When you move to a new place, you often wind up answering a lot of questions about yourself. It's certainly kind of people to take an interest, and since I find myself to be a topic of great interest, I don't mind answering. Sometimes, though, we think that an FAQ on Us might be in order. Here is what that might look like:
Q. Do you live around here?
A. We live in Comstock Park. Behind the Best Buy on Alpine. We are near the York Creek apartment complex, but not of it.
Q. Are you from this area originally?
A. No. Andy is from the San Diego Area, but has been living in Muskegon the last few years. Michele is from Lincoln, Nebraska originally, but has been living in Chicago.
Q. Nebraska, eh? I drove through/flew over Nebraska once.
A. Yes, it's a long way across, isn't it. [Polite laughter.]
Q. [Some reference to Michigan winters vs. those of California.]
A. [Polite laughter.]
Q. Did you meet at Calvin?
A. No. Andy attended Calvin, but Michele foolishly did not. We met at the University of Chicago.
Q. Really? What did you think of Chicago?
A. Errrm...well...we're not really big-city people...it was kind of crowded and loud...crime-ridden...and squalid...horrifyingly poverty-stricken. Kind of led us to wonder who was profiteering off the misery of so many millions of people...
Q. Oh. I grew up in Chicago. I love that city.
A. Ah. Ummm...that's not really a question, is it?
Q. So what do you do? (Question posed to Andy)
A. I work in Muskegon at an internet ministry.
Q. Oh, so you commute to Muskegon?
A. Yes. I carpool with some co-workers.
Q. And what do you do? (Question posed to Michele.)
A. I'm a graduate student at the University of Chicago.
Q. [Confused look] But what do you do?
A. I'm just being a full time graduate student right now.
Q. [Knowing look] Oh. A professional student, eh? Ha ha! Will you be moving to Chicago soon, then?
A. No, I'm done with the classes phase. I'll take comprehensive exams in March, after which I plan to find a job and start on my dissertation.
Q. A likely story. I mean, how interesting.
A. Thank you.
Q. You guys don't have any kids yet?
A. No. Sorry.
Please note that many of these Qs and As did not occur as transcribed above. Thank goodness.
This blog has been mostly free of cute cat stories up until now, and I'd say it's due for one.
Yesterday I heard some scurrying around outside our sliding door, and went to check it out. A squirrel was climbing around on the two dead houseplants I keep out there (that makes it sound purposeful, doesn't it), being closely watched by our cat Misty. The squirrel seemed to have figured out that Misty couldn't get through that invisible glass barrier, and was now sitting inches away from her face, totally carefree.
Today, the squirrel seems to have taken things up a notch. I was sitting in the living room reading (school stuff, of course), and heard the familiar scurrying and saw Misty looking very intent, up on her cat perch. Next time I looked up, I saw a squirrel face peering in the window which is located in the wall perpendicular to the sliding door. Misty was sitting on the table under the window, and reached a tentative paw out toward the squirrel face. She knows that she can't get outside, since an attempted pounce on the squirrel last summer resulted in her bouncing off the closed screen door in a very undignified fashion.
The squirrel, apparenlty having realized that Misty poses no threat, celebrated his new-found security by scrambling around all over the window screen and sliding door screen, and staring tauntingly in at both cats who were now riveted by his performance. I don't know about him. Come warmer weather, I'll be spending more time out on that patio and then we'll see who's boss.
I really need to get out more.
Still waiting to hear about the amazing health benefits connected to excessive cookie consumption.
The comments on the last post raised some new ideas about machine consciousness, and I decided to post a new entry instead of making a really long reply. This isn't exactly a response, just some new stuff on the subject which I felt like writing about. It's very long, and I'm not at all sure I've accurately represented the theories I cite, but it was fun to write.
