Cochlear Implants: 120,000 Cyborgs and counting

I'm currently taking an aural rehabilitation class, and one of the coolest things I've learned about so far has been cochlear implants. The FDA approved the current multi-electrode version of the device in 1990, and over 120,000 have now been implanted.

Here's a brief run-down on normal hearing and how cochlear implants work:

In normal hearing, sound energy is transmitted through your ear drum and bones of the inner ear to fluid in the cochlea, a tiny pea-sized cavity in your skull shaped like a snail. In fact, your whole outer ear, ear canal, ear drum and bones of the inner ear all simple function to amplify and transmit sound vibrations to your cochlea. The inside of the cochlea contains membranes covered with tiny hairs, and when sound waves pass through the fluid, these hairs undulate like beach grass in the wind. They act as transducers, converting mechanical sound energy into nerve signals. Moving a hair cell literally pulls open mechanically sensitive ion channels, which alters the voltage level within the cell and causes it to fire, sending an impulse up the auditory nerve. Pretty crazy, huh? The spiral shape of the cochlea serves to break the sound signal into its constituent frequencies, because low-frequency sounds can penetrate deeper into the spiral than high frequency sounds.

A large percentage of profound hearing loss is caused by damage to the hair cells in this delicate, totally badass system. A cochlear implant basically works by cutting out the hair cells middle man, and instead sends electrical impulses straight to the auditory nerves via electrodes:






The whole system consists of a microphone (replacing the hair cells as the transducer), a speech/ sound processor that converts the signal into very specific map of electrical amplitudes mapped onto the electrodes in the cochlea, a radio transmitter, and the actual implant itself, which consists of a radio receiver and the actual electrode array. The array is placed within the cochlea by drilling a hole straight through the skull, and a shallow depression is also drilled out in the cranium so the remainder of the implant can sit flush against the skin. The implant has a magnet attached to it as well, and the external radio transmitter just sticks right on like a refrigerator magnet. Three different companies make this sort of system in the US, and they all cost about $50,000 to implant. Here's a diagram:




The cool thing is that you end up with a cyborg whose auditory perception of reality is created by computer software. I've just finished a book by Michael Chorost called Rebuilt, where he talks about what it was like to go through the process of learning to use his implant. It wasn't simply a matter of altering the software until it fit his the organization of his auditory cortex; he simultaneously had to rewire his auditory cortex to make use of the new input. For him, one of the most valuable aspects of the experience came from switching between versions of speech processing software. This showed him in a literal sense how constructed his perceptions of reality are; natural selection had set up one program for interpreting sound, but here were a number of others he could flip through with a flick of a switch, each one as "true" as the next.

I think it's absolutely astounding that these implants have become so common-place. When implanted early enough, profoundly deaf children now have the potential to up with completely typical spoken language.

If anyone's interested, I can get into the controversies regarding this technology in the deaf community, but today I just wanted to focus on the sci-fi aspects.

Avoiding the truth.

In true out-of-touch Guyness, I hastily created an extremely complex system of why I think people are afraid of really communicating on a meaningfully TRUE level. So of course, thanks to the anonymity of the internet, I'll share that now without fear of being held accountable for it.

Methodology: Don't ask. Not that I would mind answering, but that answer would have to do with way the cinnamon floated on my tea, a song playing on the radio, the way the really cute med-tech sitting behind me at the cafe tapped her foot, some random (unless you ask Bunny) words I pointed to in a book on Jewish mysticism, the... insightful commentary on reality from a 17 year old barista, and an extremely complex matrix I created years ago to explain the interplay and ranking between all human virtues.

The Seven Barriers

There are seven levels to the resistance towards truth. They are linear, meaning you cannot pass one with having passed those below it. Not surprisingly, they seem to be aspectual of the most fundamental ways in which we interact with reality.

Gate 1: Truth is discomforting.

This is the level that the vast majority of humans are trapped at. "Ignorance is bliss." In some versions of the myths of Prometheus, his final "gift" to mankind, among fire, industry, and art, was that he took away the burden of each man knowing the time and cause of his eventual death. A surprising number of people would not want to know this incredibly important piece of information. Many of us have a list of things we would like to do before we die, and we spend a lot of time and money on making our transitions smoother, such as wills and life insurance policies, and it would certainly make the criminal justice system work much smoother to know where and when a murder will take place, but yet, so many people would be too uncomfortable knowing when the final grain of sad would pass through that slender neck of the hourglass we call the present. Truth is a pure expression of reality, and that is a direct threat to hope. Hope is apparently a much more powerful motivator than assurance. There is a gambler's mentality to this level of aversion to the truth.

The solution to this first obstacle seems to be nothing more than recognizing that truth holds a value in and of itself. For whatever my opinion is worth, the very idea of communicating with one another is severely diminished by wide-spread truthophobia. What is the point of communicating an idea if the principle parts of the idea are crippled by the filters we set in place?

Gate 2: Truth is work.

And not easy work at that. A lot of things are easy, and many of those are easy because you can't screw them up. We've all had times where we knew the truth would hurt someone else, get us in trouble, get someone else in trouble, make things awkward or more difficult, or just be embarrassing. We make the call as to whether or not the value of the truth outweighs the complications at each instance, and we all have different levels of commitment to the truth in these instances. Some will always be honest about themselves, but refuse to hurt others. Some will deny truth to keep themselves out of trouble, but don't extend that courtesy when someone else's neck is on the line.

The solution here is to accept truth as a principle instead of an instance. Dedicate yourself to the truth and draw strength from it instead of finding your own weakness in it by trying to defy it.

Gate 3: Truth is sacrifice.

Dedication to truth isn't just hard work, it is resource intensive. Truth is only a lens with which we can view any given data. Complete truth could only come with complete knowledge, and while unattainable, even pursuing it would be a life-long endeavor, that not unlike the men who came before Prometheus' liberation, one knows from the outset will never be successful. People dedicate their lives to all sorts of things, becoming famous, finding a cure for cancer, securing a place in heaven, or finding true love. But surely only a fool would walk any of those paths if they knew from the outset they would never reach their goal. Though goals like becoming more happy or making as many new friends as possible are perhaps better analogues, as they become better and better as they progress with no end goal. Ultimate knowledge may be unattainable, but the closer and closer you get, even if you're light-years away, all the better.

