Question Everything

Sapience - Relationship with Cleverness and Affect

My New Year offering is the second installment of my work on sapience. In this installment I explore the relationship between intelligence, creativity, affect, and sapience. The latter three are functions that modulate decision making in the first.

The full text is here.

And here is an excerpt:

Decisions, decisions

All autonomous agents living in a highly dynamic and non-stationary environment must continuously make decisions about what to do next given a particular situation. Simple animals living in simple(r) environments have fewer decisions to make. Humans appear to live in the most complex, dynamic, and non-stationary environments imaginable. This despite their every effort to construct a predictable, convenient environment with technology! The evolution of intelligence and creativity is the development of neural computation systems increasingly able to handle more complex environments requiring more elaborate decision making processes (Geary, 2005).

For humans, only some decisions are made consciously after some form of mental analysis of the situation. Some decisions are the result of intentional thinking in this way. But the vast majority of decisions are made subconsciously or preconsciously (before conscious awareness). This often comes as a shock to people who are unfamiliar with the research in the psychological and neurological bases of decision making.

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In light of the fact that we are about to enter a new year, I thought I might add a few questions about what might the new year bring that seem pertinent.

• How will the new administration work out in terms of tackling the economic crisis and at least halting the slide? I am actually thinking this economic meltdown is an opportunity to initiate some actions that could lead to a new way of looking at economics and the economy. Namely I would love to see Obama come to grips with the evils of growth and a consumer-based economy (especially one based on people borrowing money in order to buy junk.)
• What actions will the new administration take to mitigate our energy decline? Note that some of the answer to the above question actually applies to this question as well, since the economy runs on energy.
• What measures will be enacted to not just curb greenhouse gas emissions, but reverse the flow of CO₂ into the atmosphere (and hydrosphere)? This needs action now. Given the relationship between energy and the economy, the slowdown in the latter might actually produce a noticeable slowdown in the growth of CO₂ emissions. But it won't reverse it.
• How will mankind react to the economic contraction that I see coming in 2009? As always I hope that my Cassandra role is wrong and that by some miracle things turn around, or at least the suffering will be minimized. I continue to work, in my day job, on energy solutions. But the scale of the problems are so huge it is hard to be upbeat about it. In the worst case scenario I do see more institutional failures in '09 with massive job losses and further contraction into a depression. I just can't see how the government spending plans being developed and the so-called stimulus package (whatever it turns out to be) can counteract the trend toward declining energy inflow into our economy. Throwing faux money at the problem will, if anything, increase inflation at some point. Too many dollars chasing too few goods.

Less than two years ago economists were generally insisting that the fundamentals of the US economy were strong and that if we did have a recession it would be mild and short. Except for a very small number of mainstream economists no one in that field foresaw the collapse of so many markets in such a short time. On the other hand, I was predicting a general collapse and that the recession would be deeper and longer than expected. This was simply on the basis of the entering of a plateau stage of world oil production and the recognition that we had been getting in the habit of borrowing against what we believed were future increases in energy flow through. That is, people expected us to be able to do more productive work in the future in order to pay back the principle and interest. Now we see that we can't.

So my judgments tell me that things are going to get worse. It isn't just the price of oil that causes the problems, it is the flow rate. Prices just react to perceived realities and don't readily reflect the ground truth. But the low prices for oil currently are going to exaggerate - amplify - the decline in net energy flow into the economy because investments in new projects are now being cancelled. Even if those projects went forward, they are in increasingly hard-to-extract fuels, meaning that the net energy delivered to the economy will still be declining.

What does it mean? What should we do? Well a tremendous amount depends on what Obama and his team do or can accomplish. But I must admit I am skeptical of this as well. It is not easy to see what he can do when politics and lawyers are running the show. If he can transcend that and put real scientists into the fray, we might get some visibility into what is really going on in the energy arena. That would allow us to determine what we can and need to do to forestall a complete meltdown (if there is anything we can do!)

