Gone to the Association for Psychological Science (APS)
That is, to the annual meeting of APS. There will be a hiatus in further blog posts. HM will not only be attending, but will also be meeting, assimilating and writing. So there will be a delay in new web posts.
In the interim
Go to https://healthymemory.wordpress.com and use the search block to look for articles of interest.
Here are some suggestions:
The Myth of Cognitive Decline
cognitive reserve
and go to https://centerhealthyminds.org/about/founder-richard-davidson
The healthy memory blog will return.
Stanford Helped Pioneer Artificial Intelligence
The title of this post is identical to the first half of a title by Elizabeth Dworkin in the 19 March 2019 issue of the Washington Post. The second half of the title is "Now it wants humans at the core." A Stanford University scientist coined the term artificial intelligence (AI) and advancements have continued at the university including the first autonomous vehicle.
Silicon Valley is facing a reckoning over how technology is changing society. Stanford wants to be at the forefront of a different type of innovation, one that puts humans and ethics at the center of the booming field of AI. The university is launching the Stanford Institute for Human-Centered Artificial Intelligence (HAI). It is intended as a think tank that will be an interdisciplinary hub for policymakers, researchers and students who will go on to build the technologies of the future. The goal is to inculcate in the next generation a more worldly and humane set of values than those that have characterized it so far—and guide politicians to make more sophisticated decisions about the challenging social questions wrought by technology.
Fei-Fei-Li, an AI pioneer and former Google vice president who is one of the two directors of the new institute said, I could not have envisaged that the discipline I was so interested in would, a decade and a half later, become one of the driving forces of the changes that humanity will undergo. That realization became a tremendous sense of responsibility."
The goal is to raise more than $1billion. It's advisory panel is a who's who of Silicon Valley titans, that includes former Google executive chairman Eric Schmidt, LinkedIn co-founder Reid Hoffman, former Yahoo chief executive Marissa Mayer and co-founder Jerry Yang, and the prominent investor Jim Breyer. Bill Gates will keynote its inaugural symposium.
The ills and dangers of AI have become apparent. New statistics emerge about the tide of job loss wrought by the technology, from long-haul truckers to farmer workers to dermatologists. Elon Musk called AI "humanity's existential threat" and compared it to "summoning the demon."
Serious problems were raised in the series of healthy memory posts based on the book, "Zuck." The healthy memory posts based on the book "LikeWar" raised additional problems. Both these problems could be addressed with IA. Actually IA is being used to address the issues in "LIkeWar." Regarding the problems raised in the book "Zuck", rather than hoping that Facebook will self-police or trying to legislate against Facebook's problematic practices, AI could police online all these social networks and flag problematic practices.
It is the position of this blog to advocate AI be used to enhance human intelligence. This is especially important in areas where human intelligence is woeful lacking, that is intelligent augmentation (IA). Unfortunately, humans, who are regarded as social animals, have difficulties reconciling conflicting political and religious beliefs. Artificial intelligence could be used here in an intelligence augmented (IA) role. Given polarized beliefs dead ends are reached. IA could suggest different ways of framing problematic issues. Lakoff's ideas that were promoted in the series of healthy memory blog posts under the rubric "Linguistics and Cognitive Science in the Pursuit of Civil Discourse" could provide the initial point of departure. Learning would take place and these ideas would be refined further to result in disagreeing parties being surprised about their ultimate agreement.
Tags:Bill Gates, Elizabeth Dworkin, Elon Musk, Eric Schmidt, Fei-Fei-Li, George Lakoff, Google, Human-Centered Artificial Intelligence, Intelligent Augmentation, Jerry Yang, Jim Breyer, Marissa Meyer, reconciling conflicting political and religious beliefs, Reig Hoffman, Washington Post
Alternative Futures 3
This is another post motivated by "Machines of Loving Grace: The Quest for Common Ground" by John Markoff. Both AI (Artificial Intelligence) and IA (Intelliigent Augmentation) should be used where they are most needed. One of the negative effects of technology has been to increase polarization. It is even being used in warfare and in altering elections which are ostensibly free.
So AI and IA both should be placed to work on these problems. HM is only aware of some very limited work in this area. He remembers one project addressing collaboration within the military. Unlike most other occupations, the military wear their rank on their uniforms. So this experiment involved collaboration in which the participants were anonymous. There was no means of assessing relative rank. The project seemed to be going quite well. Then one of the participants started using all caps in his entries. This was the ranking officer who felt he was being ignored.
One would begin using IA to address this problem. This should be used to the extent possible. However, at some point there might be a need to let AI take over. Perhaps as in the case of the Forbin Project's Colossus, it would succeed.
Tags:Artificial Inteligence, Colossus, Forbin Project, Intelligent Augmentation, John Markoff, Machines of Loving Grace, negative effects of technology, polarization
This is another post motivated by "Machines of Loving Grace: The Quest for Common Ground" by John Markoff. In this future AI, including robots and cyborgs, take over all labor. This technology is held by its few owners. So wealth is even more grossly distorted than it is today, and there are effectively no jobs for individual people to do.