Here we cross the threshold through sacrifice and dedication. Recognizing that truth is valuable beyond whatever it touches, that truth *is* and doesn't exist simple as a recurring, but always different, aspect of any given datum - that the lens itself is meaningful.

Maybe this is getting a little lengthy. And it gets a lot thicker from here out (paradigms, responsibility, loss of self, and universal enlightenment). So I'll break it here, so it can be chewed up by the monkeys before I get too far ahead.

Honestly,
Guy

A quicky

Today I'm going to write about sex. That got your attention.

This post deals with adult issues, but it's not that explicit. Oops, lost your attention.

When I was a kid, I remember worrying that sexuality was going to go out of style before I got the chance to get laid. I saw this as a real conceivable threat. My teevee box would tell me stories about test tube babies and AIDS. I figured it was only a matter of time before nobody even bothered anymore. Too dangerous! Brother, was I ever wrong.

Skip ahead fifteen or twenty years, and here we are. AIDS is still pretty bad, but if you are rich, it's not such a rough thing. Sure, it's ravaging Africa, but if there is one thing I can take away from all those years of teevee, it's that Africa is far away and they don't even have a lot of oil, so it's not our problem. Plus, I think the band U2 is taking care of things over there. Celebrities will adopt the cuter children. Occasionally, we shall come together as a society to comment on how fast people from Kenya can run. We shall give them little medals. We shall be amazed that they can do so much with such inexpensive shoes.

But back to sex. Yea, I think it's still pretty fashionable. Turns out the feminists didn't kill it. Neither did the church. The porn industry is doing well, but artistically speaking, I feel they've painted themselves into a corner. There is, I suppose, only so much one can do with flesh tones and high heels.

Test tube babies are out there, yet everyone seems to prefer reproducing the old fashion way. We still aren't allowed to show nipples on our old friend the teevee (well, woman nipples anyway), but pretty much everything else is alright. *shudder* nipples *shudder*. Terrifying stuff!

For something else entirely, here's a picture of my buddy Darwin (he lives on my desk) begging for a grape.


He was successful.

Jumping on the free will bandwagon.

Hi Team. Bunny and Guy's posts have gotten me thinking about free will over the past week, so I've decided to chip in...

Isn't it great how blogosphere exists to let you write about things for which you're completely unqualified?

In his book, A New Kind of Science, Stephen Wolfram (creator of mathematica) writes about cellular automata, a way of modeling simple computational processes that can generate very complicated behavior. I came across the book back in college while working on a paper trying to link Chomsky's generative grammar with complexity theory (totally hot, I know). The reason I mention it now is that it actually had a section on free will that always stuck with me.

Wolfram claimed that our perception of free will is actually the result of something called Computational Irreducibility, the basic idea of which is that the sum is greater than its parts. When philosophers and scientists talk about determinism, the assumption is that by knowing all the elements and possible interactions of a system, you could predict its future behavior exactly; that if you knew a person's neural makeup down to the atom you should be able to predict exactly what they would do given an input. But with an irreducible computation, there's no way to make short-cuts to predict the final result: the fastest way to find out what happens is to actually let the whole thing run. In such a system, knowing all the pieces and all the rules is not enough to predict the system's behavior beyond a few steps (think 10-day weather forcasts).

According to Wolphram, everything in the universe may be completely deterministic, but even if this is the case, that doesn't eliminate the subjective experience of free will because there's no way to really know what will happen in a system as complex as the universe besides letting it happen. At least that my reading of it.

Bunny's example of running shoes popping in Bubble Bobble was a good example of determinism based on computations, but if they'd added a few more interacting parameters, we would never have known exactly when the shoe was going to drop (ha!). In terms of complexity, it's the equivalent of ant behavior being pretty darn predictable versus never being able to predict exactly what will set your girlfriend off (although sitting on the couch and writing this while she wants attention is a pretty good bet)*.

*This comparison wouldn't apply if your GF was your ant farm, of course, but then you'd have more issues to worry about than wondering about free will.

I'll sign off with the following:
I think this computational irreducibility is pretty hot stuff, but it's not really how I think about free will and fate in the day-to-day. Since it's actually impossible to know for sure how it's all set up, I generally try to act and believe that the following is true (with varying degrees of success):

I exercise free will in the present, but everything I have ever done was fate. Looking forward, I have choice, but looking back, there was only one to make.

I think this is a functional belief in the face of the unknowable, because if I believed only in fate, I might use it as an abrogation of personal responsibility. If I believe only in free will, I'd constantly berate myself for every mistake I've ever made. Good thing I don't do that.

I've been thinking for a while about a way to visualize this, and I've drawn pictures of bifurcating branches and so forth, but they didn't really seem to capture it. Then I had a flash and figured out the perfect way to show the concept in motion. Fortunately for me, someone had already made a gif:




(I think I'd like it better if there were more than two strands, but it gets the idea across.)

As a special bonus, it turns out that Wolphram put his whole book online. Very cool stuff. Here it is: http://www.wolframscience.com/nksonline/toc.html

-Odds

Neopoverty

Poverty is a weird concept. In the US, it is used for all sorts of measures and indicators, census information and tax categories. But we rarely talk about what it *is.* It's extremely subjective and makes a lot of suppositions that I don't care for. For 2009, the official poverty threshold is $10,830 for a single-person household. That's about a full time job at $5.50/hour after taxes. So let's look at someone a little above that line, say, by 25%. $13,500 for a single household - a full time job at $7.00/hour. Anyone who has ever had a $7.00/hr job is probably laughing right now. Right now, the lowest cost of living in the US is in Oklahoma, where $.87 buys you a dollars worth, so let's start there. First, taxes... Let's say we're bringing home $6.50 an hour on our $7.00 - our earned $13,500 is already down almost $1000. $12,650 in hand, we need a place to live. One bedroom apartments in Oklahoma City rent for an average of about $600-650/mo. Yay, we found a cheap one for $550, or $6600 a year. That was already half our money, leaving us $6050, or $500/month.