I have no real advice to give. Like everyone else I will keep plodding along thinking about what to do and keeping my eyes and ears open. I do believe we will see a pattern emerge by midyear. If it looks like Obama is heading in the right direction (according to my judgments, of course!) then I may breathe a sigh of relief and relax a bit. If not, I will redouble my efforts (to be seen on this blog) at figuring out how to pick up the pieces after the house falls. Time will tell, but not a lot of time now.

May 2009 be a better year than 2008.

Sapience - Introduction

Sapience - Introduction

NOTE: As good as typepad is for general blogs, it just can't seem to handle somewhat more complex HTML! Therefore I have posted this on my own web site. Sapience

Here is an excerpt.

From Whence Cometh Wisdom?

What is wrong with the world is not a lack of intelligence or creativity, what I like to call 'cleverness'. The existence of our science, engineering, works of art, music, and literature, and social institutions are adequate proof that we are not lacking in that capacity. Nor do we lack in passions, everything from our primitive emotions to our refined spirituality show that our minds are propelled by feelings of every sort. What is wrong is a lack of wisdom. That is what most profoundly affects our lives and, in these times, the whole world. We need to have a better handle on how to use our cleverness, how to modulate and appropriately use our emotions and feelings, to make life sustaining decisions for humanity and the Ecos. As a species we lack, ironically, a sufficient level of the very capacity for which our species was named, what the Greeks called sapience — wisdom. Carrolus Lineaus named us Homo sapiens, man the wise, thinking, I suppose, that to be the defining character of our kind (and to make a clear distinction between man and the rest of animal life!) Indeed, humans possess some capacity for wisdom. Occasionally persons of greater than normal wisdom shine forth and the rest of us intuitively recognize them. But that is really the problem. The occurrence is all too infrequent. Moreover, the common level of wisdom seen in the average human is simply not sufficient to provide benefit in the modern fast-paced and complex world produced by our cleverness and passions. If we are to succeed in surviving our own foolish mistakes, made from not having wisdom to make the right choices, we had better take a closer look at this mental capacity and see if we might not have a way to expand it in the future. We need to understand where wisdom comes from. And that means understanding not only what it is, but where in the brain it is 'processed'.

What makes a person wise?

The Future of Questioning - Exploring Answers

It's hard to believe that it has been a little more than a year since I started this blog. Over that year I have touched on most of the topics that interest me and which I see being interconnected in systemic ways and which are at the roots of all of the problems mankind currently faces.

During this next year I plan to go more deeply into some aspects, in some instances becoming a bit more scholarly than I have been in the past. I will strive to keep the work from being too technical, but at the same time I feel that a little hard core science here and there is what has been missing from the national, if not global, discourse. So I will attempt to provide more scientific meat on the bones of concepts I have already covered.

For instance, consider sapience or the neural basis of wisdom. I am planing to develop this concept in greater detail in the coming months. This is in preparation for a paper I am to give next summer on the topic. I will try to do a better job of giving more background and deeper descriptions of the mental/neural processes underlying higher judgment, moral reasoning, systems and strategic thinking that form the basis of sapience. This is an exciting time in neuroscience and psychology when the actual brain mechanisms underlying conscious and subconscious thinking. Similarly the explosion in knowledge about the genetic and epigenetic mechanisms giving rise to the development of these brain mechanisms is providing us with an incredible glimpse into how sapience evolved and how it develops in the brain.

Sapience and wisdom are, in my view, what has been largely missing in the affairs of humanity. It is especially missing in considerations of how humanity fits into the world. Our long-held beliefs that we could simply take from nature and convert to our own desires while spewing wastes into an environment ill equipped to handle the rate of pollution are clear indications of our lack on long-term consideration; our lack of appreciation for how the world works.