To prevent violent uprisings guaranteed incomes would need to be provided to all. So people's basic needs would be provided for, but what would provide meaning to their lives? They could have children who would have similarly bleak futures. There would likely be problems with drug and substance abuse.
Of course, there could be online games to play and, perhaps, opportunities to gamble. There could be supports for growth mindsets. There could be educational opportunities to pursue online and opportunities for athletic and artistic pursuits. IA (intelligent augmentaion) could be life enriching for those who wanted to pursue such lives. It might also be possible to create unneeded jobs where people would pursue activities using IA, that they thought were meaningful. Even today, many work in research jobs that are designed to address problems, but who never see any of these projects implemented. HM knows of this from his own personal experience.
The preceding paragraph applies to the advanced world. What about the undeveloped or under developed worlds? Would they be ignored and allowed to suffer and die out? There could be an effort to attempt to bring these people up to the level of the developed worlds, and until this was accomplished it would likely provide additional jobs.
Tags:alcohol abuse, artistic pursuits, Cyborgs, drug abuse, educational opportunities, growth mindsets, guaranteed Annual Income, John Markoff, Machines of Loving Grace, robots, underdeveloped world, undeveloped world, Wealth
Alternative Futures
"Machines of Loving Grace: The Quest for Common Ground" by John Markoff provides an excellent review of the development of artificial intelligence including the researchers and the funding agencies. And he does examine the differences between AI (Artificial Intelligence) and IA (Intelligent Augmentation). For those interested in technology and of the developing and funding of both AI and IA, HM strongly recommends reading Markoff's book. However, this post and the immediately following posts will examine the ramifications of Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Intelligence Augmented (IA) in alternative futures.
The most nightmarish future is one in which AI becomes so powerful that it takes over. It either eliminates humanity or preserves humans as pets. However, it should be realized that it is possible that a benign future would result from a powerful AI. At the height of the Cold War a movie was released titled "Collosus: the Forbin Project." The movie takes place during the height of the cold war when there was a realistic fear that a nuclear war would begin that would destroy all life on earth. Consequently, the United States created the Forbin Project to create Colossus. The purpose of Colossus was to prevent a nuclear war before it began or to conduct a war once it had begun. Shortly after they turn on Colossus, the find it acting strangely. They discover that it is interacting with the Soviet version of Colossus. The Soviets had found a similar need to develop such a system. The two systems communicated with each other and came to the conclusion that these humans are not capable of safely conducting their own affairs. In the movie the Soviets capitulate to the computers and the Americans try to resist but ultimately fail. So the human species is saved by AI.
Currently there are more countries with missiles and nuclear weapons than there were at the time of this movie. So one might argue that there is even more of a need for such AI today than at the time of the movie. When one considers that the leader of one of these countries lives in his own reality and is prone to strike out whenever he feels threatened or provoked, there is even more of a need for such AI today.
Tags:Artificial Intelligence, Benign Artificial Intelligence, Cold War, Collossus: The Forbin Project, Intelligent Augmentation, John Markoff, Machines of Loving Grace
This post is motivated by material in an excellent book by John Markoff titled "Machines of Loving Grace: The Quest for Common Ground." Cyborg stands for "cybernetic Organism," a term formulated by medical researchers in 1969 who were thinking about intentionally enhancing humans to prepare them for the exploration of space. They foresaw a new kind of creature—half human, half mechanism—capable of surviving in harsh environments.
It seems even if Kurzweil is capable of uploading his mind into a computer, it would be a frustrating experience unless it was a cyborg. It is clear that the brain can issue motor movements to machines. So output issues would not be a problem. And suppose that Kurzweil successfully uploads his mind to this cyborg. The question remains what would the phenomenal experience be for Kurzweil or any human. Kurzweil's fundamental concept is that his mind in the computer would give him extraordinary mental powers. He probably could do amazing computational exercises. But would he understand, in a phenomenal sense, what he was doing? He might even be able to write poetry, but would he understand the poetry. And what about his personality. Would he become more humanistic, or would he become mechanical. What about a soul and a sense of morality? What about one's humanity? Would it be lost?
Would cyborgs be able to breed and produce new cyborgs? Presumably they would be immortal.
This seems like a great topic for science fiction. Unfortunately, HM does not read science fiction. Do any science fiction readers who also read this blog have any recommendations? If so, please supply them in the comments section.
Tags:John Markoff, Kurzweil, Machines of Loving Grace
Singulataritarians
This is another post using "Machines of Loving Grace: The Quest for Common Ground" by John Markoff as a point of departure. Perhaps the logical result of combining Artificial Intelligence (AI) with Intelligent Augmentation (IA) is a singularity, the combining of the two. Kurzweil has written a book "How to Create a Mind: The Secret of Human Thought Revealed." HM would like to see a review of this book by a psychologist. As a psychologist he thinks we have much more to learn before we can even consider to attempt building a mind. Yet apparently Kurzweil, an engineer, is convinced that he can. Moreover, he thinks he can upload his brain/mind into this machine. The following is taken from the Wikipedia:
• The Singularity is an extremely disruptive, world-altering event that forever changes the course of human history. The extermination of humanity by violent machines is unlikely (though not impossible) because sharp distinctions between man and machine will no longer exist thanks to the existence of cybernetically enhanced humans and uploaded humans.