$500 per month? Drive a crappy 1988 Oldsmobile? $90/mo for no-fault insurance, and another $50 in gas if you never really go anywhere and work near where you live. Have a car you're making payments on? Not in this scenario you don't! Internet, water, cell phone, electricity, gas: $50, $15, $60, $35, $20 - unless it's winter or summer. $320, good job, you still have $180 per month left for whatever you want - unless you have a credit card balance, student loans, health insurance, past medical bill, or enjoy eating food. Even if your daily menu was cereal in the morning, sandwich for lunch, and macaroni and cheese for dinner every night, you still have a monthly $80 grocery bill. Car problem? Not in an 88' Oldsmobile, dummy. Need a bed, couch, place to eat or any of that fancy pants stuff? Nope. See a movie, eat some Taco Bell, have a beer with your friends? No, maybe, and no (Taco Bell if you stick to the value menu).

That's 125% of the poverty line in the cheapest cost of living City in the US. But here's something else that bothers me.

You can own 40 acres in the hills, a nice four bedroom, two bathroom house with a full basement and root/wine cellar, set against the backdrop of that fruit orchard you planted near the edge of that pine tree line, just past the creek that has the great trout fishing in fall. A few acre personal use farm with a thriving and varied vegetable patch, a nice sized green house, a bee colony, some nut trees, wild ducks, wild berry bushes, a sizable solar array, a wind turbine, an aquifer well... and you trade your neighbors what you have for what you don't, selling just enough to pay your property taxes each year. The government considers that extreme poverty. Well, sign me up.

There's a life they want us to live that many of us can't afford, and there's all the things we actually need, which in no way factor into what we're supposed to have.

And of course, huge parts of the populations in southern and central Africa, South America, and southern Asia live off of less than $1 US everyday. $13,500 didn't work out for you? Try $30. Most "poor" people in America live like kings compared to the poor elsewhere.

I realize this post is all over the place, but I don't feel like fixing it. Besides, it's easily makes as much sense as the American perception and attitude towards poverty. All I know for sure after writing this is that I'm not a big fan of currency or capitalism, and that I want to own some acreage out west, maybe southern Oregon, near the mountains...

The "I promise I won't write about running post."

Sometimes I think my life is passing me by - mostly because it is. I haven't yet found a way to stop getting older; friends are getting married, some are having kids. Here I am, in college, again. I live with my boyfriend of nearly 4 years and a friend. I am wondering if I am socially a late bloomer or if I have different priorities. I also wonder if the lack of healthy romantic relationships in my family has contributed to this (i.e. why get married if you're going to end up doing it several times?).

I once read somewhere I don't recall that when young people get married, it is kind of like setting them on a boat, watching them sail away and hoping for the best. I'm too young yet for my friends to be getting divorced - they're only in their first or second years of marriage, but my favorite radio dj (who is my age, give or take about a year) married last year and just announced his divorce on the radio last week. His female co-dj said something to the effect that if you don't have kids, the first divorce doesn't count.

No one has asked me when I plan on getting married, etc. yet. I know, however, being a woman gradually approaching 30 that the question will soon come up - especially as I've been in the same relationship for 4 yrs. My mom is the only one who is a little less subtle. When she's had a few drinks she more or less implies that my ovaries are shriveling and that with each passing month and that if I have kids I'll be an old lady by the time they are my age. (FYI: She had me at 19).

Maybe it isn't that big of a deal. According to one of my favorite hip-hop artists, 30 is the new 20, so that makes me about 17. I don't know if I'd be ready for all that shit anyhow.

The perception of bubble spewing dinosaurs who eat cake

Question: Do you believe your fate is predetermined, or you have some free will?

Before I state my personal feeling, I want to talk about randomness for a minute.
First up, what ISN'T random. Well, Random Number Generators used by computers are, for the most part, completely deterministic.
Most of them work by having some large complicated mathematical expression, taking a seed from somewhere (say the clock, network traffic, keyboard input, temperature of processor, ect) and just seeing what comes out when it's plugged in. Although it's true that you don't personally know what number might come out when you first use the generator, it's just some equation. The "randomness" is actually just a lack of knowledge about the equation used, thus it's only random to you. Ignorance doesn't make something truly random. It simply creates the PERCEPTION of randomness.

Did anybody play the game "Bubble Bobble" as a kid? Holy crap, what a great game. Anyway, if you had played it, you might remember the "random" drops of items all over the game. Sometimes special food, like cake, would appear in a level. These delicious foods would, obviously, be worth WAY more than the regular food, like green peppers and cherries. Other times, a pair of running shoes would appear that would give you a speed boost! But sometimes, and it was really rare, you'd get these umbrellas that let you skip ahead a bunch of levels.
The funny thing about Bubble Bobble was that some kids always seemed to have all the luck. Some jerk neighbor kid was ALWAYS getting umbrellas. My little brother was always getting magical wands. Me? I just got the stupid letters. ALWAYS WITH THE LETTERS. Apparently they unlocked some big secret ending of the game, but they sure as crap didn't skip levels like the umbrella! Or let you shoot lightning out your butt like the wands did! Man, those letters sucked. Surely, I figured, the bubble bobble gods were frowning upon me.
Sadly, I know now it wasn't digital deities at all, rather it was all due to MY actions. See, Bubble Bobble did sort of a funny thing. It secretly kept very intricate records in it's memory of exactly how many times a player had say, jumped. Or how many times the player moved to the left... or the exact position on the screen the player was in when a level ended. Like a little digital Proteus, Bubble Bobble kept all this knowledge and used specific bits of it to feed the different random number generators used in the game! So that jerk neighbor wasn't lucky at getting umbrellas, he just had an unnatural obsession with jumping on water bubbles. And my bro just happened to run around the screen a lot, so obviously, the game was giving him running shoes! See, once you start to see the variables the game uses for various items "random" spawn rates, they all kinda make sense! As a kid, you were just living in the perception of randomness. In truth, it was only determinism. Infuriating, sweaty palmed, controller throwing determinism. Nothing more.

Fun game though!

Anyway, I probably believe in free will. It just feels right. And yet, if there is one thing a 20 year old video game has taught me, it's that sometimes experiences that APPEAR random and unconnected are actually based on past variables I never realized were even important. How many times you jump, how far you walk to the left, what you had for breakfast, the color of your shirt, boxers or briefs. Maybe it's all just feedback loops, and if we only knew the equation we'd be able to predict the future. Wait, wasn't this the theme from the movie "Pi"? Crap, it might have been. Of course, that movie might also have been about how you shouldn't trust the Jews with powerful computers or mathematicians with power drills. Weird movie.

