The Nearly Overwhelming Influence of Technology: only for dumbing-down or distraction?

edited 5/29/19

"Consumerism is Communism." -- Comment (circa 1960) made by a head of a Philadelphia area Chamber of Commerce president critical of the evaluations published in the magazine, Consumer Reports.[1]

Teaching Clever Folks to be Discreet. Outside the university, clever thinkers, purportedly so prized in academia, can often be tolerated only if the mouths controlled by them stay shut. This is called "discretion."

Why? Because, to begin, clever thinking may obstruct otherwise easy commercial transactions. On the still just legal side of that narrow boundary separating clever marketing from fraud, bigger profits are more easily extracted, in the short run, at least, from naïve, misinformed or confused customers. The 1960 "Consumerism is Communism" comment in the epigraph alludes to this.

But the concern that only commercial institutions fear criticism is somewhat dated. To examine a more recent rhetorical exercise on the theme that Big Business, hand-in-hand with Big Government, is crowding us all into "Communism," see How consumerism leads to "communism".

Clearly commerce is not the only area in which ignorance can be exploited. Clever folks have a habit of nosing around in various traditional realms. Our legal, religious, governmental and educational institutions all have their own dirty wash to hide. For example

a. Scientists persistently complain that much published research is sloppily done, or non-replicable, yet is still often celebrated as an important breakthrough. (See Seven Warning Signs of Bogus Science.)


b. Government regulatory agencies fall down in policing misrepresentation in financial transactions; or in medical exaggerations. (See
Why is the SEC Ignoring Its Greatest Asset in the Fight Against Corporate Misconduct?)


c. Clergy who would impose a strict morality beyond the boundaries of their own congregations, themselves protect their confreres who indulge the vices they condemn in their flocks. (See The Catholic Bishops Lobby Against Legislation to Protect Children )


d. Lawyers and judges have colluded, for example, in facilitating incarceration of children in private prisons for payments from the proprietors. (See Pennsylvania Judge Sentenced For 28 Years For Selling Kids to the Prison System )


e. Educators and school governors have absconded with or misused monies given them in the name of reform. (See De-Regulation and Charter School Swindles)


f. Casinos prefer unthinking customers. (Why else the free drinks?) Clever players, e.g. card-counters, are ostracized and expelled from the gaming establishments. (See Local casinos use countless methods to discourage card counters.


g. Most ominous is that some institutions attempt to squelch whistleblowers or critics by adopting policies or laws that criminalize those who would reveal illegal or unethical goings-on within them. (See Silencing Whistleblowers.)

To reiterate: clever folks are tolerated only if the mouths connected to them stay shut -- or are being viewed on the Comedy Channel. Statistically, events of the types listed above may be but a small proportion of the activities of the gigantic enterprises they are found in. Happily, they still cause shock and outrage, since they are unexpected, because they are considered egregious even though they relatively small in scope.

Individual scandals of the types listed are often not paid much prolonged attention likely due to their overwhelming frequency -- there's always something new -- but also because there is little immediate issue of wealth involved. But such small misadventures will occasionally -- or always, in the supermarket tabloids -- be exaggerated as to their seriousness, especially if they make good media attractions.


Better Access to More Distraction? Perhaps it is the emphasis in our expanding culture of technology as the primary, if not the sole, hope for the future that has disemboweled our educational systems of the wisdom gleaned from traditional sources of moral, legal and educational knowledge. Or, it may just be a matter of ease of access to more entertaining options by a public generally not too interested in those issues. (We'd probably win any bet that more people play video games on a daily basis than watch The Science Channel.)


To take an optimistic perspective, easier access to information, true, false or otherwise, that new technology affords, answers an apparently vast curiosity possessed by multitudes of people enjoying ever more leisure time to indulge it. But is this accessibility making for smarter, better informed and wiser people? Recalling the concern about "teaching" clever folks to be discreet, we might well wonder how much and by whom smarter, better informed and wiser people are wanted.


All of the items on the list above involve attempts to shift authority, the recognition of trustworthiness and truth-telling, from more traditional sources to newcomers who hope to enjoy substantial gains in wealth and influence.

If we read widely -- another waning habit? -- we run across even Ph.D.'s in "hard science" disciplines engaging in intellectually ham-handed debate. For example, there is no end of quibbling as to whether brain-research bears on the question as to whether "mind" and "spirit" are separate. Similarly with the notions of "natural" and "supernatural." The participants in such arguments seem to define themselves as opponents without even checking first to see whether they mean the same thing with such words as "natural," "mind," "spirit" or "separate." Even less often do they bother to say, if they could, what kind of evidence they can offer that supposedly addresses the questions

Masking Struggles for Authority? Or Snatching For the Collection Plate? A more recent, more subtle grab for recognition is the attempt by technically trained practitioners in various "hard science" disciplines to replace older traditions as definers and arbiters of broad philosophical and religious concerns. (See Pseudo-Science: the reasonable constraints of Empiricism)

Perhaps the disregard for long-established procedures of investigation and debate are not so much oversights or sloppiness as indicators of a much more attractive pursuit, that is the purloining, the usurpation, even, of authority. But this usurped authority, not about the search for discovery or truth, but more intensely in the competition for benefits more familiar, more widely valued in our pluralistic, commodity-focussed culture: wealth and influence.

Cordially, EGR

Footnotes or References

[1] I have been unable to retrieve my original citation and its stated source either from a faded, distant memory or from the Internet. However, there is much similar to be found online using the search phrase, "consumerism is communism." -- EGR

Understanding "Talking Lions" and Other "Black Boxes"

If a lion could speak, we could not understand him. -- Wittgenstein[1] Artificial intelligence is everywhere. But before scientists trust it, they first need to understand how machines learn. -- D Castelvecchi, Can We Open the Black Box of AI? [2] "With artificial intelligence, we are summoning the demon." -- Elon Musk (2014) Reported in CNN Tech , Oct 28th.
	Faust with Homunculus

Black Boxes Abound. Less so, our understandings of them. The "black boxes" are not only lions, or AI devices, but also humans, and even more. If we generalize, keeping in consideration our perceptual limitations, any source of emissions that appear to us to be more than random, from any object or even an "empty" focus of attention, is, initially, a black box.