Kurzweil is taking means (diets, drugs, etc.) to assure that he shall be able to upload himself into the machine and achieve eternal life.
Presumably, his intention is to upload his brain into the machine. What he forgets is that he is a biological organism. His memory is biologically based on chemical changes that take time to implement. In other words, his mind uploaded to a computer would be nothing but buzzing noise. Consider how fast a computer printout occurs. Then consider how long it takes not just to read, but to assimilate the meaning of the information. Consider the paltry few seconds it takes to download a book to an iPad. Then consider not just how long it takes to read the book, but to assimilate the material in the book and related it to old knowledge and to update current knowledge.
Kurzweil presents the best case for a liberal education, one that includes courses in psychology, biology, and neurochemistry.
Tags:biology, How to Create a Mind, John Markoff, Kurzweil, liberal education, Machines of Loving Grace, neurochemistry, Psychology, Wikipedia
Licklider
J.C.R Licklider is a personal hero of HM. He has appeared in previous healthy memory blog posts. When HM was a student and read Licklider's article, "Man-Machine Symbiosis." HM thought that this was the role computers should play in technology wherein the combination would be greater than the sum of its parts. Licklider also wrote, along with Taylor, in 1968, "The Computer as a Communication Device" that pointed to the existence of a future internet.
Unfortunately, the notion of Man-Machine symbiosis did not catch on. HM was frustrated with using computers to replace humans. True, there are jobs in which it is desirable to have computers play a solo role, but the real potential seemed to be in creating a symbiotic relationship with computers. Unfortunately, the focus has been on having computers replace humans. Late in his career HM wrote and co-authored articles on what he termed neo-symbiosis in an effort to resurrect the idea. Although he failed, he shall keep on trying.
HM was disappointed to learn while reading Markoff's "Machines of Loving Grace: The Quest for Common Ground" that Licklider, like McCarthy, was confident that the advent of "Strong" artificial intelligence in which a machine capable of at least matching wits with a human, was likely to arrive relatively soon. He wrote that the period of man-machine "symbiosis" might only last less than two decades, although he allowed that the arrival of truly smart machines that capable of rivaling humans thinking might not happened for a decade, perhaps fifty years.
Humans must stay involved. Otherwise machines will take over and create knowledge that is inaccessible to humans. As was mentioned in a previous post, developers understand how they develop a neural net, but they are unable to understand how the net solves a given problem. Humans always need to maintain a supervisory role and regard computers as tools for them to use. Remember that Minsky once responded to a question about the significance of the arrival of artificial intelligence by saying, "If we're lucky, maybe they'll keep us as pets."
Tags:Machines of Loving Grce, Man-Machine Symbiosis, Markoff, McCarthy, Minsky, Taylor, The Computer as a Communication Device
Douglas Engelbart
This post was motivated by an excellent book by John Markoff titled "Machines of Loving Grace: The Quest for Common Ground." The Wikipedia credits Doug Engelbart with creating the field of human-computer interaction. Doug ran the Augmentation Research Lab at SRI International. He also created the computer mouse, the development of hypertext, networked computers, and precursors to graphical user interfaces. NLS, the oN-Line system developed by the Augmentation Research Center under Engelbart's guidance with funding primarily from DARPA, demonstrated numerous technologies, most of which are now in widespread use; it included the computer mouse, bitmapped screens, and hypertext. Engelbart is credited with a law, appropriately named after him, that the intrinsic rate of human performance is exponential.
The following is taken from the Wikipedia article on Doug, "He reasoned that because the complexity of the world's problems was increasing, and because any effort to improve the world would require the coordination of groups of people, the most effective way to solve problems was to augment human intelligence and develop ways of building collective intelligence.[6] He believed that the computer, which was at the time thought of only as a tool for automation, would be an essential tool for future knowledge workers to solve such problems. He was a committed, vocal proponent of the development and use of computers and computer networks to help cope with the world's increasingly urgent and complex problems. Engelbart embedded a set of organizing principles in his lab, which he termed "bootstrapping". His belief was that when human systems and tool systems were aligned, such that workers spent time "improving their tools for improving their tools" it would lead to an accelerating rate of progress."
Returning to Markoff's book, Doug stumbled across an article by Vannevar Bush, who proposed a microfiche-based information retrieval system called Memex to manage all the world's knowledge. Later Doug deduced that such a system could be assembled based on the then newly available computers. He concluded that the time was right to build an interactive system to capture knowledge and organize information in a way that would now be possible for a small group of people to create and collaborate more effectively. So he was thinking of the world-wide web. It took time and resources and source code from Tim Berners-Lee to see the full scale implementation.
According to the Wikipedia article he retired in 1988 because of a lack of interest in his ideas and the funding to pursue them. One wonders what he could had achieved if others had understood his ideas and provided funding to support him.