The current crises, which are global in scope and unlike anything humanity has ever faced previously, continue to be approached from an unwise belief that we can somehow, through the magic of technology, fix things to get back to the way they were before global warming and peak oil were ever heard of. Global systems thinking is sorely lacking, as is strategic thinking, in the world leaders, who are first and foremost politicians. We have failed to be wise enough to recognize that no biological species can increase its numbers indefinitely. We have failed to be wise enough to recognize the essential role of complete, and science oriented, education as a basis for citizens of the world to grasp things like energy and work. We have failed to be wise enough to recognize the idiocy of conflict and wars. We are still that primitive beast that first learned to grow its own food and used the augmentation of energy inputs from wood fuel, animal effort, water wheels and finally fossil fuels to just find more powerful ways to dominate or eliminate each other.

I will also be delving into these specific areas, such as energy and the economy, to further clarify what I think may be one of the most challenging turning points in human history. We need to come to grips with so many beliefs and behaviors that were, perhaps, appropriate long ago when humans were small compared to the expanse of the world, but are now inappropriate that we have grown to become a world-changing force.

Some of the material from previous blogs will obviously be repeated so long-time readers may have to skip around a bit to find the newer stuff. Newer readers may be spared digging through the index to catch up. I will provide some links to past blogs where they might suffice to explain something. And I will continue to rely upon Wikipedia where appropriate (I just made my annual contribution to Wikipedia and I encourage all readers to support this enterprise in aggregating human knowledge!)

I have received more e-mails from readers who have not commented directly here (some problems with submitting comments have been passed on to the Typepad crew, if you were having problems I'm sorry and I hope that gets cleared up soon). Generally they are complimentary. But I appreciate even the occasional questioning of my questioning (or some proffered answers to those questions). I understand some readers' desires to participate but remain anonymous. If you wish to contribute you can send me an e-mail (go to the author page to find it please) and I will post it. If you do send me an e-mail, I should note that I reserve the right to use some portion or all of it without revealing your identification.

Looking forward to this year of digging deeper. I hope you will too.

George

Does local optimization imply global optimization?

In the energy business this is a crucial question.

In the coming years there will be a tremendous effort put forth to increase energy efficiencies in all sorts of appliances, buildings, motors, and generators. The reason is simple enough. Increased energy efficiency means lower energy usage for the same amount of work at the local level. The implication is greater energy savings at the global level, right?

Unfortunately no. The devil is in the details of how the higher efficiency is achieved at the local level. It may be the case that there is some local saving of energy, which all other things being equal, is a good thing. However, the work that it takes to achieve those increased efficiencies may more than offset the gain! Consider the problems with increasing the energy conversion efficiency of photovoltaic cells. At present the nominal efficiency of solar collectors is roughly 15%. There are reports of increased efficiencies (20% and even 40%!) using more sophisticated designs and manufacturing methods. But scaling issues remain at question. Another way to produce higher collection efficiencies is to use exotic atoms (like Tellurium in Cadmium telluride thin film cells) but the costs and availabilities of these atoms raises substantial questions about how such technologies can scale up to the level needed to supply our electrical energy requirements.

Additional energy saving measures such as increased insulation look, on first examination, like a no-brainer. But really effective insulation, like urethane foam or glass fiber batting, takes energy to manufacture. The important thing to remember is that the energy used in manufacturing, transportation, etc. is not readily or honestly reflected in dollar prices. Energy has been artificially kept at lower cost than it really should have been. Money costs can no longer be used to reflect the true energy costs of producing the materials needed to create higher energy savings. We have to account for the energy used up making and delivering the materials. Then we have to subtract that energy from the energy saved over the lifetime of the material. It may have a net positive savings (I suspect that in the case of insulation it does), but that net may not be as great as we currently think. And remember, it is the global net energy gain that counts. The local homeowner with R42 rated batting in his walls may enjoy a lower energy bill (measured in dollars!) but the world may not be that much better off. Then when you consider the opportunity cost of that insulation — what else might we have done with that production energy that might have had a higher energy return on energy invested —

The same argument can be applied to power generation maximization. Efforts to maximize energy generation through centralized units will seem most efficient. For example creating a monstrous solar collection field in the desserts of Arizona looks promising and matches the needs of our current electrical usage (120 volts AC). We should be cautious, however, to make sure we are not expending more energy than we thought in other activities supporting the construction and maintenance of this facility. Dollar costs cannot tell us the whole truth. We need to do energy accounting to know the whole story.