Many commentators have remarked that Wittgenstein makes an incautious jump from speaking to understanding in the quote cited above. I will generalize their concerns: how do we know that a (what appears to us to be) non-random emission of, say, sound, is speech? Or, if the transmission is not sonic to humans, language? Animals can learn to mimic human emissions. Even non-English recordings, played backwards, can sound like English speech.

To many a monolingual English speaker, the following phrases sound like pieces of English nursery rhymes colored with a non-English accent:

1. French - Un petit d'un petit s'étonnent aux Halles (Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall.)
2. German - Oh wer, oh wer ist Mai Lido doch Gong? (Oh where, oh where is my little dog gone?)
3. Spanish (Caribbean) -- Grima! Sí, comí. Te excusé que rifa. (Christmas is coming, the goose is getting fat.) [3]

Black Boxes are "Understandings." How does Wittgenstein even judge what the lion is doing? What assumptions is he making? Even if the lion's emissions sound like an English sentence, what is relevant in the context? What is the lion doing? Suppose, for example, our friend, Harry, is standing before a lion's cage in which a cave has been constructed as a den. The lion, staring at Harry, emits the sound sequence, /2aym+ gowing+3 hówm1/ [4]

It sounds like the lion just said, "I'm going home." But did it "say" that? Suppose the lion then lies down and rolls over on its back. It starts to snore. Are we still inclined to think that the lion talked? (If so, did he talk to Harry? Did the lion inform Harry it was "going home?" And, thus, was the lion telling a lie?) Can Harry believe his eyes and ears? Has he jumped to conclusions? (See Artificial Intelligence Weirdness. Need categorizing relate to visual cues?)

The basic problem is how we distinguish illusions, visual, as well as audial or other, from realities. Even AI's have this problem.(See Autonomous Car Collides with Bus: an illusion of abstractions?)

And What Are Understandings? Understandings, when articulated in language, are narratives (or, if highly structured, a program) of collection or connection. We may judge them incorrect, false, or incomplete but they are still understandings -- we might say, "misunderstandings."

People may not be at all articulate as to what they understand so we may have to observe how they proceed from their present conditions toward those outcomes that we judge them to be pursuing. If we observe persistent failure to achieve a goal we might reasonably judge that their understanding of how to achieve that goal is deficient.

There is a large number of likely misunderstandings that persist in any population because they need not or cannot often be put to any test whose outcomes enjoy broad consensus as to their pertinence. (So what if kids believe in the Tooth Fairy!) These questionable understandings are often characterized as (empirically) "non-disconfirmable" beliefs. Examples are:

a. The mind is co-extensive with the body, or:
b. The mind is not coextensive with the body.
c. The universe is a hologram; or
d. The universe is not a hologram.

It would appear that any rationales, or chain of rationales, that contain misunderstandings would thereby be severely weakened. (Many pundits who presume to speak for Science share such misunderstandings with those who presume to speak for Religion. See Pseudo-Science: the reasonable constraints of Empiricism.)

The Fractal(?) Generation of Rationales. Understanding in general is the ability to produce chains of behavior or their narratives which link a confronted situation of interest to a goal to be achieved. But, understandings alone are often narrow and give may give no indication of the interests or abilities of the persons who understand and may be expected to act. Thus, understandings may be just part of what we're looking for.

Rationales can be elaborated from understandings. Rationales often bring up systemic concerns about, say, indicator validity (Cue), actor interests (Concern), and actor abilities (Control) which underly attempts at interventions based on narrower technical understandings.

Understandings can be chained together to produce rationales for action, and rationales themselves chained to produce broader understandings. Thus we may go from merely speculative understanding of how to cross a river, to a rationale for expanding commerce across that river, to an understanding of how political influence can be brought about reiteratively by using market rather than, say, armed forces. Understandings developed this way can be connected together, in chains or trees, etc., to articulate, say, foreign economic development policies. (See The Fractalization of Social Enterprise)


Why Can We Understand Human Black Boxes but find It harder to Understand AI Black Boxes?
It is because many people working in AI feel restricted to technical issues of understanding the how's of economically pertinant AI functioning. Despite the the persistent anthropomorphizing of AI output -- and despite the suspicions that the ultimate goal of AI research is to create some kind of homunculus -- issues of rationale, especially in the contexts of human development and learning are discounted as off target. [5]

Autonomous AI stimulates the same kind of misgivings that one might feel about extra-terrestrials. We are not sure we can predict, much less control what they might do with us. It is a non-sequitur to believe that high computational ability equates to altruism. (See METI. Here We Are! Come Eat Us! Our Children Are Especially Tasty!)

We have built-in, so to speak, Cue-identifying abilities inherited through evolution, both physical, mental and social, that are sensitive to the norms of the environments of our development. We are Concerned to share a world with motile, sometimes dangerous, beings that we can hear, feel, smell, taste as well as see. And we know from personal experience what fear, hunger, danger, hate and social attraction are. [6]

We measure the autonomy we are willing to extend to our ancient non-human friends and enemies because we can guess well what drives them, and how to accommodate them to our society. And, not the least important, we can, with more or less success, Control and defend ourselves against them.

To pursue the issues of understanding and rationale, see Intervention. Helping, interfering or just being useless?

Cordially, EGR

(P.S. Check out this interesting interview with Gary Marcus called Making AI More Human.)

