth and millions of individual insects. The energy to the system is how much work each individual can do. Now if you took a single termite and inspected it closely you'd never guess that it could build a mound twenty feet tall. It doesn't even know how to "build"! And you'd be right, a single termite can't build a mound. Even several hundred couldn't, but a few million can, and do. A bunch of individually simple termites can build gigantic mounds taller than a giraffe!
The human brain: Same thing. Your components are individual neurons, and of course the energy comes from the food you eat. If you look at a single neuron you can see how it basically works, but it can't create complex thought...or even simple thought for that matter. All it can do is send and receive chemical signals. You can't make a "sort of brain" with a few hundred neurons. You need a whole skull full of them, all connected together, to be able to think, and learn and know. A brain is not a neuron, a brain is an intricately connected assemblage of many neurons that when acting together produce thoughts and regulate body functions.
So why is this important and interesting to me? This subject of emergence is critical for the transition from non-living to living. The primary reason being that it explains how the evolution of life was able to occur and not conflict with the second law of thermodynamics (i.e.entropy of a system never decreases). To be clear, technically nothing gets around the second law, so ultimately everything does increase in entropy. But small isolated systems like termite mounds, or shallow shore lines, or human brains, can under the right circumstances, for a time, produce amazing and complex things. Using only specific quantities of energy, and relatively simple parts amazing patterns and functions quite literally emerge! I think that is so cool.
Anyway, I'm probably not explaining this super well, but it's my hope that if you find this subject interesting, you will look it up and do some reading on your own! I am sure there are authors out there who have done a much better job than me. On is Dr. Robert Hazen who wrote the book Genesis: The Scientific Quest for Life's Origin that I read for book club this month.

We are our Synapses

One of the many books I have read lately is Synaptic Self by Joseph LeDoux. It's one of the most interesting books I've ever read about the subject of who we are. For those of us who don't believe in things like souls or spirits, the questions surrounding who we are have been difficult to answer. Of course the solution lies somewhere within the mushy folds of the brain, but where and how does it all come together to make me feel like myself?
Well, this book answers that question. And in my opinion the author does it clearly and methodically. It was simply a fascinating read. He begins simply, and sort of teaches you as you go about the different functions of brain regions, the interaction of chemicals and the processes that influence them. He interweaves the history of neuroscience with our modern understanding of how the brain works. His discussion on depression and anxiety were really interesting, as well as his explanations of how medications are taken up and used by the body.
It took me forever to read (on and off for a couple months), but I never lost interest, and I enjoyed it every step of the way. It was definitely not an easy read. In fact thinking back on it, it was more like the summary of a textbook and less like pop-science.

Stem cell neurons.

It is truly amazing how brains work. It seems nothing short of a miracle, yet it is made up of normal things, it functions using the laws and relationships that nature has provided everything else, and it was created by a universe that can't even know itself like the thing it created. Truly one of the most awesome things I have ever thought about. And to think I have a whole brain (at least I think it's a whole one), right up in my head, to keep all for myself, and use for all of my life! Sweet.

I recommend this book to anyone interested in a biological understanding of who we are. 5 out of 5 stars on this one.

Stephen Hawking's Grand Design

I stumbled across a 4 part TV series hosted by Steven Hawking last weekend and recorded it. I watched the first one a couple days ago, and it was wonderful! Really interesting and thought provoking. The first episode was titled "The Meaning of Life". I have been wondering about that on and off over the past....fifteen years, and so I was really interested in what Hawking had to say about it. And I will get to that in a later post, but I wanted to write about something else.
One of the things I found especially interesting was his discussion of free will. It is a contentious point for a lot of people when discussing evolution, specifically when arguing against it. The argument goes, if evolution/natural selection really happen, then how do you explain free will which often appears to contradict what natural selection would "choose"? First of all, natural selection doesn't choose anything. It is simply the result of a process that occurs within systems where not every organism survives equally. And therefor free will cannot contradict it. But then what is it?
Hawking likens the billions and trillions of possible neural connections in the brain to another complex system: weather. He says
"Our brains create and sustain our conscious minds through an extraordinary network of interactive neurons."
He goes on to say
"The mind is like weather inside our heads. Free will is simply what we call the process that happens (just like natural selection just happens)  when this vastly complex system faces a choice." (Parentheses inside quote are mine)
Now maybe at first blush you find this definition...less than romantic, and unflattering, but the more I think about it, the more incredible of an idea it becomes to me. To think of our minds like weather, with the same sort of complexity, and unpredictability, and ability to surprise the hell out of us on a daily basis is a truly awesome thought to me. To think of free will as a process resulting directly from the complexity of my mind is....mind blowing, because it means that not only does it exist, but it always will. To know that nature endowed me (but not on purpose!) with the capacity to forever be able to bewilder myself, and be astonished by others no matter what I think I know, is exciting and wonderful, and fills me with a curiosity about the future that I can barely express!
If Hawking is right,and free will is just a side effect of the complex system housed in our skulls, how incredibly lucky for us hu? It didn't have to happen, but it did. WOW! So awesome! This will definitely be added to my list of things I love about my life!