I got out of the solar (thermal) energy business back in the 80s when a back-of-the-envelop analysis of the energy cost for making the solar collectors (glass, aluminum, copper, and urethane foam were the main materials) might actually exceed the total useful energy delivered to the building interior over the life of the collectors. The collectors were rated at greater than 80% conversion efficiency. But by the time the heat was delivered to the interior, through a circulation and storage subsystem, the actual system efficiency (for very well designed systems) was nearer to 10 - 20% (I even saw systems with negative efficiencies! Fortunately none of my designs!) Thus the energy intensive collectors, though marketed in part for their high efficiencies, may have actually cost the world energy that might have gone to some other process, ultimately more efficiently.

As we move more aggressively into the realm of energy management to reduce our overall energy needs and, eventually, wean ourselves off of fossil fuels. We will need to be extremely cautious in how we decide which technologies or which cost-saving measures we pursue. There are hidden costs in energy that are now masked by the dollar accounting system. We don't have this huge reserve of easily obtained fossil fuel that we used to have. We are cutting this very close so our margin of error is slim and possibly none at all.

Exercise critical thinking when you read stories about energy savings and energy production through the latest eye-popping technology. There is usually a back story you don't see that involves all of the energies that had to be used to get that one visible event. Bear in mind always that the Second Law of Thermodynamics lurks beneath the surface of any claims about energy savings or production. Remember corn-based ethanol and the lessons that we should have learned from it.

Is part of our problem that we are voracious informavores?

Human beings consume information. They are informavores (analogous to omnivores with reference to food).

This is so because we are learners. Our principal mode of survival is adaptation through learning and behavior modification. And information is necessary to learning. But what is information? And how might our hunger for more be a problem?

Put simply, information is, in Gregory Bateson's phrase, "News of difference", and it is related to novelty. Our voracious appetite for novelty is a part of what drives us to seek new things (like the next great iPod, or fashions) and be willing to expend energy to posses them. The quest for newness is a major driver of human activity. I submit that it lies at the heart of why we have become unconstrained consumers, what drives our economic activity to use up our resources by inventing new things and services and selling them to eager consumers.

Let me explain.

Bateson's phrase conveys the rough semantics of information. When someone receives a sensory message which they did not expect, or have knowledge of the content, it is new to them. It is, perhaps, different from expectations. Another sense of this is that a piece of information tells you something you did not already know (or knew only vaguely). And a consequence of receiving information is that you learn something new.

Claude Shannon put a more quantitative spin on the semantics of the word information. He was seeking a measurable quantity for purposes of analyzing and designing communications systems where there is a sender, a channel with finite capacity and noise, and a receiver capable of interpreting the messages sent by the sender (and possibly distorted by channel noise). He came up with a remarkably simple definition of information that actually conforms with the common version by way of the notion of news of difference. One formulation of information is that it is a measure of the surprise that one feels at exposure to news of difference — that is how different is the news. To be even more exact, surprise can be couched in terms of likelihoods or probabilities. That is, the more expected a message is, the less information it conveys. Conversely, the less expected it is then the more information (surprise) it produces.

Human mentation is not very good at computing probabilities. We save the strict notion of probability theory for mechanical communications systems. Humans, with inherent biases, estimate expectations. There is no mathematical requirement that a human estimate of likelihood be numerically between 0 and 1 as is the case with probabilities. Rather we make judgments, based on how much like something we already know the news seems to be (see my July 2nd blog, "How do we make sense of a messy world?", and also a follow up on the 5th, "How do we make sense of anything?"). We feel surprise or lack of it. The degree of surprise is affective rather than cognitive, though we are conscious of our feeling and can cognitively acknowledge the level of surprise.