Tags:Augmentation Research Lab, computer mouse, hypertext, John Markoff, Machines of Loving Grace, Memex, networked computers, SRI International, Vanneval Bush, Wikipedia
Machines of Loving Grace
The title of this post is identical to the title of an excellent book by John Markoff. The subtitle is "The Quest for Common Ground." The common ground referred to is that between humans and robots. The book covers, in excruciating detail, the development of artificial intelligence from the days of J.C.R. Licklider to 2015.
The book covers two lines of development. One from John McCarthy, which Markoff terms Artificial Intelligence (AI) and the other by Douglas Englebart, which Markoff terms Intelligence Augmented (IA). The former is concerned with making computers as smart as they can be, and the latter is concerned with using computers to augment human intelligence.
Markoff does not break down AI any further, but it needs to be. AI has been used by psychologists to model human cognition. So the ultimate goal here is to develop an understanding of human cognitive processes. AI has been quite informative. In attempting to model problems such as human vision, psychologists realized that they had overlooked some critical processes that were needed to explain perception. One should also regard AI as being a tool needed to develop theories of psychological processes.
There are also two types of AI. One is known as GOFIA, "Good Old Fashioned Artificial Intelligence" where computer code is developed to accomplish the task. GOFIA was stymied for a while due to the computational complexity it faced. Judea Pearl, the father of decapitated journalist Daniel, is a superb mathematician and logician. He developed Bayesian networks that successfully dealt with this problem and GOFIA proceeded further on with this expedited approach (enter "Pearl" into the search block of the healthy memory blog to learn more about this genius).
The other type is, or are neural nets. Here neural nets are designed to learn how to to accomplish a task. The problem with neural nets is that the programmers do not know how to solve the problem, rather they know how to design a neural net that solves the problem. Nightmare scenarios where computers take over the world would be the product of neural nets. With GOFAI problems could be solved by deleting lines of code.
Augmenting intelligence IA is what HM promotes. Here computer code serves as a mental prosthetic to enhance human knowledge and understanding. IA, unless it was the intelligence of a mad scientist, would not constitute a threat to humanity.
It is true that AI is required for robots to perform tasks that are difficult, boring, or dangerous. But the goal of an AI system must be understood or undesired consequences might result.
Tags:Artificial Intellligence, Bayesian Networks, Douglas Englebart, GOFIA, Human Cognition, Intelligence Augmented, J.C.R. Licklider, John Markoff, John McCarthy, Judea Pearl, neural nets
The Dark Side of Information Proliferation
The title of this post is identical to the title of an article by Thomas T. Hills in the May 2019 issue of "Perspectives on Psychological Science." This article focuses on how information-rich environments place information under the forces of cognitive selection, driving the evolution much like other forms of selection drive biological evolution. But as the title implies, this force is maladaptive. Healthy memory blog readers should know that there have been many previous posts on this topic. Nevertheless, this is an important topic that needs further attention.
It should be understood that information selection is critical. Otherwise we would be overwhelmed by a sea of incoming input that would not be understood. So for each of these properties of information adapted to cognitive selection there will be a light adaptive side and a dark side with negative consequences.
There is a strong selection for belief-consistent information. Although Dr. Hills does not mention this, the brain easily accepts and assimilates belief-consistent information. Information that is not consistent with one's beliefs requires further attentional processing in an attempt to reconcile or assimilate the information. It requires no attention to simply blow off this belief-inconsistent information. The result is confirmation bias, biased assimilation, and motivated reasoning. This, in turn, yields polarization and overconfidence.
Dr. Hills writes, "People's appetite for social information has led some (Vespers & Stengel) to suggest that smartphones induce hypernatural social monitoring, and others (Mickes and his colleagues) to observe that information on social media crowds out other kinds of information. Where people do not have strong ideological convictions otherwise, social information can lead to herding and undermine collective wisdom."
Dr. Hills continues, "When problems are easy, social information can be good: Social connectivity increases the rate at which groups converge on optimal solutions. But for hard problems, high levels of social connectivity prevent groups from finding optimal solutions because they lead groups to exploit suboptimal solutions too quickly."
This appetite for social information reduces exploration and polarization.
Dr. Hills continuing further, "Heightened sensitivity to negative information is part of our evolutionary heritage. This sensitivity leads us to weigh disadvantages over advantages in information-seeking and decision making." He notes the well-known news trope: "If it bleeds, it leads." Unfortunately, this negativity bias induces us to identify and recommunicate information about risk at the expense of more balanced information. This preferential sharing of risk information leads to social risk amplification. For example, when the first Ebola case was diagnosed in the United States, Twitter posts jumped from 100 per minute to 6,000 per min and rapidly produced inaccurate claims that Ebola could be transmitted through food, water, and air.
Unfortunately, information proliferation promotes spurious correlations. Research has shown that people who experience monetary payoffs from a set of alternatives tend to choose increasingly risky alternatives. It is interesting to note that data-driven machine learning is not a solution to this problem. Absent input from theory, blind machine learning can do far worse as a result of the curse of dimensionality— too many predictors and not enough data).
In his conclusions Dr. Hills notes that these heuristics have paid for themselves in our evolutionary past. But the gigantic proliferation of information produces this hard side that cognitive selection's reliance on these heuristics in an information-rich environment distorts what information is available and reduces our capacity to use this information objectively.