NOTES
[1] L Wittgenstein 1958b. Philosophical Investigations. ed. G.E.M. Anscombe and R.Rhees. tr. G.E.M. Anscombe, 2nd edition. Oxford: Blackwell. page 223. See comments by Simon van Rysewyk at Wittgenstein Light

[2] D Castelvecchi Can We Open the Black Box of AI? Nature magazine, October 5, 2016

[3] Sources for pseudo-English concoctions: French - Mots d'Heures: Gousses, Rames, The d'Antin Manuscript. Penguin,1980; German - J Hulme Mörder, Guss Reims. The Gustave Leberwurst Manuscript, Clarkson N Potter, 1981; Spanish -- My confabulation, EGR

[4] IPA, digits indicate tone levels. Cf. H A Gleason, An Introduction to Descriptive Linguistics (New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1955)

[5] See EG Rozycki Behavior in Measurability and Educational Concerns 

[6] See D Gross, Why Artificial Intelligence Needs Some Emotional Intelligence

Self-Driving Cars, Run-Away Trams, & “Unavoidable” Accidents

How should the (self-driving) cars be programmed to act in the event of an unavoidable accident? Should it minimize the loss of life, even if it means sacrificing the occupants or should it protect the occupants at all costs? Should it choose between these extremes at random? -- Why Self-Driving Cars Must Be Programmed to Kill -- MIT Technology Review, October 22, 2015

A primary cause of philosophical illness: a one-sided diet. One nourishes one's thinking with only one kind of example.--- L. Wittgenstein (1967) Philosophische Untersuchungen, §593 (Suhrkamp: Frankfurt a.Main) p.189. (My translation. - EGR)

Who Broke the Copy Machine? And Other Follies.

Vignette, the First: In the main office of his company, Larry waits patiently for a colleague to finish using the common copy machine. Larry needs to duplicate a report for a later meeting. At his turn, Larry loads the machine and pushes the copy button. A strange, loud groan issues from the machine. The attention of everyone in the office is now diverted to an astonished Larry. The machine goes dead and smoke issues from it. The office manager comes over and fretfully asks Larry, “What have you done?” In the ensuing atmosphere of reproach no one mentions -- if they even know -- that the office manager, himself, put off maintenance for the copier, doubling the service interval, at the behest of the company president that expenses be reduced wherever possible.

Vignette, the Second: Mack drives a tram (trolley car) the movement of which is constrained by a track. Mack can only make it stop, go, speed up, slow down or switch over to a connected track. One day, while approaching a blind curve, Mack realizes that his braking mechanisms don’t work: he is in a runaway vehicle. Rounding a blind curve yet picking up speed due to descending an incline, Mack sees a group of people ahead on the track. He fears the worst. Luckily there is a parallel track he can switch over to. Alas, there is already a single person ahead on that track. It is, it seems, a matter of life-or-death. Switch or not-switch. Kill many or one? Which should he choose to do? (See, for example, Thomas Cathcart (2013) The Trolley Problem)

Vignette, the Third: A group of automotive engineers is perplexed. They are constructing the control programs for a self-driving car. No passenger will be a driver, i.e. make driving decisions. They are aware of some form of Vignette, the Second. (They don’t stop to think of examples like Vignette, the First.) The engineers jump to a dismaying preliminary conclusion: in the (likely rare?) event that an unavoidable accident threatens risking human damage and death, the car must, willy-nilly, be programmed for a lethal decision. If faced with the choice of Vignette the Second the car must be programmed to kill, whether many or one. But, in the aftermath, who -- they worry -- will bear responsibility for the damage? (See Will Knight, “How to Help Self-Driving Cars Make Ethical Decisions”)

Responsibility & Intervention. The three vignettes appear to have similar underlying structures. However, there are substantial differences among them. In the first and second vignettes, the actors whose choice behavior we are considering are caught up in a chain of events which they have had no part in structuring. They are, so to speak, minor officers on the Titanic. In the third vignette, the actors are Planners not confronted with choices that immediately threaten catastrophe. The Planners -- and the analysts cited above, i.e. Thomas Cathcart and Will Knight -- mistake the second vignette as a model for the first or third vignettes, respectively, by conflating important distinctions:

a. they confuse “Role” with “Function;”
b. they confuse “Choice” with “Responsibility;”
c. they invoke a vague notion of “unavoidable” that allows equivocation between “Intervention” and “Prevention.” (See Intervention: helping, interfering or just being useless?)

In Vignette, the First Larry’s role, for which he is responsible, is as a procedure-follower. If machinery is involved, Larry is, shall we say, an Engager. He is not himself a duplicate-producer. He employs the copier; it is the copier which produces duplicates. The casual speech of office politics may confound these distinctions, but morally and legally, should it come to that, his having followed procedures may protect him, even if the machinations of other organizational members would have him take the blame. (These distinctions are often disregarded in cases of organizational “disruption” based on what is masqueraded as “performance evaluation.” )

Once started, Larry was not likely able to intervene in the rapid self-destruction of the copier, even had he realized what was happening. Prevention, which is neither part of Larry’s role nor responsibility had been deliberately left undone by the office manager -- a risk taken that failed. The destruction was practically unavoidable, once initiated. But Larry, despite facing issues of responsibility had no practical choice in the matter.

In Vignette, the Second Mack is, also, a procedure-follower, an Engager, whose personal responsibility is delimited by the well-functioning of his machine. The “choice” between not stopping killing many or killing one does not relieve those responsible for accident preventive procedures of their responsibility. This consideration is regularly ignored by those who take advantage of some person’s being a link in a chain of events ending in catastrophe to charge that person with major responsibility for the catastrophe. Mack has a choice, but no fair responsibility.

In Vignette, the Third The automotive engineers worry, as they should, that in order to make their autonomous cars salable, they may end up being held responsible, to some extent, for the damage that results. Just consider the scandal with Volkswagen where their vehicles were programmed to create false pollution reports to enhance salability. There are many other examples of vehicle recall and successful lawsuit that come easily to mind. The engineers are, by role AND function, responsible actors in that they contribute to the production of the outcomes, although not so much as their organizational leadership who may determine what the engineers are permitted to do..