Now before you go thinking that Astrology or Darren Aronofsky were onto something, let me tell you how to make an ACTUAL random number generator. You will need:

1. a smoke detector
2. a ridiculous amount of free time

Basic smoke detector operation involves a little radioactive source that is emitting alpha particles. Near to the source is a little sensor which is designed to pick up the alpha particles, and count how many it's seen in the last couple seconds. "But Bunny D, what of the radiation?" you ask me with a sense of urgency. "Do not fear," I begin reassuringly, "these particles are of such low energy that just a few inches of air is enough to effectively block them". And see, that's EXACTLY how the smoke detector works! If smoke happens to wander up into the thing, the little alpha particles will be unable to make the centimeter trip to the sensor, as the atoms in the smoke block them all out. After a few seconds, the sensor says "hey, I haven't seen any particles in a while, better make a fuss" and then things get rather loud and you know that your cake should have been taken out of the oven a while ago.

See, interesting thing about radioactive sample decay. For a large enough sample (like of the source used in a smoke detector) using the mystical powers of science, we know that on average a certain number of decays are going to occur (each decay producing an alpha particle). How accurate is this predictable decay rate? Well, is your smoke detector going off right now for no reason? Then pretty good, I'd say.
Ok, but what about on the atomistic scale? See, that's where things get crazy, for even though we know that a small sample is going to have a certain number of decays in a period of time, we have NO IDEA when an individual atom is going to decay. You can't just stare at and say "I think this one will be ripe in like a week". If you pick any atom at random in your smoke detector, it might decay in the next 2 seconds or it might not decay for the next 7000 years. We really don't know!

These atoms represent TRUE RANDOMNESS on an individual scale, and yet incredible predictability taken as a group. Weird!

Oh, so if you wanted to make that random number generator, you'd write a little program that just went,

"1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, ... ect",

over and over as fast as it could. Assuming you haven't gotten too distracted by the internet at this point, you'd wire your smoke detector to it and set it up so that whenever the sensor of the smoke detector notices a "ping" of an alpha decay detection, it saves the number that the "counting" program is on at that very instant into a file. Later, you can just open that file and go down the list of numbers, which would all be truly random.

And yea, not only do people do this, they write sets of random numbers onto DVD's, and sell them to scientists. We buy them. We pay a lot. We're smart, and we deserve a good set of professionally constructed random numbers. SCIENCE!

In summery:

Bubble Bobble = Not Random
Smoke Detectors Duck Taped to Computers = Random
Life = ?

Personally, I don't know. What I do know, with absolute certainty, is that the theme song to Bubble Bobble is stuck in my head. I could keep talking about this subject all day, but an angry white whale is about the chase me around the room.

Scale and Measurement: part 2.

So last week I talked about the importance of scale and units of measurement:
When measuring something as gnarly as a coastline, the smaller your measuring stick, the larger the final number you end up with. That means that when someone hands you the final measurement, you need to know the scale they were working on, or the number doesn't mean too much. I also claimed that there is a 'best' scale to work on for a given project. You probably don't want to measure the British coastline with a 1mm measuring stick, since it'd take forever, you don't need that level of detail for most applications, and the final value would be constantly changing at that level anyways due to erosion, tides, ect. Today I'm going to try to tie this idea into some more abstract issues like zoning laws and art.

I had an interesting talk with my dad the other week, which is actually what got me going on this whole line of thought in the first place. He moved to a new community a few years ago, and he's recently started to become involved in local politics. He told me about a public meeting he'd recently gone to about setting up new zoning guidelines for their small community, with the intention of keeping out a big box store that wanted to set up shop.

I should mention at this point that my dad is a pretty interesting fellow: he's in his 70's, and over the course of his life has worked as everything from a Wallstreet bond reporter to sculptor to industrial psychologist to cabinet-maker to site-planner/landscape architect. He's also the one who got me into complexity theory and nonlinear systems. Suffice to say, he had an interesting take on zoning guidelines. After listening to people squabble over determining exact square-foot limitations and the like for most of the meeting he pointed out that if they just ended up creating a set of rigid guidelines for the sole purpose of keeping out this store, two things would likely happen: First, even if they did keep this store out of the town, rules always come with unintended consequences. For example, if they decided that no stores would be granted permits that were more than 50 feet deep as a way of limiting size, they'd end up with strip malls instead of box stores (personally, he said he preferred the one big box to a strip mall, because at least with the box there'd be a chance to leverage the developer into doing things for the community you'd never get out of 30 different store owners). Second, once all the rules were laid down, there was a good chance that the box store would be able to game them anyways. For example, I read a while back about a Wallmart that was only allowed to build a certain size store due to zoning, so they just built two right next to one another and connected them with a covered walkway. Sigh. The big problem with rigid guidelines is that once you have the rules set down you lose the ability to deny a proposal that's weasled its way around them. They can end up being a way to provide rope for your own hanging.

As an alternative, my dad suggested that they think about what kind of community they wanted big picture, and how to shape those ideals into a number of broad guidelines that gave the committee more latitude in making decisions. Instead of just square footage limitations, they could talk in terms of relationship to the community. To tie this back into the whole scale thing, his idea here was that sticking to fine-toothed rigid guidelines was actually the wrong idea in this case, and that a looser, larger-scale approach might let them do a better job of preserving their community.

Here's another example: I read an interesting New York Times article a while back by Errol Morris about a fellow named Van Meegeren, who forged Vermeer paintings (think 'girl with a pearl earing') during WWII. A couple of books have recently come out about him, and Mr. Morris interviewed one of the authors about how Van Meegeren got away with it and what made his paintings believable. Here's an excerpt (the full article is here):

ERROL MORRIS: I’m fascinated by your use of “The Uncanny Valley.”

EDWARD DOLNICK: That’s one of my favorite parts of the book. But I wasn’t sure whether it should be included in the book. I was on the fence about it. I thought it might be too indulgent.

ERROL MORRIS: Indulgent?

EDWARD DOLNICK: Well, it’s a digression. You’re talking about paintings and forgery and what oil paintings look like, and then you say: let me tell you a cool thing about robots! Before this new spate of Van Meegeren books, they always squeezed him into a frame that I don’t think fits, that he was like other forgers, that he did these close copies, that he tried to make his forged Vermeers look like real Vermeers. If you really looked at Van Meegeren’s Vermeers, you would see that Van Meegeren’s story couldn’t be that story, even though people told it that way.