He provides these eight warnings for contemporary information environments:
Information becomes more appealing to humans as it moves through human minds;
balanced information about ideological issues reinforces divergent beliefs;
when people share similar divergent beliefs with one another, they often become more confident even when they learn that the people with whom they have shared their beliefs know nothing more than they do;
information about costs proliferates more readily than information about benefits, which can prevent cost-benefit analysis and reduce decision making to risk avoidance.
social information crowds out individual quality indicators and impairs objective assessments;
social information reduces explorations for hard problems;
more information can lead to overfitting and the detection of spurious correlations driven by rare events;
as we become aware of more alternatives, the most appealing alternatives become increasingly risky.
Although HM thinks that Dr. Hills has produce a valuable paper, he has omitted a further exacerbating factor. As has been written in many previous healthy memory blog posts Kahneman's Two Process Theory of cognition raises an additional problem. System 1 processing, called intuition, requires no cognitive effort and readily accepts information.
System 2 processing, commonly thought of as thinking, is needed to correct misinformation and that requires attentional resources.
This situation is especially worrisome in the current political environment. Trump was elected with a campaign based on lies. Indications are that these lies have increased since he became president. One might wonder how a successful liar can keep making lies and still be believed. Trump's playbook was written by Joseph Goebbels. Make the lie big and keep repeating the lies and they will be believed. Moreover, there are many sources from which these lies keep emerging that add to their credibility.
Tags:belief-consistent information, curse of dimensionality, Donald Trump, hypernatural social monitoring, Joseph Goebbels, Kahneman, negativity bias, Perspectives on Psychological Science, smartphones, successful lying, Thomas T. Hiils, Two Process Theory
Reactive and Proactive Aggression
A distinction between these two types of aggression is made in a book by Richard Wrangham titled "The Goodness Paradox: The Strange Relationship Between Virtue and Violence in Human Evolution." This is a recent, 2019, publication. For most of his career Wrangham has been intrigued by the relation between virtue and violence. Wrangham worked with Jane Goodall when she discovered war breaking out between two groups of chimpanzees in which they were killing, trying to destroy each other.
Wrangham defines reactive aggression as aggression that is fairly spontaneous in which something happens and the victim of the aggression quickly responds. In contrast, proactive violence is violence that is planned in advance for retribution or for some type of gain. Many other species are characterized by reactive violence. Something happens to one individual and that individual quickly responds with some sort of reciprocal violence.
Wrangham argues that the emergence of civilization was critically dependent upon a reduction in reactive violence. Although Wrangham does not seem to mention the difference between physical and nonphysical reactive violence, human language does provide the means of nonphysical violence and, fortunately, daily human violence tends to be of the verbal type.
Proactive violence is a matter of planning a violent response. So revenge killings, battles, and pogroms and wars are examples of proactive violence. Some non-human species engage in proactive violence, but lack the technology that humans have. While it is a reduction and changes in types of reactive violence by the human species that assisted in their success, it is proactive violence that brings out the worst in humans and presents a potential existential risk.
The holocaust perpetrated by the Nazis is an example of one of the worst types of proactive violence. The detailed planning entailed in this holocaust required the sophisticated planning only we humans can perform. A nuclear holocaust could potentially eliminate our species. Such a holocaust requires a high degree of scientific and engineering abilities as well as a lack of emotional control that allows true reasoning being overcome to achieve a pyrrhic victory.
Tags:chimpanzees, civilization, holocaust, Jane Goodall, Nazis, nuclear holocaust, pogroms, revenge killings, Richard Wrangham, The Goodness Paradox, wars
The Second Mountain
The "Second Mountain" is a book by David Brooks: The subtitle is "The Quest for a Moral Life." The first mountain referred to in the title is Hyper-Individualism. The second mountain is Relationalism. The first phase of his life was characterized by his hyper-individualism. This phase of his life ended in divorce and unhappiness. He moved on to Relationalism, concern for his fellow humans, and is now happy. He argues that Relationalism is the way to go. Although HM agrees, Brooks falls short on his Relationalism.
Before HM explains how Brooks falls short, he would like to underscore two parts of his book that HM finds praiseworthy. Brooks writes, "In eighteenth-century America, Colonial society and Native American society sat, unhappily, side by side. As time went by, settlers from Europe began defecting to live with the natives. No natives defected to live with the colonials. This bothered the Europeans. They had, they assumed, the superior civilization, and yet people were voting with their feet to live in the other way. The colonials occasionally persuaded natives to come with them, and taught them English, but very quickly the natives returned home. During the war with the Indians, many European settlers were taken prisoner and lived in Indian tribes. They had plenty of chances to escaped and return, but did not. When Europeans came to "rescue' them, they fled into the woods to hide from their 'rescuers.'
The difference was that people in Indian villages had a communal culture and close attachments. They lived in a spiritual culture that saw all creations as a single unity. The Europeans had an individualistic culture and were more separable. When actually given the choice, a lot of people preferred community over self. The story made HM think that it's possible for a whole society to get itself into a place where it's fundamentally disordered."