NOTE WELL: It is at this point that the vagueness of the term, “unavoidable,” comes into play. In the debate on autonomous vehicles the invoking of "unavoidable accidents" functions to buffer those in leadership positions from the moral hazards they run as they give considerations other than product safety higher priority. “Unavoidability” provides a shield for morally questionable leadership. (See Buffering: Enhancing Moral Hazard in Decision-Making?)

Avoidability. To call something “unavoidable” is not to make a simple empirical judgment. Just consider: if an event is called “unavoidable,” what observations, by themselves -- even with trustworthy instruments -- could support that judgment? It’s a slightly different matter if we modify “unavoidable” with adverbs such as “practically,” or “economically.” These allow us to consider narrower options on which we may find an easier consensus as to what is desirable or not. But there is likely still some necessity for theoretical argument.

Basically, to call something “unavoidable” is to make either of two negative possibility claims:

1. It cannot be intervened in so that its potential effects are nullified; or
2. It cannot be prevented so that its potential effects are nullified.

At this stage of our knowledge (2015) -- examples of practically non-intervenable events would be -- once initiated -- an atomic bomb explosion, the short-range discharge of a bullet, or the ingestion of cyanide. However, they all could be and are preventable prior to their initiation.

It would seem that, logically, any intervenable event is preventable. But there are some things we cannot logically prevent prior to their initiation, because the character which prompts us seeing them as needing prevention does not manifest itself prior to the event, e.g. mayhem, having developed from mere rough-housing. Or disregard for traffic signals. Or possible future adult criminality in children. Attempts at pre-emptive treatment for such examples risk violations of legal and other rights.

Solutions? There is yet another rub: many interventions or preventative actions may be seen as too monetarily costly for individuals, or even large communities; for example, such actions as providing closely monitored special limited access roadways for confining the use of self-driving cars.

In the end, self-driving cars may be treated as many would like to do in the U.S. with firearms: requiring vetted ownership licenses and heavy usage restrictions. This is much more likely since human-driven cars kill more people every year than do firearms. (See Gun Fun or Safe Kids? Must We Make Tradeoffs?)

Unlike with firearms there is, at this time in the U.S. no widespread, traditional use of autonomous vehicles (AV’s) to damp the enthusiasm for imposing restrictions. Nor is there any Constitutional basis for arguing every citizen’s right to own AV’s. But what counters the enthusiasm for highly restricted use of self-driving cars -- e.g. consumer mistrust in their programming and intentions by designers to block owner attempts to intervene at will -- will also counter market enthusiasm to invest in their manufacture.

I will close the present considerations with a more sanguine opinion:

The wide adoption of self-driving, Autonomous Vehicles (AVs) promises to dramatically reduce the number of traffic accidents. Some accidents, though, will be inevitable, because some situations will require AVs to choose the lesser of two evils. For example, running over a pedestrian on the road or a passer-by on the side; or choosing whether to run over a group of pedestrians or to sacrifice the passenger by driving into a wall -- Bonnefon, J et al. (2015) Cornell University Library. Autonomous Vehicles Need Experimental Ethics: Are We Ready for Utilitarian Cars? arXiv:1510.03346 [cs.CY]

Afterthoughts. The moral hazards risked by the leadership on issues pertaining to self-driving cars may well become the physical hazards of those affected by that leadership’s decisions. And with it, American worship of the automobile may come to acknowledge the blood sacrifice it has long been paying. Greater evils may be avoided at the cost of creating lesser ones. But it may not be a matter of the length of casualty lists.

To pursue these issues, see Leadership vs. Morality: An Unavoidable Conflict?

Cordially, -- EGR

Autonomous Car Collides with Bus: an illusion of abstractions?

The secret of success is honesty and fair dealing. If you can fake those, you've got it made. -- Groucho Marx

re-edited 3/12/16

An Illusion is not Necessarily a Perceptual Error. It is usually just a rather run-of-the-mill experience. We encounter illusions frequently. To our personal benefit, our own bodies often produce illusions, e.g. 3D vision or directional hearing, or even the pains we experience from surprising external or internal systemic pressures, or, even, upon hearing bad news. The pain in our bare foot is not the tack we just stepped on; nor, the pleasure we feel, the chocolate we just ate.

We humans rely on illusions. We use them for better or worse to lead our lives. Seafarers have long guided themselves across oceans using star constellations. But we know now that there’s no Big Dipper, or Belt of Orion, to be found “out there.” Constellations of stars are illusions due to slow cosmic change and to our position as viewers. Human racial differences, too, have been a commonly encountered practically exploitable illusion due to slow change and social position. (See Philosophy & Racial Discourse.)

Wayfarers and pilots, too, may venture into or over deserts and forests, cross-referencing their positions along the way by triangulating imaginary lines-of-sight between “fixed” terrain features. (Even such “fixtures” as expected mirages of an oasis or other bodies of water can work.)

We humans are not unique in producing illusions in pursuit of the “goals” patterned in our genes. Our use of duck calls, fishing lures or pheromone hunting baits illustrates this. Animal species, too, may pursue prey or fend off predators by, feigning death, or, ferocity, or venomousness.

Illusion is not in the perception, in the appearance, but in what we take that appearance to be. We learn at a young age “Appearances can be deceiving.” We certainly hope so, when we aggressively yell to frighten off an approaching animal; or, when we go to meet someone on a first date.

How do we learn what is illusory and what not? By using as many of our senses as we can, in as many variations of position as we can manage, in order to see what happens. It is no accident that most illusionists do their presentations to audiences fixed in their seats. Or that séances are held in the dark. Or that proselytizers of every stripe discourage broad learning in their followers. Narrow perspectives blur the distinction between illusions and realities.