ERROL MORRIS: Could you explain to me the concept of “The Uncanny Valley,” as you use it in your book?

[The Uncanny Valley is a concept developed by the Japanese robot scientist Masahiro Mori. It concerns the design of humanoid robots. Mori’s theory is relatively simple. We tend to reject robots that look too much like people. Slight discrepancies and incongruities between what we look like and what they look like disturb us. The closer a robot resembles a human, the more critical we become, the more sensitive to slight discrepancies, variations, imperfections. However, if we go far enough away from the humanoid, then we much more readily accept the robot as being like us. This accounts for the success of so many movie robots — from R2-D2 to WALL-E. They act like humans but they don’t look like humans. There is a region of acceptability — the peaks around The Uncanny Valley, the zone of acceptability that includes completely human and sort of human but not too human. The existence of The Uncanny Valley also suggests that we are programmed by natural selection to scrutinize the behavior and appearance of others. Survival no doubt depends on such an innate ability. — E.M.]

EDWARD DOLNICK: You would think a close copy would be the goal of a forger, but it might not be a smart way to go. If you were a brilliant technician it might be an acceptable strategy, but my forger, Van Meegeren, is not as good as that. So if he’s going to try to pass himself off as Vermeer, he isn’t going to do it by painting “The Girl With Two Pearl Earrings.” [3] He’s going to get in trouble, because that’s asking for a side-by-side comparison, and he’s not good enough to get away with that.

Now here’s the point of The Uncanny Valley: as your imitation gets closer and closer to the real thing, people think, “Good, good, good!” — but then when it’s very close, when it’s within 1 percent or something, instead of focusing on the 99 percent that is done well, they focus on the 1 percent that you’re missing, and you’re in trouble. Big trouble. I wonder if it’s true in general: if one group, one music group, does a cover of a famous song, that if they do a pretty good job you think it’s pretty good, and if they get close, instead of thinking, “Boy, that’s really good,” you focus on what’s missing and think, “Gee, they shouldn’t have bothered, why don’t they do their own stuff?”

Pretty cool, huh? I feel like this idea of the Uncanny Valley relates to "How long is the coastline of Great Britain" in the sense that the unit of measurement can be thought of as a proxy for the level of detail. Scale makes a big difference, and when it comes to things like art, stories, and realistic robots, the more information included, the more flawless its execution needs to be. I'm grasping a bit here, but I think this is because people naturally zone in on the scale of a piece, then judge its quality in terms of that scale, automatically filling in the details if it's a large-scale sketch. At the low-detail end, drawing two dots and a line in a fogged up window is enough to activate your fusiform face area and make you see a face, but if on the high-detail end I try to draw a friend from a picture, all you're going to see are the small things I screw up (such as the number of eyes and nostrils).

Another example that goes along with all of this are movie sequals that should never have been made. The first Matrix was an incredible movie on its own, and it was a complete story; once you [SPOILER] found out that Neo was The One, the rest was a given. We knew he would eventually triumph, and we could fill in the gaps perfectly well if left to our own devices. Yet for some inexplicable reason, the Wachowski brothers decided to thrash their way through another 2 movies, tearing the whole story apart in the process. Now if those last two movies had been, well, Good, they would have been a pleasure and enhanced the original (like the original Star Wars trilogy), but it seemed like the Wachowski bros just couldn't pull off the whole story at that level of detail. My point is that they didn't have to keep going: they could have told an excellent and complete story on a slightly more abstract scale.
...

When I think about all this, I kind of picture a microscope dial in my head that I zoom in and out, trying to get the right level of detail. Artists get into trouble a lot when they zoom in too far and try to tell us too much, or I suppose they can also get in trouble when they don't tell us enough, either. If they say too much without nailing it, it feels contrived, and if they say too little without nailing it, it's feels wooden. It seems like it's really difficult to know when you've hit the sweet spot in scale, told just enough but not too much, whether it's art, writing, or any other creative process.

So why did I decide to harp on this whole Scale thing? What was I trying to get at with all these examples? Well, the cognitive linguist George Lakoff says that most of the abstract meaning in language relies on spatial or 'embodied' metaphors: (e.g., moving forward, no turning back, looking deep inside, feeling down,etc.). We constantly use this kind of language to automatically to frame and conceptualize our thoughts, yet most of this spatial language refers to directional movements in three dimensions without reference to scale. I think that using the idea of scale as a spatial metaphors creates a lot of conceptual power. In a way it gives more cognitive 'space' in which to work, and it becomes a way to map relationships and talk about similarities without being stuck using linear spatial comparisons (up/down, backwards/forward, etc.). I guess these posts have been an attempt to see how much mileage I could get out of this idea.

A Philosophical Revisit

I apologize in advance, this is going to be long, but I like to think it's interesting enough to be worth it. I wrote the following about a year and a half ago for a different blog I was involved with as part of a three part series. I'm interested in how the monks feel about it, and I'll throw some of my more recent thoughts in if the comments go well.

-----------------------------------------------------------

For the greatest effect, please take the time between each step to really get an idea of how the situation would make you feel.

1) Imagine that you put your time, effort, and resources into making a gift for a friend of yours. Let's say you made them a sculpture, and you spent weeks of your free time trying to get it just right, to show your friend what they mean to you. Try to think of how you would feel about this kind of investment.

2) They weren't home for you to deliver it face to face, so you just left it at their house. Several days go by and you still haven't heard anything, maybe you get a little worried that maybe they weren't as excited as you had hoped they'd be. As of yet, you haven't even heard a "thank you." How would you feel at this point?

3) You finally get a call, it's your friend. They want to know if you'll make them a completely different sculpture because the first one was lacking and inadequate. But they feel they owe you loyalty as a friend, so they don't want to have someone else make it. How would you feel then? All of that time, effort, and good faith, all just to show that you care - just to find out they didn't get anything out of it except for a desire for something better. Think it over before moving on.