The Shannon measure of information for a one-off message depends on how many possible message states could have been sent. It also depends on the receiver's a priori expectation of the actual message state sent. For example, if there are four possible message states for any given one-off message receipt, and they are all equally probable (equally likely due to the receiver's past experience with this kind of message) then the receipt of any one of the four possibilities is .25. Shannon used the inverse log function to convert this value to a measure of information. Without getting too technical or mathematical, suffice it to say that this function produces interesting results at the extremes. If a message state is highly unlikely (probability near zero), it produces a nearly infinite amount of information. If the message state is highly likely (probability near one) then it produces virtually no information (in fact at probability 1, information is 0).

While this might seem too esoteric for explaining human informavorism, it actually provides some deeper insights. The relationship between likelihood and information produces a zone of optimal information (related to learning and motivation below). If something is already expected then it produces no real information and can be ignored. If something is totally unexpected (by the recipient) it can produce more information than the receiver can process — it is information overload. Somewhere in between high expectation and low expectation is a sweet spot of information production that is needed by learning animals.

We convert information into knowledge. They are not one in the same. Our brains receive information and those feelings of surprise I mentioned trigger a cascade of events in the brain to absorb the information and integrate it into our world model. The details are too complex to consider right now, but the outcome is that information triggers a process whereby we learn and construct more refined knowledge about the world. That knowledge is what provides us with our expectations for the future. Once you have been surprised, you are not as likely to be surprised in the future by the same message! The more you know about the world, the less it can surprise you and the more likely your behavior will help you survive. It is in this sense that we are motivated informavores.

We need to acquire knowledge (that is veridical knowledge) in order to survive in a complex and changing world. We evolved a nervous system that responds to the optimal level of information by triggering our internal reward system when we experience learning. Just like we feel satiated and satisfied after a meal or sex, our brains are wired to make us feel good about having converted information into knowledge. And just like the natural drives we feel to pursue food or sex, we are driven to pursue (or be open to) information since it is the basis for learning about the world. And there we come to the problem. Just as some people can become addicted to food or sex, we are vulnerable to becoming addicted to information!

Not much is known about how the mechanism for rewarding the gain of information but I'm betting it is basically the same as for food, sex, and any other drives that go into overdrive. One concept is that overexposure to stimuli for any of the major appetitive drives at an early age alters the connections between stimulus and rewards in such a way that it takes more of the stimulus to affect the same level of reward. Regardless of the details of the mechanism we can see the effects. People are less satiated by nominal levels of stimulus and require more and more over time.

Informavorism served us well in a world that had a nominal amount of information about how the environment was changing slowly over time. But in the world we have created, change has become rapid and more complex. Is it possible that in response to the information overload we have developed an addiction to information (e.g., novelty) for its own sake. We no longer are able to effectively process the information to obtain knowledge, we've overloaded the learning capacity which is why there appears to be a dumbing down of the populace. But we continue to crave information. Hence we want newness, change, latest-and-greatest. And clever inventors are all too willing to provide it.

In some sense this proposed phenomenon is the opposite of Alvin Toffler's Future Shock in which a person retreats, perhaps into neurosis, from too much change in too short a period of time — explicit information overload. But I prefer to think of it as another aspect of the syndrome. People can be neurotic about change and still have a craving for more! Our cognitive and affective processes are complex. We are perfectly capable of double-think.

When you walk into the electronics entertainment store and see that next bigger, wider, more brilliant colors TV screen that has built-in Internet connectivity and a remote control with 500 buttons to choose from, if you feel a thrill of excitement, just remember you are a slave to your insatiable appetite for information, novelty, newness, and try to resist pulling out your wallet as a substitute for converting information into knowledge.