Not only do we vary the manner in which we confront what we suspect may be illusory, but we do it noting the context of presentation. Is it “normal”? Is the lighting different from daylight? Would art museums display their traditional exhibits under intense red light? (Try sorting blue, black and brown socks under incandescent light. Why is fluorescent light better for the task?)

Is image, tone, feel, odor, or taste sufficiently persistent? How far away (intense) does the apparition, tone, etc. seem to be? Smallness and haziness are indicators of distance. If we can estimate its height (or loudness, etc.), then, more is closer.

Strained or strange body positions on the part of the observer are likely to indicate something amiss. Cross a middle finger under a forefinger, close you eyes and touch the tip of you nose with both fingers simultaneously. You will feel two noses!

We tend to judge the reality of the perception that confronts us based on the degree of “normal” corroboration among our different sense modalities in the context of our estimation of the “normality” of the perceptual situation.

Is the image, tone, feel, odor, or taste sufficiently persistent? Can we compare it with tracings from memory, or with our hypothetical constructions about confrontations to come? Both past and future are processings left as mental traces, not the evanescent qualia that phenomenologists say present themselves to us only in the passing moment. (See Similarity: not a given; but, a composition.).

Motion pictures, or their derivatives, provide us an interesting example of illusion. They are composed of stills, or frames, the projections of which are clearly illusions, which appear less illusory when perceived quickly and sequentially. Their most important consequence is the illusion of cause and effect.

Cause & Effect. What conditions “connect” perceptual events into perceived chains of cause and effect? This feature seems to be “wired into” us; (or, as Immanuel Kant proposed much earlier, cause-effect is a essential structural component of Mind - Verstand) Cause-Effect is often an illusion we must take pains to recognize as such; e.g. Post Hoc, Propter Hoc. (See Cause = Perceptions + Assumptions )

How do we correct a suspected misconception as the reality of a perception? By probing any hunch – called in exalted educational circles, “testing our hypothesis” – to see if it holds up under questioning. Usually fatigue, boredom and feelings of risk set in long before any “personal hypothesis” is thoroughly criticized. (See Good Lies, Wise Evasions )

Reality, Knowledge? Just Presumptions? Some long while ago, at a cocktail party, in my late youth and early marriage, a chemistry professor, having had a bit too much chemical and having heard from my in-laws that I was still in my middle-twenties (!) stumbling around after a profession, confided in me: “Consider Chemistry! By the year 2000 we will be all efficiently taking various pills instead of eating, having to waste our time and effort chewing, so-called-healthy crunchies for hors d’oeuvres.”

Granted, time passes, new things are discovered, the old dies away. Today’s knowledge becomes tomorrow’s superstition; today’s realities, tomorrow’s illusions. This seems inevitable in a culture which practices an empirically-based knowledge acquisition model.

An Equation-like Metaphor. But this is no argument for returning to a culture of unquestionable, alledgedly prophesy-based dogmatism. Rather, think of “reality, R,” as a limit condition, a congeries, at least, of truths, T. The disconfirmation of hypotheses, as a procedure (a function), D, which moves us away from previous illusions and toward “reality, ” as the number of disconfirmations, D, increases, likely to infinity (since we and the universe around us evolve). Knowledge (i.e. Compiled Truths, {T}, which will in the limit comprise Reality, is the residue of practical, experimentally exercised caution. See Knowledge: The Residues of Practical Caution..

A metaphorical equation: (lim K/_{(D → ∞)}) = {T} ⊆ {R}

Read this: In the limit, our knowledge, K, as the disconfirmation of tentative hypotheses increases to infinity, approaches - via {T} - Reality (R),

a. T is the set of all truths, {T}, i.e. hypotheses that have survived disconfirmation tests;


b. {T} is reasonably expected by less-than-omniscient beings such as us, to be always less than (R).

I concede this to be a metaphor because I am not even sure it makes much sense taken literally. (See Measuring Educational Outcomes: truth, tricks and hype.) Certainly the total number of English (or other language) words (and the power sets of all their combinations and permutations) is less than the number of events discriminable by us in the universe as we know it, or even as we might come to know it in the future, given superior instrumentation and language to expand and communicate our experience.

Contingently Dysfunctional Characteristics: explaining AI failure. I do not have enough particulars to deal with the specific recent collision event. But I do have a broader concern that may apply to it. It is that there is a problem with the traditional notion of abstraction used by (only some, I hope) AI researchers.

The Platonic conception of abstraction introduced by Socrates in the Meno – the traditional use of necessary and sufficient (N&S) conditions -- common to many theoretic activities to this day, appears in full bloom in chapter two, “A Model of the Neo-Cortex,” of Ray Kurzweil’s book, How to Create a Mind.

(Compare Alfred Korzybski's "Structural Differential," shown above - from Science & Sanity: An Introduction to Non-Aristotelian Systems and General Semantics (1941) - that he used to explain his conception of abstraction.)

This model of abstraction, call it the N&S model, is, what I will call a “ context pro-functional” accumulator. It sets up a checkpoint for the selection of candidates in a given class of situation, call it [S1], to moving up the ladder of abstraction. It allows items to climb that meet certain functional requirements for an AI construction goal. It may even cull out an [S1]-dys-functional elements, if they are of concern.

But such dysfunctional elements may be overlooked or disregarded, as being, for example of low probability of happening, or of low enough cost in the long run to allow to pass through. See Concept as Abstraction. A hindrance in developing intelligence?

But the [S1]-appropriate abstraction may also be a sort of “sludge-accumulator,” in that it allows to pass through any items with [Sn?1]-dysfunctional characteristics so long as they are [S1]-functional. A situation [S31] may arise in which the response set available contains [S31]-dysfunctional items that are nonetheless [S1]-functional.

So it is that an autonomous car might accelerate to pass a bus that has lain quiescent for twelve seconds, [S31], but may accelerate on eight because the bus driver left his running lights off, creating in the car an "illusion" of [S1], signaling a permanent stop.