Vegan for Dinner

My first vegan dinner!

On my trip back to Michigan I was treated to my first vegan meal ever by my brother. And I learned three very important things:
1.) Being vegan is not contageous.
2.) Contrary to popular thought eating a dinner without meat won't kill you.
3.) Vegan meals can actually taste good!

Mixing the dough

He made something called saitan, which is pronounced "Satan" (and was pretty much who I thought would be the mastermind behind a meal that contained no meat or dairy products of any kind). Saitan is a flour and water mixture which becomes spongy  in consistency that is then boiled and takes on the flavor of whatever is used to season the water. Then you fry it in a pan in bacon grease and...just kidding:) You fry it using some olive oil and soy sauce.We used it to make a stir fry and it took the place of chicken or steak.
It was a simple recipe, and although it didn't taste like meat per se, it had a fried noodle taste to it that I found to be really quite good. And it filled me up. I don't know any vegans beside my brother, but if I did I would totally make this dish again!

Frying it up

While I'm not sure that I'd ever have it in me to give up meat entirely, I have definitely had an epiphany in terms of the possibilities of vegan cuisine, and would be very interested to try it again. It seems to be pretty tough to eat vegan, especially out in restaurants, but that doesn't mean it's impossible to have a good meal, especially at home. And it really makes you think about how much we use other animals, their unfertilized offspring and their milk in our everyday cooking. Considering the sheer number of animals necessary to support such a diet as ours there is definitely a point to be made about the process by which these animals and the products made by them end up on our dinner table. I think that is why most vegans are vegan, because of ethical concerns related to the exploitation and quality of life of the creatures that eventually become our dinner. If anyone has anything they'd like to share concerning this topic, I'd be very happy to post it in the main body of this blog for others to read!

Consile This

I just started reading Consilience by Edward O. Wilson, And when I say "just started" I mean I am 10 pages in. The basic idea, from what I've gathered in the pages I have read so far, is that the author believes eventually science will merge with social science and everything will be explained and made clear through a singular set of laws. Philosophy will cease to exist, because every aspect of human endeavor will play by the universal rules, and so become understandable, testable, and predictable. At the moment I haven't the slightest idea of how this might happen, but it appears by the length of his book that Wilson has come up with a solution. I was going to read more, but I suddenly felt more like writing and thinking. (Not that reading doesn't require thinking, but I mean pondering/thinking not analysing/thinking.)

I have been toying around with a similar idea (or maybe the same one?), although I never gave it a name, whereby every human action and decision no matter how ridiculous or surprising might be understood in a fundamental way if viewed through the active mechanism of evolutionary progress. It is the idea that no matter what we do, no matter how badly we want to be in control of who we are, at the heart of every action that we are capable of performing we will always find that we are doing what 3.5 million years of evolution is telling us to do. From that point of view, psychology would not be the study of why humans act and feel the way we do. We would already know that. The study would focus rather on figuring out how our actions and feelings are satisfying our (to borrow a phrase from Star Trek) prime directive of evolving.
Even the actions of the insane and mentally ill could be "understood" because if there is some physical ailment that interferes with their ability to function then it stands to reason that their judgement and decisions would be faulty because of it (and not a their own fault). But what would that do to our legal/justice system?

