Shunya's Notes

Fooled by Science

H. Allen Orr is among the most insightful writers today on the often uneasy intersection between science and culture (including religion). In this review of The Social Animal by David Brooks, he shines the light on a few follies all too common among science enthusiasts.

Science has a lot of uses. It can uncover laws of nature, cure disease, inspire awe, make bombs, and help bridges to stand up. Indeed science is so good at what it does that there’s a perpetual temptation to drag it into problems where it may add little or even distract from the real issues. David Brooks appears to be the latest in a long line of writers who, enamored of science, are bound and determined to import the stuff into their thinking.

The Social Animal is an attempt to write an accessible treatment of a set of weighty topics, many of which require Brooks to stretch in a distinctly scientific direction. The book, which was excerpted earlier this year in The New Yorker, focuses on big and somewhat diffuse questions: What has science revealed about human nature? What are the sources of character? And why are some people happy and successful while others aren’t? To answer these questions, Brooks surveys a wide range of disciplines, including evolutionary psychology, neurobiology, cognitive science, behavioral economics, education theory, and even the findings of marriage experts.

More here. If you like this, search on the NYRB site for more articles by Orr.

From Technologist to Philosopher

Damon Horowitz, former technologist, Artificial Intelligence (AI) researcher, and a graduate of Columbia and MIT, talks about the state of AI, why he left that field, and "Why you should quit your technology job and get a Ph.D. in the humanities."

Over time, it became increasingly hard to ignore the fact that the artificial intelligence systems I was building were not actually that intelligent. They could perform well on specific tasks; but they were unable to function when anything changed in their environment. I realized that, while I had set out in AI to build a better thinker, all I had really done was to create a bunch of clever toys—toys that were certainly not up to the task of being our intellectual surrogates.

And it became clear that the limitations of our AI systems would not be eliminated through incremental improvements. We were not, and are not, on the brink of a breakthrough that could produce systems approaching the level of human intelligence. I wanted to better understand what it was about how we were defining intelligence that was leading us astray: What were we failing to understand about the nature of thought in our attempts to build thinking machines?

And, slowly, I realized that the questions I was asking were philosophical questions—about the nature of thought, the structure of language, the grounds of meaning. So if I really hoped to make major progress in AI, the best place to do this wouldn't be another AI lab. If I really wanted to build a better thinker, I should go study philosophy. Thus, about a decade ago, I quit my technology job to get a Ph.D. in philosophy. And that was one of the best decisions I ever made.

More here. Check out my own take on AI in an article I wrote two years ago, The Dearth of Artificial Intelligence.

The Perils of Personalization

For over a decade, personalization has been a growing trend on the Internet. It feels nice, this idea of news, information, and services customized for our individual interests. But does it have any downsides? The answer, says Eli Pariser, is a resounding yes. In an interview on Democracy Now, Pariser summarizes his key arguments, also laid out in his book, The Filter Bubble: What the Internet Is Hiding from You.

Gurgaon: Dynamism + Dysfunction

I was based in Gurgaon for two years from 2004-6, and this article resonated with me well enough:

In this city that barely existed two decades ago, there are 26 shopping malls, seven golf courses and luxury shops selling Chanel and Louis Vuitton. Mercedes-Benzes and BMWs shimmer in automobile showrooms. Apartment towers are sprouting like concrete weeds, and a futuristic commercial hub called Cyber City houses many of the world’s most respected corporations.

Gurgaon, located about 15 miles south of the national capital, New Delhi, would seem to have everything, except consider what it does not have: a functioning citywide sewer or drainage system; reliable electricity or water; and public sidewalks, adequate parking, decent roads or any citywide system of public transportation. Garbage is still regularly tossed in empty lots by the side of the road.

With its shiny buildings and galloping economy, Gurgaon is often portrayed as a symbol of a rising “new” India, yet it also represents a riddle at the heart of India’s rapid growth: how can a new city become an international economic engine without basic public services? How can a huge country flirt with double-digit growth despite widespread corruption, inefficiency and governmental dysfunction?

More here.

Alva Noë on Consciousness

In Out of Our Heads, Berkeley philosopher Alva Noë, "restates and reexamines the problem of consciousness, and ... suggests that rather than being something that happens inside us, consciousness is something we do. Debunking an outmoded philosophy that holds the scientific study of consciousness captive, Out of Our Heads is a fresh attempt at understanding our minds and how we interact with the world around us." Here is an excerpt from a review:

The key assumption behind the science of consciousness is that consciousness is an internal process that occurs in the brain.  Noë's chief goal in the book is to show that this highly questionable, yet unquestioned assumption, has led the consciousness research astray; in brief, the search for consciousness has focused on where it isn't.  Noë opens by challenging this assumption, and offers an alternative picture.  Instead of characterizing consciousness as an internal process (like digestion) Noë proposes a picture which takes consciousness to be an activity (like dancing).  To try to understand consciousness by just focusing on the brain's neural activity is tantamount to trying to understand dancing strictly in terms of the muscles.  In the latter case, the muscles certainly play a part in the explanation, but they can hardly be the entire story.  Analogously for the explanation of consciousness: brain processes are a part of the story, but they are not the whole story, even if they have been given an undue amount of attention.

Today I came across this brilliant talk by Noe in which he explains his key ideas about consciousness to a general audience, and which seem to me exactly right, though I submit that they are not so new as some reviews suggest—perhaps Noe's particular exposition and focus on the topic create that impression. His line of thinking in fact goes back directly (via philosophers like Hubert Dreyfus) to Heidegger, as well as to Wittgenstein. Enjoy the talk—if you like it, check out this conversation and a talk on Edge.org.

The Culture of Gaming

Broadcast on public radio, an interesting "look at the history, the culture and the future of video games. Whether you know it or not you're likely a gamer and games are creeping into nearly every aspect of life; an hour on how far video games have come and where they're going."

Mexico and the War on Drugs

Al-Jazeera has this sad and chilling report from Ciudad Juaraz, a border town in Mexico now embroiled in the absurd American war on drugs:

Once known as a booming industrial city and a model of economic progress in Mexico, the border city of Juarez has become infamous as the murder capital of the world. More than 8,000 people have been killed there since 2008, when Mexican President Felipe Calderon sent in the army to carry out his offensive against the drug cartels.

The official story is that the Sinaloa and Juarez cartels are fighting for the city and the access it provides to the multi-billion dollar US drug market only a few hundred metres away.  On this episode of Fault Lines, Josh Rushing travels to Ciudad Juarez, and asks how human life there came to be worth so much less than the drugs being trafficked through.

Rao on Indus Valley Inscriptions

Rajesh Rao on the challenge of deciphering the 4000-year-old inscriptions of the Indus Valley Civilization, including whether they represent a linguistic script or a non-linguistic symbol system. Using computational approaches, he suggests that the inscriptions represent a language, possibly a forerunner to the Dravidian languages (for a refutation, see this; more food for thought in the comments section of this post).