Using the common N&S concept of abstraction is very much like an admissions procedure to an organization based on education, ethnicity, profession and income that welcomes anyone who meets these four requirements but ignores, say, their legal status, e.g. felon or not, their level of indebtedness, their history of violent public behavior, and the condition of their health.

How to Avoid Such Difficulties Basically it comes down to three things:

a. investigating broad ranges of functional situations;

b. looking at not only those characteristics that are pro-functional, but considering whether there are potentially dysfunctional characteristics that may manifest themselves in not impossibly remote circumstances;

c. building in different kinds of input systems to enable corroboration among them.

Scanners alone, like visitors' eyes at a seance, will not easily help their user recognize illusions.

For examples and to pursue these issues, see Physical Objects as Non-Individuated Entities. (A universe of constructs) )

Cordially
--- EGR

Concept as Abstraction. A hindrance in developing intelligence?

EDITED 191720*

I shall not today attempt further to define the kinds of material I understand to be embraced within that shorthand description ["hard-core pornography"], and perhaps I could never succeed in intelligibly doing so. But I know it when I see it, and the motion picture involved in this case is not that. -- United States Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart, 378 U.S. at 197 (1964)

Why Do We Need Lawyers, Judges, Interpreters ...? Because we often need to reach a workable consensus on what a text-- or statement -- means before taking action. Deliberation and authoritative decision may be needed. Texts, or language in general, can often be vague and ambiguous; and, perceptions can be surprisingly idiosyncratic. (See What Little Babies See That You No Longer Can.. And not only just babies! -- EGR)

Documents alone do not yield definitiveness. Conceptual agreement is the end of many an investigation (consider dissertation advising); agreement is seldom an absolute beginning. (See The Indeterminacy of Consensus )

A Misleading Tradition. Since we all can recognize examples of virtue, Socrates asks Meno to say what virtue, in general, is. Meno replies by giving Socrates examples of virtue. Socrates objects: no, no. What Socrates wants is the common thread (the abstraction), running through all the examples which makes them examples of virtue. Meno fails the test. So Socrates presses to the conclusion that Meno doesn't know what virtue is. Nor, Socrates would readily admit, does he himself. (But see Sakezles, P. Socratic Skepticism” )

The rhetorical stratagem here is to set up Meno for Socrates' doctrine of the Forms, otherworldly existants that are what knowledge comprises and that we encounter only spiritually. Learning, for Socrates, is explained as our recalling, re-recognizing, Forms previously encountered before birth, say, or in a previous life.

In fact, Meno has rendered a perfectly good definition of virtue; but, in a form that Socrates does not (want to?) recognize because it specifies no common thread.

If we allow that definitions delineate concepts, enabling us to sort out what belongs to a class from what does not, then besides the genera-species definition form (the abstraction) that Socrates is plumping for, a recursive definition works as well.

A Non-abstractive Approach. I used to teach the calculus in a private high school where I was headmaster and would occasionally play a game called "WFF&Proof" with my students. They had to roll a set of six dice that had sides marked with the following: p, q, r, C, A, K, E or N. After a throw they had to see if they could construct a WFF, a well-formed-formula, by arranging the outcomes in various combinations.

A WFF was defined as any of the following: p, q or r. (Addendum 1, 2/7/16: Note that there is no indication of p, q, or having common features.)

Also WFF's were combinations of the letters C, A, K or E followed by two WFF's. Or N followed by a single WFF. So beginning with p, q, or r, one could possibly construct the new WFF's, Np or Nq or Nr. Continuing in this vein, one might construct Apq, or ANpp, or CAqKqrr, ... (Addendum 2, 2/7/16: Note also that no two complex WFF's need have common features, e.g. Cpr and ErArr.)

* We can use Meno's example and define operator V = "is virtuous" to mean merely "has some virtue". And since we are trying to avoid abstraction, i.e. talk about classes, "has some virtue" does not mean "is a member of the class of exemplars of virtue." So now "Virtue" can be defined as "anything that has some virtue." (We thus avoid a question as to whether we have "all" such things under consideration.

Now, if we have to sort out, say, bravery from cowardice, since Bravery is a (Meno-)WFF and Cowardice is not, the concept advanced by Meno does the work of sorting them out. The basic idea here is that if you can, initially, practically sort out contending examples, even of they lack common characteristics, then the label you put on the covering set needn't really matter, depending upon your purposes. (See Does your school really need a kluge-maker"

Another Approach. But isn’t “is virtuous” just as abstract a concept as “Virtue.” It’s difficult to say, but it involves very different procedures for reaching consensus. Trying to agree on what virtue is, in toto, bumps up against philosophical, religious and cultural commitments a lot sooner than merely asking a group to name and evaluate examples, e.g. something I have done for years with graduate students:

Let’s propose a number of situations or actions and then rate each one on a scale from one to five, say,

1 = definitely not virtuous;
2 = probably not virtuous;
3 = not clearly virtuous or not;
4 = probably virtuous;
5= definitely virtuous.

Then we’ll restrict our attention to 4 and 5 and then see what common threads, if any, they contain.”

(For applications, see A Library of MODEL CASES FOR ANALYSIS)

Of course we will have to examine and justify any proposal X to be a VX, focussing on the particulars of that X rather than doing it top-down from a "higher" abstractional level, straining at heavy philosophical lifting and the likely dissension it occasions.

This is exactly what Ethics Committees in various institutions often have to do in order to achieve even a general agreement. Where concrete problems have to be dealt with, abstract theoretical discussion tends to generate dissensus; practical specificity, more likely, consensus. As in a courtroom, we try first to ascertain not, whether a given law is just, but whether a violation has occurred. (See A. R.Jonsen, & S. Toulmin. The abuse of casuistry: a history of moral reasoning. 1988. Berkeley: U of Cal. Press. Especially pages 16 through 20.)