People pray because they desire, they desire because they are dissatisfied with what they already have. What they have is what their god gave them. Though here, we are talking about life, existence, nature, emotion, family, friends, anything and everything one has, has had, or ever will have - and not merely a sculpture of comparatively no importance. And yet everyday, billions of people all over the world of all different faiths make that phone call. "Hey, god, yeah, it's Todd, ummm, do you think you could change all of that stuff you gave me into completely different, better stuff? That would be really cool, thanks." For the sake of argument, we'll grant that any religion is true, and it's *still* no wonder that most prayers are never answered. "Hey, omniscient creator of everything, I just wanted to let you know that you're doing about 65% pretty good, but there's still a lot of stuff you need to fix." Most of you were pretty disappointed in your friend's reaction to your present earlier, now imagine you provided absolutely everything for everyone ever, and then heard billions of complaints a day for it.

It's safe to assume that god is pretty on top of things, even without your input. He knows your aunt is sick, that was his decision. He knows you could really use this promotion, and he'll let you have it or not regardless of whether you pester him about it. And it's a good thing I'm not your creator, because the first time one of you interrupted whatever it is I do all day to ask for floor seats at the Laker's game... well, spontaneous human combustion would be a mercy ruling. If you believe enough to pray, you should already believe he knows what you want and what you need. That's sort of the point of being omniscient and omnipresent.

The only thing worth actually praying for would be the only thing you don't need to, that is, what you already have. Because that's what god wanted you to get, and when he's ready for you to get something else, he'll let you know. You could call it "saying thanks."

[removed by author] By Shakespeare or by monkeys, Lear is Lear, and so too is our existence. If god was the author, our praise still belongs to the work, just the same of our criticism. Nor would it matter why god created the world, for us to be happy, for us to prove ourselves, or for just something to do. What we have in no way changes because of the intent it was created with.

Even if god were to be praised for his work instead of praising the work itself, why would he want to be? For one, he already knows you're a fan. Two, he sort of knew it was going to be good before he started. And three, I'm pretty sure the lord of all creation isn't in desperate need of a pat on the back from you in order to feel good about himself. Mankind has the tendency to paint his gods in the colors of his own demerit. Beings who strive for recognition, power, the subservience of others, loyalty of others, and exclusive right to credit and ownership will envision gods much the same, but I feel it's safe to assume this is not the case. What a pity it would be to spend one's life in service of a perfect luminous being only to find out upon death that this being was, in reality, no better than the humans we consider the most base and desperate of men.

So let's think about this then. If your creator doesn't want to hear your complaints and has no need to hear your praise, what should one speak of when they speak to god? This I have no answer for, but I have what I would like to personally believe...

If one is going to speak to god, let it be because they want to, not because they feel they have to. Let it not be for personal gain or for unnecessary praise. Let it be because god is there and so are you. If god has always existed, then god didn't choose to be god, you didn't choose to be you, but like all nature, like all existence, we each go about our own ways, all in universal accordance. If you're going to talk to god, let it be because you're both a piece of existence, speak as friends would. Your sincerity will be worth more to god than hollow ceremony, god knows how you really feel, so be honest and be yourself. And like old friends who have spoken of everything five times over, let the two of you speak of nothing of importance, just talk to be together. I'm sure a two year old rarely has any ground-breaking revelations to share with his or her parents, but they talk together anyway and they both love every moment. A couple who has been married for 50 years doesn't have to always have new and important things to discuss to be happy spending time with one another. Get it off your chest, part of being friends is having someone to talk to, even if you don't need to be told what to do, just letting it out helps. And how often do you think god gets asked to tell a joke? And even if he already knows the punchline, I'm sure he'd appreciate hearing your joke too. All of this trite, sanctimonious formality is a product of mankind. Just be yourself. Have fun. Tell god a secret and, if you're lucky, maybe he'll tell you one of his.

Runrunrun

I am addicted to running. I am so addicted to running, I can't even remember if I've written about being addicted to running. I am about to leave for this week's hash. I am shaking I am so excited (or it is the 3 cups of coffee I had earlier). I want to sweat, run hard, and hear attractive men say "hey there is that girl who was going really fast/ hitting it hard, etc." again. I like what this running thing is doing for my body. I am feeling mentally and physically in good health. I am starting to like the way my legs look for the first time in my life, ever, and I am 27. This stuff is making me a little nutty and I can't quit anytime.

Musings of a bicyle ride

Good evening fellow monks of E. This post was composed in my head as I was cycling home today. I will now try and record it for you, to the best of my recollection. Sometimes it would be nice to have a typewriter inside one's head, but then only button up shirts could be worn.

Whenever someone has a cat on a leash, I cannot help but think "that person right there... nobody should ever listen to his/her advice about anything ever". You see fellow monks, if you do find yourself in a situation where someone hands you a leash and a cat (separate), the correct response is to.

1.) pet the cat (if it is a nice cat).

2.) hit the person who gave you the leash, in the face, with the leash.

3.) repeat

Note that, if you happen to be allergic to cats or even just uncomfortable with them, please feel free to skip the first step.

Cats are many things to many people. Sometimes they are pets, sometimes obsessions, sometimes annoyances, and sometimes tiny loving friends. Cats cannot be on leashes. They are not interested in this situation, why are you? He does not like it. He wants to go back in the house, and at this point he is fully entitled to poop in your shoe.

----------o----------

Note to girl who has become aware of my ever advancing presence on a bicycle.

Dear Girl,
I am pleased you are now aware of me. I was worried you might not become conscious of my existence until I had egressed further upon you, elevating the possibility of a collision between us. Girl, I am sure you have many positive attributes, and I mean no offense by this, but I am not interesting in colliding with you. So yes, while I am pleased at our collective recognition of each others existence in the world and sidewalk, I am happy to give you a simple smile as we pass each other by. I wish upon you only prosperity and health. You will know, when I smile at you as we pass, that you are being wished prosperity. You will know, when I don't run you over as we pass, that you are being wished health.

See, Girl, we really don't need to bring shouting into this. Don't get me wrong, I am pleased to meet you as well. Also, thank you for announcing my arrival to the girls around you, but I assure you, they were already aware of my existence. That's what the whole "grabbing you and pulling you out of the way" thing was about. It's a little something your compatriots and I worked out. You have good friends, keep them close. Good friends are hard to come by Girl. More so for some of us. Keep them close.