The second praiseworthy point is his calling out the soul specifically. Too many religions are preoccupied with biological life. Biological life should be irrelevant to religions and spiritual beliefs. It is the soul that is of central concern.
Here are two paragraphs from the Conclusion with which HM strongly agrees.
"The world is in the midst of one of those transition moments. The individualistic moral ecology is crumbling around us. It has left people naked and alone. For many, the first instinctive reaction is to the evolutionary one: Revert to tribe. If we as a society respond to the excesses of "I'm Free to Be Myself" with an era of "Revert to Tribe," then the twenty-first century will be a time of conflict and violence that will make the twentieth look like child's play,
There is another way to find belonging. There is another way to find meaning and purpose. There is another vision of a healthy society. It is through relations. It is by going deep into ourselves and finding there our illimitable ability to care, and then spreading outward in commitment to others."
The examples he provides of building relations are definitely commendable. But these alone will fall short. Government programs and government assistance are also needed and often provide the most efficient means of dealing with problems. Brooks is blinded because he looks at the world through Republican lenses. Unfortunately, in the United States too many Democrats are also suffering from faulty lenses. All other advanced countries have government supplied medical care. The data show that not only are these programs more effective with respect to medical care, they are also cost effective. Political propaganda and lies in the United States blind people to these results replicated in every other advanced country.
The preceding paragraph provides a good example of how beliefs and compartmentalization preclude or hinder critical thinking. Brooks identifies himself as a conservative. There is nothing wrong with that in itself. Politics needs both liberal and conservative approaches. Unfortunately, his conservatism leads him to compartmentalize. He has beliefs as to what functions government should perform and which functions they should not. Unfortunately, this compartmentalization puts medical care as something government should not do. So even in spite of the voluminous data that government supplied health care is both more economical and provides better medical care, he remains blind to that evidence. And it is quite likely he never looked for it. But good critical thinking requires examining how to justify the data in support one's political decision and not just by blind belief.
College educations in these countries are also more affordable. It is not surprising that the United States always finished behind these countries when the survey is on happiness.
Brooks also makes derogatory comments on meditation. Meditation and contemplative prayer are central to finding meaning and purpose. But Brooks is entirely focused on western civilization and apparently is oblivious of the wisdom of the east.
Tags:colonial society, compartmentalization, critical thiking, David Brooks, Europeans, Hyper-Individualism, I'm Free to be Myself, medical care, meditation, Native Americans, Relationalism, Revert to the Tribe, Second Mountain
Default Network, System 1 Processing, and Alzheimer's Disease (AD)
An earlier healthy memory blog post promised more about the default mode network. That post identified similarities between the default mode network and Kahneman's System 1 Processing. Kahneman's System 1 processing is important in that HM thinks that too heavy a use of System 1 processing at the expense of System 2 processing, which is active thinking, increases the risk for AD.
The simplest distinction between the two terms is that Kahneman is a cognitive psychologist and his two process view of of cognitive processes comes from cognitive psychology. The default mode network comes from cognitive neuroscience. Default mode activity is identified via brain imaging. Although they might not be identical, that distinction awaits further research, it is clear that there is considerable overlap between the two.
In addition to brain atrophy, AD patients have abnormal high levels of proteins in different brain regions. In the medial temporal lobe, the accumulation of tau protein leads to neurofibrillary tangles. In cortical regions, such as the parietal cortex in early AD, the accumulation of amyloid-B protein leads to amyloid plaques. The neurofibrillary tangles in the medial temporal lobe and amyloid plaques in cortical regions can be assumed to disrupt neural processing in these regions.
Dr. Slotnick writes, "There is an influential hypothesis that were is a causal relationship between default network activity that leads to deposition of amyloid that results in atrophy and disrupted metabolic activity, which impairs long-term memory in AD patients. The regions in the default network are active when participants are not engaged in a task and include the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex, the medial prefrontal cortex, the inferior prefrontal cortex and the medial parietal cortex. In AD patients, amyloid deposition occurs in the same regions, which suggests the default network activity may lead to amyloid deposition. Dr. Slotnick suggests that perhaps higher level of amyloid deposition, which occurs in late AD patients, is necessary to produce atrophy in the frontal cortex.
Dr. Slotnick continues, "If high amyloid deposition is a causal factor in developing AD, older adults with low levels of amyloid should be at decreased risk for developing this disease. There is some evidence that cognitive engagement and exercise engagement throughout life may reduce the amyloid level in the brains of healthy older adults as a function of cognitive engagement, and this was compared to the cortical amyloid levels . Participants rated the frequency which they engaged in cognitively demanding tasks such as reading, writing, going to the library, or playing games at five different ages (6, 12, 18, 40, and their current age). Healthy older adults with greater cognitive engagement throughout their lifetime, as measured by the average cognitive activity at the five ages, had lower levels of amyloid in default network regions. Moreover, the healthy older adults in the lowest one-third of lifetime engagement had amyloid levels that were equivalent to AD patients, and the healthy older adults in the highest one-third of lifetime cognitive engagement had amyloid levels that were equivalent to young adults.