Abstraction as Sieve. It would probably be unwise to use a coffee filter on a sewage pipe to get potable drinking water. A lot of unwanted things, even excepting most coffee grounds, could likely have passed through, e.g. harmful bacteria and dissolved heavy metals. What the sieve has captured may not give any indication as to what has escaped.

Our organs of perception and internal nervous processors also work as sieves – but inversely from a coffee filter: here we want the “grounds.” We cannot, as dogs can, process the information in light energy that is not within the human visual spectrum. Ditto for the aural spectrum. Nor can we sieve out information from X-rays with any parts of our natural bodies. We need to extend our perceptual apparatus with instrumentation to make up the lack.

If you are listening to a person speak in a language you don’t know, you often can’t even tell which utterances are information-laden and which are random sound. What is even more interesting is that, for languages you do speak well, you can often not keep from overhearing what an individual person in a crowd is saying, even if her voice is somewhat drowned out.

The development of our “sieves” are very much dependent on help from our caregivers to help us strain out what our social environment traditionally recognizes as information-laden or random. The discovery that self-learning neural nets perceive the world in “weird” ways should hardly come as a surprise. Even feral humans, artists, and others who regularly experience synaesthesia or pareidolia are similarly "weird."

For examples and to pursue these issues, see Abstraction.

Cordially -- EGR

Similarity: not a given; but, a composition.

a. This is not B. F. Skinner	c. This is a tiny reproduction of a Klee Painting

All concepts within which an entire process has been symbolized, withdraw themselves from definition: anything which has a history is not definable.— Nietzsche, Towards a Geneaology of Morals II, 13. (My translation – EGR}

Teaching Analphabets. I spent twenty years of my professional career teaching English as a Second Language (ESOL) to mostly refugee children whom misfortune had deprived of most schooling experience. (I would even have to teach some how to hold a pencil or pen to write with and to do simple lettering.)

The standard subject teachers, overwhelmed by their ESOL pupils' incapacity to communicate, would voice suspicions that most of them were mentally, or at least, perceptually deficient. On one occasion, a visiting lecturer gave a demonstration for the faculty during which she showed an analphabetic pupil she had brought with her a poster with the letters, N O P, in 144 pt Times Roman Font printed on it. Then, on a blackboard mounted to the side of the poster, she wrote a script form of O, somewhat slanted and with a loop at the end of the upstroke. “Can you tell if there is a letter on the poster like the one like the I just wrote on the blackboard?” she asked the student. He said he couldn’t.

The lecturer turned to the faculty and said, “This shows how severe a discrimination problem this student has. He can’t even tell which letter I have written! Can any of you suggest how you might go about remedying it?”

A teacher replied that the lecturer’s simple test did not prove the student had a discrimination problem. In fact, purely from a visual viewpoint, what the lecturer drew on the blackboard was visually distinguishable from what had been printed on the poster. The student may have been over-discriminating. The lecturer embarrassedly replied, “I’ll have to look into that.” The presentation was brought to a sudden conclusion.

Sometimes You Can’t See the Forest For the Trees. Nor the trees, for the forest. The problem of training discrimination is faced not only by analphabetic children learning a new language, but by native speaking adults researching new material which requires confronting new perceptions and having to learn to communicate their experiences within the framework a terminological tradition. It is not for nothing that university students have to take courses in data analysis. (For a simple data analysis example with an interesting application, see Moral Education: Indoctrination vs. Cognitive Development? )

Even experienced practitioners may have to learn to develop interrogatories to systematize their research. (See, for example, Developing Interrogatories to Aid Analysis.)

They may also need learn to apply research protocols using new instrumentation. These practices, i.e. data analysis, interrogatory and protocol development, are not so importantly issues of acquiring new perceptions as of learning standards, i.e. what counts as a relevant perception to develop data bases and to communicate their findings with other researchers. (But, for critical historical variations in the notion of objectivity, see L. Daston & P.Galison [2007] Objectivity New York. Zone Books.)

Nietzsche’s Proposition. In the epigraph above, Nietzsche was commenting on the concept of punishment as an example of one which through translation bridges over centuries and carries with it the baggage of often contradicting traditions and morals. Such a concept, he argues, rightly, I would think, cannot be expected to meet the criterion for a (Platonic) definition in terms of necessary and sufficient conditions. Other approaches to definition may work. See, for example, Concept as Abstraction. A hindrance in developing intelligence? However, practically useful definitions for us tend to yield results that clash with moral concerns deriving from historically long-lived and still extant moral systems. (See School Violence, Punishment, and Justice. ).

How is Similarity a Composition? There’s an old joke. It concerns a sculpter who was asked, “How did you make your fantastic statues?” “Simple,” he replied. You just take a block of marble, or whatever, and chip away the stone that doesn’t belong."

Of all the energies that impinge upon the surfaces of our bodies, those that don’t pass through without noticeable effect are filtered by our skin and other organs, which may absorb or transform their energies. We don’t “see” or “hear” or “feel” or “taste” or “smell” those energies as their physical manifestation passing through the universe; but, only as they impinge upon and stimulate certain cells in our body.

“Red” or “Middle-C” or “roughness” or “salty” or “skunk” are already filtered energies, thanks to the evolution which has pre-wired us and many other animals to filter out mostly energies that do not enable us as species to survive and procreate.

This is common knowledge, if somewhat pedanticly expressed. Similarities are not “out there” caroming around the universe:

a. They are composed from the welter of energies that have already been filtered through our skins.

b. they are composed by means of the nervous connections we have developed as species over millions of years.

c. they are further determined by what our attention is drawn to. And finally,

d. they are focused more narrowly by what our socialization brings us to disregard as unimportant.

Similarity is only part of the story. Any two “things” are similar to the extent that we disregard their differences. Most importantly, similarity is not identity. We learn early on in life:

a. Not all that glitters is gold.

b. It may look like a human or a duck, and even talk or walk like a human or a duck. But still be neither.

c. There are such things as counterfeit money, faked emotions, and false promises.