No, Girl, we won't be high fiving each other. I hope you are not emotionally wounded by this, but if you look closely Girl, you will see I am riding a bike. It would be quite uncomfortable, for both of us really, to achieve an impromptu high five at this juncture. Please do not be disappointed by this Girl. Trust me that this is the right decision. Your stumbling tells me you shall likely receive plenty of high fives later tonight. I have such high hopes for you Girl. I ask that you support me on this "non-high-fiving" policy, Girl. I need your support. I cannot "not high-five" without you Girl. I cannot, gracefully, anyway.


God speed Girl. Dare to dream. Reach for the stars. Don't sleep on your stomach tonight.

Farewell, Girl.
Farewell.

Fractals, scale, and measurements.

So, how long is the coast of Great Britain? It depends on the size of your measuring stick.

That's the gist of a paper written by the famous mathematician (aka fractal dude) Benoit Mandelbrot, way back in 1967. His whole idea was that a coastline isn't made up of straight lines; instead it's a craggy, jagged thing that's craggy and jagged no matter what how close you're looking at it. Because of this, the smaller the ruler you use to measure, the larger your final measurement will be, because you can lay it up against more and more of it's curvilinear edge. For example, if you measure the coastline of Great Britain in 200 km lengths, the number comes out around 2400 km, but if you measure it in 50 km lengths it comes out to around 3400. And so forth. In this way, an infinitely small unit of measurement would result in an infinitely large measurement of the perimeter. At least if the object is truly fractal, anyways.

This means that when you're given a measurement for pretty much anything in the real world that isn't strictly linear, the number is meaningless unless you know the scale the measurer used. Most the time the scale used is implicit in the units used to report it, but even so...

I feel like this basic idea can becomes really powerful way to think about systems and tasks once you add one more crucial premise: not only is it important to know what scale you're working with, it's important to use the right one for the job. Measuring out garden plots to the mm is a waste of time, but you had better be at least that accurate if you're milling machine parts. In other words, tasks have a 'best' scale on which to work on.

I realize this has all been pretty straightforward (and quite possibly boring) so far, but please bear with me: Next week I'm going to go out on a limb and try to apply these ideas to sculpture and public zoning laws.

Further reading:

How Long Is the Coast of Britain? Statistical Self-Similarity and Fractional Dimension. (wikipedia)

Chaos, by James Gleick (a really well-written book about the pioneers of chaos science- it's where I first read about the Great Britain example)

Meaningless

After the long string of hilarious events that have transpired for me over the past several months, up to and including my job as the ass of the bottom critter of America's cultural totem-pole, there was really only one indignity left for me to suffer... so I created an online dating profile.

Man oh man do I have no idea what I'm doing. I figured, "Hey, this way I can start off right by only talking to people I already know I share common interests with and I'm already physically attracted to." Instead, I find that all of the stupid rules of real-world pursuit are amplified into some sort of digital joke.

First, there's the profile. Being no stranger to social networking sites, I was already fully aware that one cannot adequately represent in a few paragraphs what has taken a couple of decades to create. But I'm finding more and more that an online dating profile is a mixture of a personal biography, a creative writing sample, and a job resume. You have to sell yourself and you have to do it quickly, because people are impatient and the market is flooded, so no one has time to waste on bad products. It also has elements of effective speech writing; you have information that you want to convey but it has to be done in an entertaining fashion and you need to get your audience's attention right away.

It's still taking me a while to catch on to some of the finer intricacies. I consider myself to be both funny and creative, but simply saying that is neither. Like any effective writer you can't say, you have to show. This means that I'm now staring at my (what I once considered to be good) profile and thinking how awful it is in every meaningful way. It also means that a simple descriptive paragraph which should take three minutes to write takes 20 minutes, and then another 10 to edit and refine. Therefore a total rewrite would take hours and hours of time, for the end result of possibly catching the eye of someone you may possibly be interested in.

That's right. You have to know how the people you would be interested in think, so that you can lure them into your well-spun self-descriptive web. At the same time, you want to subtly exclude those you have no interest in wasting your time and effort on, especially since those updates are so time costly. This shouldn't be a problem, so long as you're an experienced multi-faceted writer with a background in human psychology, sociology, and cultural anthropology - as well as anything you might actually be interested in (and anything the people you might be interested in would be interested in).

After thinking way too hard about all of this, I came to a realization. If I knew enough about who I wanted to be with to accomplish all of this, I'd already have her. I've dated girls who shared my tastes in music, movies, and literature... we've broken up every time. I've dated girls who were my ideal physical type, again, it obviously didn't last. I've dated girls who were honest, caring, open, intelligent, funny, quirky, kinky, artistic, talented, and all of the other things I would think I should be looking for - all dead ends.

The whole thing is meaningless - I can't know what I'm looking for until I've found it and I can't find it until I know what I'm looking for. Screw you online dating! Not that I'm going to use you any less or anything or get less excited when someone I ultimately won't care about sends me a message, but screw you and your circular logic nonetheless!

Creating new markets

Working in "consulting engineering," there always seems to be a push to create work, make yourself needed, and peddle your wares. It is really no different or honorable than trying to sell anything else, even the image above (courtesy of my local CVS and my camera phone). I hope you get as big of a chuckle out of it as I did. It might make up for me being so tardy.

Cave-dwelling Scottish cannibals

A few years ago, I was in a conversation about the most useless academic books or articles we'd read. A journal article about the history of chairs, gender-based division of labor in 18th century Massachusetts, butchering cows with Stone Age flint knives, bird motifs in barbarian belt buckles, the effects of nanoparticles on the viscocity of plastics and so on. It was a painful discussion. Fortunately, someone had read something interesting - a book about murderers who took refuge in caves! Murderers, it seems, a drawn to hide out in caves. Caves are scary. So are murderers. They make a good team. No cave/murderer team was scarier than Alexander "Sawney" Bean and the Bannane Head cave system in Scotland. The story is widely known, so I apologize if I'm writing about something you already knew, but really its your fault for being a know-it-all.

Alexander Bean was the son of a ditch-digger and hedge-trimmer in the 15th Century when those things were apparently professions. The uppity Bean did not want to follow in the family business, and decided that the area would find someone else to dig its ditches and trim the hedges. Instead of finding his way to an occupation suitable for his station he found a particularly cruel and loutish woman to run off with. Having cast off the laws of lesser men, Bean and his wife took refuge in a coastal cave and set about making a clan of cruel and loutish children. These children contributed yet more children until the Beans had a large pack of cave dwellers. And while caves are perfectly suitable places for incestuous clans to propagate they provide little in the ways of sustenance. But Bean, idle, incestuous and Scottish though he was figured a way out of this problem. The local villages were full of people, and soon the clan was busying themselves ambushing people at night, taking them back to their cave and eating them. For 25 years the family continued to prey on people until King James VI of Scotland (James I of England) sent a band of men to capture the incestuous anthropophagi.