The question becomes if everyone always does what nature intended, then is everything hopeless? If everyone since the dawn of consciousness (and before it for that matter) is doing what evolution wants them to do, then you could argue that the reason we have not achieved things like world peace is because we were never meant to. That's as good an example as any. At first glance killing each other appears counter-evolutionary, but maybe there is a reason we have been fighting each other for centuries. One might argue that it has been our primary means of population control. Our instinct to take over what others have instead of live peacefully side by side could be interpreted to be a result of the fact that evolution has shown that in the long run it is more beneficial to have your neighbor dead than living next door with his 50 offspring and a dwindling supply of land and food.
A dog can learn to open a car door, but it can't speak English. A dog is limited by what it is. Maybe we are limited in the same way? We might learn some cool tricks and have some nifty ideas, but maybe we lack the ability to change the world we live in literally because we are human. I don't know, does that sound depressing? Who cares if it's depressing, what if it's true? Science and philosophy, thought and instinct all rolled into one smooth reality.

Like I said, I haven't read the book yet, so hopefully whatever Wilson has to say on the subject is encouraging and not defeatist. I am already confused! Any thoughts?

In the Blink of an Eye: Locked-In Syndrome

Last night I read this memoir published by the former Editor and Chief of French Elle Magazine. I came upon it a few weeks back while browsing at the local used bookstore.
Jean-Dominique Bauby suffered a massive stroke in December of 1995 that left him in what is called "locked- in syndrome" which means he was conscious, but could not speak or move his body except to turn his head and blink his left eye. Apparently the syndrome occurs when the brain stem stops working and can no longer relay information from the brain to the spinal cord.
The only way he was able to communicate was by blinking his left eye. He could not blink the right one so it had to be sewn shut to keep the eyeball from drying out. He managed, with the help of his speech therapist to work out a method of communicating, and was thus able to complete his entire memoir by blinking out each letter of each word. The book is not a long one, but when you consider the pains that were taken to compose each and every syllable, it seems impossibly long.
The way it worked was the letters of the alphabet were arranged on a card by most frequently used (in the French language). The therapist would slowly say each letter and Jean-Dominique would blink his eye when she reached the letter he wanted. She would then write it down and start the list again. The amount of patience he must have had to compose even the shortest of sentences leaves me speachless.
The human body is a remarkable thing, but the resilience of the human mind is almost miraculous. Bauby was trapped in his body with nothing but his thoughts and he was able, to not only survive under such horrifing conditions, but to create and sometimes laugh in them too. As he put it so elloquently "If I must drool, I may as well drool on cashmere."
Bauby's memoir is a lot like life; difficult, sad, funny, and over before you know it. Maybe the lesson is not so much in the words he wrote but in the book itself, and the way in which it came about. If anyone would like my copy send your address and I will mail it to you! It's not the happiest subject, but it was a one of a kind reading experience, that really made me feel grateful for the little things in life like being able to smile.

What Are You?

Animalia, Chordata, Mammalia, Primate, Hominidae, Homininae, Hominini, Homo, H. sapien. That's the easy answer, but what does that mean? I have found myself asking this question over and over in as many different contexts as you can imagine. I am coming to believe that until each of us finds our own answer this question, our personal sense of morality will be resting on shaky ground. It's such a difficult question to breach though. Where do I even start? It is becoming clear to me that whether religious or not, most people think we humans are "higher" or "separate" from all the rest of the animals on earth. Whether it be because we are made in the image of God, or because our brains evolved consciousness, there seems to be a common opinion that (for whatever reason) the rules that apply to the rest of biological life don't apply to us. And here I must confess the more I think about that the less I believe it's true. There are several reasons for this, a couple of which I'd like to explain here.