And also photographs, twinkling tiny pointillist stars, and soap operas. Illusions galore, even helpful illusions, similar to many things; but still not the real things.

For further discussion, see Isormorphism Everywhere? 
Imagination, Likeness, and Identity.


Cordially --- EGR

METI: Here We Are! Come Eat Us! Our Children Are Especially Tasty!

...the fetish to narrowly define the (SETI, Search for ExtraTerrestrial Intelligence) has resulted in a view of alien life that is as constricted and ironic as it is unsupportable.-- David Brin, Ph.D. [1]

Forget about freedom, the economy, terrorism, disease, obesity, the state of public schools and bad taste. If those who practice METI (sending Messages to ExtraTerrestrial Civilizations -- a subfield of SETI,) have made a bad bet, then none of our trivial local concerns will mean much. (Imagine the movie, Independence Day [2], with an unhappy ending.)

David Brin comments about the METI advocates (METI’s, for short) :

Serenely confident in a “we know best” attitude, they are embarking upon this path in blithe confidence, unwilling to even discuss their plans in an open forum. A path that might have serious consequences to humanity.

(In other contexts, we might say that METI’s exercise Moral Hazard ).)

If this planet’s unhappy history provides any example, all we can expect from the arrival of technologically advanced, interstellar newcomers is conquest and extinction. Why would anyone on this planet want to take the risk?

Here are some possibilities:

A. METI researchers believe that advanced civilization most likely indicates advanced “morality,” -- read here “altruism;”

B. METI’s are exercising their “inviolable right” of free speech.

C. METI’s hope that by inviting ET’s they will ingratiate themselves with the invaders enough to be spared the general harvesting of our bodies and resources;

D. As first “discoverers,” METI’s will enjoy fame and its blandishments if even only for a short period in the likely not much longer history of the human race.

Let’s return to the issue of altruism (-- most likely a case of pathological altruism). Can we bank on the altruism of a technologically superior civilization? Does the development of refined intellectuality and rational, technological skills naturally produce refined, rational moral development that considers the needs and is tolerant of those weaker and different from the stronger?

Consider the last 100 years of this history of this planet. Consider just exactly who it was that inflicted needless death and destruction upon millions of non-combatant inhabitants around the world. Were those inflictors lacking in refined intellectuality or rational, technological skill?

Clearly, neither physical, intellectual or technological development is any guarantee of “moral development.” Status competition, i.e. honor and one-upmanship, alone -- don't even mention resource scarcity -- produces conflicts, which intellect and science are likely brought in to support. That is unless a happy development in technology generates more wealth, of which it is not cost-effective for oligarchies to try to curtail the sharing.

For a longer article with references examining the relationship of cognitive development to moral development, see Moral Education: Indoctrination vs. Cognitive Development?

Cordially
EGR

----------------------------------------
FOOTNOTES

[1] Brin, David (2008) SHOUTING AT THE COSMOS
…Or How SETI has Taken a Worrisome Turn Into Dangerous Territory by Lifeboat Foundation Scientific Advisory Board member David Brin, Ph.D. A very important article.

[2] See Independence Day

All Schools Are Little Wheels: the J. Fred Muggs Effect

updated 12/27/20

The little wheel run by Faith…
…(W. Guthrie, Ezekial Saw the Wheel}

Many of us were shocked, -- shocked, I tell you, -- to read (more likely, see on TV) that chimpanzees, affectionately known as "chimps," were not just the cute buffoons we had been seeing all our lives in the media. In the wild, they warred against other clans of their own kind and hunted and fed on the fresh kill of Bonobo monkeys; you know, those even smaller, cuter, gentler primates whose main pastimes merely mimicked those of a typical college undergraduate population. (See also 7 Adorable Animals That Could Kill You In An Instant.)

Faith in the docility, the sociability, of “pets” has brought it about that Florida is overrun by snakes of foreign origin. You flush ‘em down the toilet down there and they end up in the Everglades. (In the North, it’s alligators; elsewhere, it’s boars and cats.)

Americans make a big deal about the distinction between religious and public schools. But both rest on some kind of Faith. The great myth is that the public schools – accused dim-wittedly of being “secularist” – put their faith in Science. Not so.

A group of psychological researchers have reviewed the literature and determined that the following beliefs – often fanatically held by many public school personnel and university trainers of teachers-- are false or lack verification:

--There are left-brained and right-brained people
--Intelligence tests are biased against certain groups of people
--Students have learning styles. Teachers can teach to them.
--Heritable traits cannot be changed.
--Low self-esteem causes psychological problems.

A recent book, 50 Great Myths of Popular Psychology. Shattering Widespread Misconceptions about Human Behavior, by Lilienfeld, Lynn, Ruscio and Beyerstein explains the 50 myths and actually mentions 167 more.

How much so-called education, not to mention educational reform, is carried on assuming that these either downright false or unproven ideas are true? How many so-called Best Practices are based on these myths? Perhaps reform doesn’t take in schools because too many people would rather hold on to their chimps – pardon me, “faith” -- than be effective educators.

To examine these issues further, see The Pop-Psych Schoolhouse: Educational Reform Mired in (Inspired by?) Scientific Misconception

Cordially
EGR

Should Kids Be Taught to Think Like Computers?

The armchair is thinking to itself... Where? In one of its parts? Or outside of its body in the air around it? Perhaps not anywhere? But what is then the difference between the internal speech of this armchair and that of another standing by it? -- Wittgenstein

Might children just as well be taught to think like armchairs? Or cuckoo clocks? Or tigers?

These might be interesting questions to try to answer provided we knew better what it is kids do when they think. We pretty well know what happens when computers process information. But is this thinking? Or just wishful thinking by Artificial Intelligence buffs?

What is it to “think”? Does the attempt to explain Mind as Machine inform or enlighten us?

To examine these issues further, see "Thinking" Like Computers Do

Cordially --- EGR