Although Alexander Bean's story appears in various gossip papers and books of the 17th century, most historians consider it to be anti-Scottish propaganda. Many similar stories of men refusing to follow the proscribed social order running off to committ various atrocities were popular in that area of Scotland, with many being set before the time of Sawney Bean. In any event, Bean is often listed as Britain's worst serial murderer and the area does a lot to use the grisly legend to promote tourism. His story has been republished so many times and remade in so many forms that its obvious there's just something about a clan of cave-dwelling cannibals that holds people's attention for centuries.

Witches are out to destroy my chair :(

Sup Monkeys!

Happy 3rd of July, or as it’s technically known, 4th of July Observed!

Did you feel a bit different when you woke up this morning? I bet something just seemed a bit… not the same. That wasn’t just last nights tacos sneaking up on you, it’s another African Religion Friday!!!

Today we travel deep into the heart of Ghana to talk a little bit about everyones favorite chair worshipping tribe, the Ashantis. No seriously, these people appreciated a good seat. For instance, whenever their king (or Ashantehene) has died, you’ll find Ashantis priests wandering through the streets, wailing with grief! I know what you’re saying, “big deal, I saw half a dozen wailing priests on the was to work this morning”. Ah, but if you notice, these priests are carrying something magical! These priests are hauling around the royal golden stool. A sacred sitting apparatice, the stool was actually key to the kings strength. Like most powerful men, the king kept his soul and source of awesome power in his upper leg and butt region.

Interesting side note, for the Ashanti, if you fall to the ground and land on your ass or even accidentally let a foot touch the ground, disaster was SURE to befall your family. Ah, but all is not folly with the Ashanti’s anti-ground-touching policy. Infact, it led to some really amazing expansionist policies. The Ashantis knew that when engaged in a territorial dispute with an opposing tribe, they could decimate their enemies by simply stealing their footwear. They alone knew that when their enemies bare feet touched the ground, they were destined to be utterly destroyed. No need for bloodshed or messy battles, simply snatch away your opponents shoes and wait for the wheel of fate to roll over your adversaries, safe in the comfort of your own flip-flops.

But back to more important issues, if the king has truly perished (shoes or no), you can be sure of one thing, witches. Witches are going to try and mess up his funeral. Those jerks! To try and prevent their unpleasantness, men will diligently surround the body and the funeral at all times during the ceremony to fight the witches. How do you fight witches? Well, you obviously gotta see them first. How do you see a witch? Duh! You have to roll your eyes up into your head. This is because the only way to spot a witch is to use your eyes backwards. You see, witches do everything backwards from humans. They walk backwards. They talk backwards. They rest during the day (in the bodies of women, naturally) and cause mischief at night. So it's not actually even a woman’s fault if she has a witch inside her. I mean, you may have to sacrifice her to get it out, but everyone knows she's not actually going out at night and putting curses on people. It's the witch inside her! Hey, why are those witches being such jerks anyway? Why are they so hell bent on harm and destruction? I already told you, they are the opposite of man. I don’t have to tell you, man would never harm and destroy.
Oh, and one last thing you should know about Ashanti kings. They like company. Really not good at handling alone time, these kings. As such, it was typical that after a king was buried, royal executioners would merrily run through the streets with axes, singing songs as the murdered everyone they could find. Why? Well, so the king would have some friends to hang out with of course! Moral of story being, if you see someone wandering through the streets with a golden stool, sobbing uncontrollably, time to get out of town for a little while.

My Apologies

Monkeys,

I am sure all of you are sorely missing my highly intelligent and non-biased posts as of late, and for that I apologize. Currently, something has happened. On a scale of 1 -10 of peril, with 1 being stuck in the Castle Anthrax and 10 being "THE PLANE HAS CRASHED INTO THE MOUNTAIN LEBOWSKI" I am sitting at an 8.5-9. Details will follow, if I make it through this.

Thisisafakename
(Thisisnotafakeproblem)

I came across an essay by Bruce Sterling a while back called 'the last veridian note'. It was mostly advice about how to live in ways that optimized your interactions with the physical world (getting rid of clutter, carefully choosing the objects you use the most, etc.). I didn't agree with everything he said, but I found most of it pretty interesting, especially what he said about tools:

"I strongly recommend that you carry a multitool. There are dozens of species of these remarkable devices now, and for good reason. Do not show them off in a beltpack, because this marks you as a poorly-socialized geek. Keep your multitool hidden in the same discreet way that you would any other set of keys.

That's because a multitool IS a set of keys. It's a set of possible creative interventions in your immediate material environment. That is why you want a multitool. They are empowering.

A multitool changes your perceptions of the world. Since you lack your previous untooled learned-helplessness, you will slowly find yourself becoming more capable and more observant. If you have pocket-scissors, you will notice loose threads; if you have a small knife you will notice bad packaging; if you have a file you will notice flashing, metallic burrs, and bad joinery. If you have tweezers you can help injured children, while if you have a pen, you will take notes. Tools in your space, saving your time. A multitool is a design education."

This little section got me thinking about the tools and objects I carry with me day-to-day. They basically amount to a plethora of solutions-in-search-of-problems...

Here's what I usually carry in my pockets:

A Swiss army knife, handkerchief, pen/ mechanical pencil, wallet (containing band-aids, butterfly band-aids, needle and thread, safety-pins, and sometimes even money), cell phone, and an ipod touch stocked with a full compliment of conceivably-useful apps.

Here's what I usually carry in my backpack:

A leatherman (since the swiss army knife doesn't have pliers), coil of thin wire, string, 6' tape measure, small roll of duct tape, penlight, lighter, ear plugs, plastic bag, a couple rubber bands, sharpy, hackey sack, and a map of the city with all of the bus and subway routes.

You'd be surprised, but occassionally some of this crap actually comes in handy. I think the band-aids and pocket-knife get the most use, but that's probably just a coincidence.