So maintaining a growth mindset, thinking critically, and learning new information provide double protection against AD. First, the reduction of troublesome amyloid levels. Second is the building of a cognitive reserve so that even if you develop amyloid plaque and neurofibrillary tangles you may not have the cognitive and behavior symptoms of AD.
Dr. Slotnick's work is reported in an important book by Scott D. Slotnick titled "Cognitive Neuroscience of Memory." The report on which Dr. Slotnick's statements are based comes from
Buckner, R.L., Snyder, A.Z., Shannon, B.J., LaRossa, G. Sachs, R. Fotenos, A.F., Sheline, Y.I., Klunk, W.E., Mathis, C.A., Morris, J.C. & Mintun, M.A. (2005). Molecular, structural, and functional characterization of Alzheimer's disease: Evidence for a relationship between default activity, amyloid, and memory. The Journal of Neuroscience, 25, 7709-7717.
Tags:active learning, amyloid deposition, amyloid plaques, Buckner R.L. et al, cognitive neuroscience, Cognitive Neuroscience of Memory, cognitive psychology, Cognitive reserve, cognitve engagement, Critical thinking, Default network, growth mindset, Kahneman, neurofibillary tangles, Scot D. Slotnick, The Journal of Neuroscience
Meaning that today HM is entering his 74th year. He engages in ikigai, the Japanese term referring to living a life with purpose, a meaningful life. His purpose, in addition to living a fulfilling life with his wife, is to learn and share his thoughts and knowledge with others. HM does this primarily through his blog healthymemory, which focuses on memory health and technology.
HM's Ph.D is in cognitive psychology. That field has transitioned to cognitive neuroscience, a field of research and a term that did not exist when HM was awarded his Ph.D. HM is envious of today's students. However, he is still fortunate enough to be able to keep abreast of current research and to relay relevant and meaningful research from this field to his readers.
What is most disturbing is the atmosphere of fear and hate that prevails today. It is ironic that technology, which had, and still has, a tremendous potential for spreading knowledge, now largely spreads disinformation, hatred, and fear.
HM understands why this is the case, but, unfortunately, he does not know how to counter it.
The problem can best be understood in terms of Kahneman's Two Process Theory of cognition. In Nobel Lauerate Daniel Kahneman's Two System View of Cognition. System 1, intuition, is our normal mode of processing and requires little or no attention. Unfortunately System 1 is largely governed by emotions. Fear and hate are System 1 processes. System 2, commonly referred to as thinking, requires our attention. One of the roles of System 2 is to monitor System 1. When we encounter something contradictory to what we believe, the brain sets off a distinct signal. It is easier to ignore this signal and to continue System 1 processing. To engage System 2 requires attentional resources to attempt to resolve the discrepancy and to seek further understanding. To put Kahneman's ideas into the vernacular, System 2 involves thinking. System 1 is automatic and requires virtually no cognitive effort. Emotions are a System 1 process, as are identity based politics. Politics based on going with people who look like you requires no thinking yet provides social support.
Trump's lying is ubiquitous. Odds are that anything he says is a lie. His entire candidacy was based on lies. So why is he popular? Identifying lies and correcting misinformation requires mental effort, System 2 processing. It is easier to be guided by emotions than to expend mental effort. The product of this cognitive miserliness is a stupidity pandemic.
Previous healthy memory posts have emphasized the enormous potential of technology. Today people, especially young people, are plugged in to their iPhones. Unfortunately, the end result is superficial processing. They get information expeditiously, but they are so consumed with staying in touch with updated information, that they have neither time nor attention left for meaningful System 2 processing. Unfortunately, technology, specifically social media, amplifies these bad effects, thus increasing misinformation, hatred and fear. Countering these bad effects requires implementing System 2 processes, that is thinking. A massive failure to do this enables Trump to build his politics on lies spreading hatred and fear.
As has been written in many previous healthy memory posts, System 2 processing will not only benefit politics, but will also decrease the probability of suffering from Alzheimer's and dementia.
Personally, all this is upsetting. But HM believes it is essential to love one's fellow humans. He tries to deal with this via meditation. Progress is both difficult and slow but it needs to be done. Hatred destroys the one who hates. So HM continues a daily struggle to be a better human being.
Tags:Alzheimer's, Attention, cognitive effort, cognitive miserliness, cognitive neuroscience, cognitive psychology, Daniel Kahneman, Dementia, Emotions, Fear, hate, hatred, Ikigai, Intuition, meditation, MIsinformation, Social Media, System 1, System 2, Thinking
Unhealthful Memories Can Lead to Alzheimer's and the Loss of Democracy
This post is motivated by an article by Greg Miller titled "With Mueller silent, Barr speaks for him—and defends the president" in the 2 May 2019 issue of the Washington Post. The article is about how Barr has gotten ahead of Mueller and completely misrepresented the report of the special council. Mueller has remained silent trying to observe the normal protocols. Barr has completely misrepresented Mueller's report and continues to lie and misrepresent his characterization of the report when questioned by Democratic members of the Senate. Most Republicans seem to be complicit in Barr's lies and misrepresentation.
Mueller will eventually testify, but much damage has been done by Trump's puppet Barr. However, it is more than time that truth will need to overcome. The failure of too many Americans to use their critical thinking processes also hinders their reaching truth.