The first is that it is impossible for us to objectively view anything. We are 100% influenced by our consciousness, and our self awareness. There is no avoiding it. Everything I am writing is influenced by my ability to think about it, it can be no other way. Wolves cannot view the world outside of being a wolf, and although we'd like to think we could imagine what it would like to be a wolf, the fact that we can "imagine" being a wolf is the very reason why we could never really know what it's like to be one.
We think we have a responsibility to the planet and to all life on it, but we only do as far as it appears to us, through our own narrow paradigm. And what if our paradigm is wrong, or at the very least not as ethical as we think it is? That is where I pause, and find fault in the above argument. I am all for saving the polar bears and stopping global warming, but is driving my car less, and donating to the World Wildlife Fund really the moral thing to do? If the earth became hotter we might perish along with the polar bear and Emperor Penguins but the fact of the matter is there are millions of species that would actually benefit from the warmer climate and who knows what animals and bugs natural selection would favor then? Is it our moral (and ethical) obligation to save the bears (and ourselves) and deny a warm and blissful future to all the critters that would benefit from it? How can we even claim to have any idea what is best for nature, when we can only view it through our own eyes.
I wonder what if there had been "intelligent" life around during the time of the dinosaurs, and those conscientious beings (like us) had started a campaign to "Save the Dinosaurs!"? What if they succeeded in repopulating the earth with T-Rex's and Velocaraptors? Wouldn't they have felt like they were doing the moral thing by saving a species from the brink of extinction? Doesn't that sound familiar? But then where would we be right now exactly? Probably sleeping in a burrow surrounded by acorn shells and our own feces, that's where. Even if these imaginary beings were intelligent, they could not possibly foresee the consequences of their actions.
It surprises me we think we know more than nature. It surprises me that we really think we have any right or authority to alter things in any direction on purpose. We criticize ourselves for depleting the ozone, but we pat each other on the back for trying to rebuild it. What is the difference? In both instances we are changing somethingto suit ourselves, that left to it's own devices would be different. All animals leave their mark. Bears don't tidy up a moose carcass after they are done gorging themselves. They leave it behind and other animals and bacteria benefit from it. How is it that we think our brains know more about how things "should be" than three billion years of evolution? We say we are doing it for the planet, for all living things, but that isn't true. We are only doing it for ourselves, because the fact of the matter is the world would get along just fine without us. Actually it would probably get along better. The environmentalists shout that they are trying to save the earth. Being as objective as I can possibly be given my humanity, I would argue the best way to "save the earth" (in the way the environmentalists mean) is to get rid of us. And I'd also like to point out we are doing a good job of heading in that general direction. So maybe nature does know more than us after all. I could go on and on about this, but I think I have made my point, and if I ever want to finish this blog I'd better move on.

Number two. Evolution may be unpredictable, but there are still patters that can be seen. One thing that stands out is evolution sticks with what works. If it ain't broke, evolution doesn't fix it. That's the reason most animals have bilateral symmetry, why there are only a handful of body plans in all of the biological world, and why all mammals have hair. Every once in a while natural selections tries something new, after all that's how we get change. If the "new" adaption works it proliferates, if it doesn't it goes the way of the dodo. Good ideas are expressed in multiples, bad ideas are singular. That is why I find it interesting that we are the only ones that developed intelligence. (OK maybe chimps and dolphins too, but not to the degree we do, and certainly not the environmental impact we do). Isn't that odd? Think about adaptive traits and how they spread among species. Teeth, claws, fur, big ears. All of those traits can be found on a number of animals. But our big brains are pretty unique. And more than that, (and more to my point) look what it has resulted in? Dinosaurs, with their little brains roamed the earth for over 150,000,000 years, yet in about 200,000 years we H. sapiens have evolved to the point that we can cause our own extinction. As far as I know, this has never happened before. And evolutionarily speaking that is a huge disadvantage. Our genes want to live and be passed on, anything that hinders that process from occurring constitute an unfit species. I am beginning to believe that our intelligence and our consciousness are an evolutionary failure. Stated simply our big brains are a bad idea from a purely evolutionary standpoint. I don't think we will be a long lived species because we are committing every no-no in the evolutionary book. We are outgrowing our resources, we are overpopulating our habitats, we are creating things that are harmful to ourselves, we are our own greatest threat. Just think about that last one for a second. Can you think of any other animal who's greatest predator is it's own kind? That's about as f*!ked up as it gets where nature is concerned. Right now humanity does not fit the criteria of an evolutionary successful species. If I had to guess I'd say we were at the bottom of the list. We might think we are "moving" ahead with technology and research, but I disagree. In a way I feel that everything that is happening in the world, from a scientific standpoint, is inevitable.

I know this sounds depressing, and I guess it is in a way, but that's not how I feel about it. The most comforting thought I have these days is that I really am a part of the world I live in. I really belong here just as I am, as much as the oak tree out my office window, or the snails that have eaten all my plants. I mess things up, and I make mistakes (like BP and the oil spill), but nature doesn't hate me for it. It will just exploit whatever it can from whatever happens as a result of my life. The proliferation of life on our planet is the closest thing to a miracle I have ever witnessed, and to know that I am a part of that process is humbling and exhilarating. The thing is I am not sure how morality and ethics fits into this view of the world. Can I even have a sense of morality if I think everything that happens (in the large picture) is OK? Am I replacing god with nature, and making up excuses for myself? It's a slippery slope. I think about all the children starving in third world countries, and I want to save them all. But at the same time the facts are if we actually succeed in saving everyone there would be too many of us and we'd all die of starvation. What is the moral view to take? If anyone has any thoughts on this I'd sure like to hear them. This is one of those topics that always leads me around in circles, and causes me endless hours of frustration....that and it's almost my birthday and I always get grouchy around my birthday.

The Black Hole of Racism

The greeting card mega-giant Hallmark had to pull a "talking card" off the shelves today after the NAACP called it racist. I was intrigued by the headline and so read the article. It makes me sad that a card clearly written (and spoken) about space is being called racist. The problem is that apparently the words "black hole" spoken by the character voice of the card sounds to some like "black whore". The NAACP says "It's passive intent aggressively stated in a way that makes African-Americans feel insulted."
The graduation card referenced the world, then the planets, and then black holes, as a means of inspiring kids to take on the universe, and stay out of trouble. Space, as far as I know is not racially biased.
This is unfortunate. Not because I think racism is a thing of the past, or because I think there aren't racist people in the world, but because situations like this are exactly what cause tension, and feelings of division. There becomes an "us" and a "them" when there really isn't. And the separation is based on superficial practically non-existent differences between peoples of darker and lighter colored skin!
The level of sensitivity to what is obviously just a random coincidence is, to me, alarming. If there is this much tension over a card, then what else is simmering in the minds of people concerning race? How will we as a species ever move beyond the arcane idea of racism, if we can't let it go? It's a predicament. Should I be more careful in what I say? Should I stop saying any words that might be misheard or misunderstood for fear of offending one or another ethnic/cultural group? I feel like if I were to do that, it would somehow imply my guilt of being aware that there was some ill feeling in me (which there is not.) What would be the outcome if everyone in the scientific community took extra pains from now on to iterate "black hole" with emphasis on the "L" every time they spoke the word? Would that improve the situation, and promote good will? I doubt it. I understand that people have the right to protect their dignity, but in this instance I believe the argument was totally unwarented. No matter the intention, from now on, every time I hear the term back hole I am going to think of racism, and that should not be the case. If people see racism everywhere (for or against themselves) there is no hope for abolishing it.
If the card said "white holes" and it sounded like "white whores" I would have though it funny. I wouldn't have been insulted. I do not harbor suspicion that Hallmark is a male chauvinist plot to undermine women. Ha I probably would have bought and given it to one of my friends as a birthday card joke. But maybe that's just me.

Oh! What a Theory!

Last week I read a really interesting book called "The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind" by one Julian Joyce. It reminded me of reading "Ages in Chaos" by Emmanuel Velikovski when I was a teenager.
The main premise of the book is that human consciousness only developed a few thousand years ago, and before that the human mind was split in two, with the left portion of the brain taking orders from the right portion of the brain without realizing that the right side was really part of the same entity. Joyce claims humans interpreted the "commands" of the right temporal lobe as the voice of gods, and thus the supernatural and religion were born. Outrageous right? Of course it is, but it's not insane...and that's what makes it a good idea. That's what makes it an original idea.
That being said, I can't say I buy the theory. I love the idea of it, but there just wasn't enough...irrefutable data to make me shout "Eureka!" and jump on the band wagon. I don't think his "evidence" was concrete enough, nor were his arguments in favor of his idea all that compelling. Too much of what he discussed was conjecture, based largely on interpretations that cannot be proved correct or wrong with our present resources.It could be true, but how could you prove it? There is simply no way of knowing (unless more data comes to light) but it did get me thinking about a lot of strange things, which I will probably write about in the weeks to come. But in this post I wanted to focus on his the nature of his idea as a whole (as a single entity). I wanted to emphasize the fact that I really do like it despite the fact that I don't really buy it.
His theory is interesting, and a good one (in a theoretical "what-if" sense, not a practical test-worthy one) to me not because he is right necessarily, but because he is asking questions and positing solutions to things that perhaps only a handful of people on the planet have ever even bothered to ask. He is (or was, he died in 1993 I think) thinking fully and excitedly "outside the box", and provides a new idea crazy enough to be true, true enough to be possible, and possible enough to stoke the fires of my imagination. Now that's what you call a theory!