A brief review of Kahneman's two process theory of cognition is appropriate here. System 1 is fast and is called intuition. System 1 needs to be fast so we can process language and make the fast decisions we need to make everyday. System 1 is also the seat of our emotions. System 2 is called reasoning and corresponds loosely to what we mean by thinking. System 2 requires mental effort and our attentional processes.
The default mode network will be mentioned in future posts. Basically it corresponds to System 1 processing. What is important is the word "default." Once misinformation has gotten into memory it takes cognitive effort to remove and correct it.
Without knowing it, Trump is a genius at exploiting the default mode network. The default mode network is also responsive to emotion. Emotion comes first. That's why it is important to stop and think, when you become angry, so you do not respond foolishly. But by exploiting pre-existing biases and out and out lying, misinformation gets into memory. And it will remain there until the individual thinks, discovers the information is wrong, and corrects this memory.
This problem is exacerbated by social media. As has been shown in previous posts, social media reinforces this disinformation. Much of this misinformation is emotional. Hate spreads easily, unfortunately, much faster than does love and caring.
There have been many previous posts on how cognitive activity, system 2 processing, getting free of the default mode network decreases the likelihood of Alzheimer's and dementia. Moreover, there are many cases of individuals whose brains have the defining characteristics of Alzheimer's, the amyloid plaque and neurofibrillary tangles, who die never knowing that they had Alzheimer's because they had none of the behavioral or cognitive symptoms.
Effective democracy also depends on healthy memories. It requires that citizens know how democracy works and seek and evaluate information as to how the democracy should proceed. There is ample evidence that few citizens know how the government is supposed to work as outlined in the U.S. Constitution. And there is ample evidence that most voting citizens have little understanding of the issues and candidates on which they are voting.
If Russia waged a conventional military attack on the United States, citizens would be outraged and demand that we fight back. But the Russians are smart, and too many Americans are stupid. The Russians used cyberattacks. These cyberattacks have been described in previous healthy memory posts. These cyberattacks promoted Trump for president and created disruption and polarization among the American public. Remember that Trump was not elected in the popular vote. He lost that by three million votes. He won due to an irresponsible electoral college.
Trump built his campaign on lies, and continues to support himself on lies. Obviously it requires too much mental effort for too many citizens to recognize this individual as the fraud and obscenity he actually is.
Regardless of the Mueller report, there is ample evidence that Trump needs to be impeached. And reading the Mueller report one quickly realizes that if Trump did not commit any crimes of which he could be convicted, his behavior still puts democracy at risk. Should he not be impeached and should he lose a reelection, he will claim fraud and refuse to leave the office. Our democracy is at risk of becoming a de facto totalitarian dictatorship. Obviously that is something that Barr would prefer, as he thinks there are no limits on presidential power.
Tags:Barr, cognitive effort, cyberattacks, default-mode network, Democrats, disinformation, Greg Miller, Kahneman, Mueller, Republicans, Russia, Senate, Social Media, special council report, System 1, System 2, Thinking, Trump, U.S. Constitution, Washington Post
Thanks to Kathleen Parker
Whose column titled "Easter, and this ungodly episode" in the 21 April 2019 issue of the Washington Post expressed some sentiments similar to HM's post "Trump vs. a Buddhist Monk'" where HM argued that the Buddhist Monk, in his poverty, lives a happier life than Donald Trump, with all his worldly riches.
The following are excerpts from Ms. Parkers column:
"Trump…is a villain but also a tragic figure. For him there is never enough of anything—riches, possessions, attention and adulation.
At times I feel sorry for him, because he has invited the wrath of millions, and it can't be easy to shoulder so much disapproval. When I said this recently to a friend, she replied: 'It's hard to feel sorry for someone who has no empathy.' True, but a person without empathy—the ability to feel what others do—walks a lonely path. Driven by lust for the material, such a person doesn't know the company of what ancient philosophers called transcendentals—truth, goodness, and beauty, which correspond sequentially to the mind, the will and the heart, and which according to Christian theology, lead to God's infinite love.
Trump wages daily war against truth. Examples of his falsehoods and outright lies could fill a doorstop volume.
Goodness is missing everywhere. Trump may have some good qualities, though it is hard to discern them given his propensity for hurtful, divisive rhetoric. To him, goodness is what he wills it to be, that which nourishes his narcissism and appetites, whether the compliance of women or the loyalty of comrades. Ironically, disloyalty may have saved him when aides refused to carry out orders to obstruct the Mueller investigation.
One needn't be a theologian, philosopher, or Christian to recognize that Trump, defiant before truth and lacking goodwill, knows beauty only as a standard for useful women or towers bearing his name."
She includes in her column Trump's own statement when Attorney Jeff Sessions told him about the Mueller appointment. "Oh, my God. This is the end of my presidency. I'm f—-ed."
Kathleen Parker ends her column, "Would this prophecy come to pass and this ungodly epodes in American history be finished."
Tags:Christian theology, Donald Trump, God's infinite love, Jeff Sessions, Mueller, transcendentals, war against truth, Washington Post