The whole idea that a computer can achieve a "consciousness" raisea a lot of questions about the nature of the human brain, the nature of "consciousness," and the nature of computers. If you take an evolutionary view, the human brain is basically the result of a bunch of random mutations which were passed on more than other random mutations, because they allowed their carriers to create more offspring and/or raise more offspring to the point that they too could produce more offspring, all of which carry the original random mutation. Since there is no mechanism by which a mutation can be directed toward a particular "problem" which threatens the survival of the species (changing climate, decline in food supply, etc.); the trait which is "selected" is simply the best of a completely random bunch. It's like a presidential election, in the sense that the chosen trait is the lesser of x-number of evils.
The mechanical differences between humans and most other species include bipedalism, the opposable thumb (my favorite), and most importantly, a thicker cerebral cortex. Whatever advantage our cerebrums gave us, they allowed us to survive and thrive despite our relative slowness, weakness, and vulnerability to climate, predators, etc. The better cerebrum would appear to give us the ability to process more data faster and better, and to come up with more creative solutions to problems (which is seen also in primates). However, where human "consciousness"--our self-consciousness, our apparently useless perception of abstractions such as beauty and truth, our ability to plan for the future, our capacity for religion, and so on--comes in is anybody's guess, as far as I can tell.
So here's my theory of the human brain: As a result of the evolutionary process by which the human brain was created, it is a fairly random bundle of abilities and processes, some of which are relevant to the current environment in which the species finds itself, some of which are outdated or perhaps even inimical to our ability to survive in this environment (since trait selection or deselection takes along time, and our current environment is the product of the very very very short term). Per the book The Blind Watchmaker the brain was not designed by anyone to do anything; rather a bunch of cells at one time began to be able to reproduce themselves, and everything sense then has been random mutations which were "selected" according to which allowed their carriers to produce more offspring than everybody else in a given environment. In contrast, computers are designed by somebody; they are designed to be efficient at doing whatever task the designer designs them to do.
Now, this is a secular view of the human brain of course. If one believes that God designed the human brain, either all at once or through evolution; much the same thing can be said of it. The difference is that in this case God created the brain like this on purpose. From a Christian point of view, this means first that God created us in His image, and the nature of God is fundamentally different from the above-outlined nature of a computer; and secondly, God created us to desire a relationship with Him and to worship Him. The bundle of abilities He gave us, is, then, much different (qualitatively different) from the types of abilities anybody would want to give a computer (I don't want a computer to love me, I want a computer to correct my spelling errors and let me read my email).
Thus, I think that the particular genius of the human brain is not primarily (or at least not only) that it's better and faster at processing data. Its genius, its "consciousness", lies in its inefficiency--its nature as jack of all trades, master of none; its seemingly useless, from an evolutionary perspective, ability to perceive beauty, to love a God, and so forth. Therefore, I don't think that simply making a computer with a better processing capacity could allow it to develop consciousness. I mean, we already have consciousness, and computers already have greater processing capacity than we do. If we've already achieved the threshhold at which an entity can achieve awareness, shouldn't computers have done so long ago?
Next is the concept that a more "complex" computer might be able to achieve consciousness. First of all, why would anyone want to create a computer that is complex in the same way that the human brain is complex? Would somebody want to design a computer with a lot of conflicting, outdated, or useless abilities and capacities that would surely make it less efficient at anything we would want the computer to do? Even if one deliberately set out to create a computer that mirrored the human brain, I think the attempt would fail. There's the old saying that if the human mind were simple enough for us to comprehend, we'd be too stupid to comprehend it--I maintain that we simply don't know enough about the mechanics of the human brain (though someday we might), but more importantly we don't know enough about what human consciousness or the human "mind" is to create an artificial one--or to venture any intelligent guesses as to whether a brainlike computer might develop one.
Another point of view from which I'd like to approach this subject is the hermeneutic one again. (I don't know much about what I'm about to talk about, and I know most readers of this blog know more about it than I do, so I'll just hope that I'm not grossly misrepresenting the theories.) Rene Descartes, when he was trying to discover what we could know for sure, what cannot be the result of delusion; determined that the only thing we could know for sure is that we ourselves exist. "I think, therefore I am"--if I am thinking, then I must exist, because there must be something doing the thinking. We can't say much about what this thing is that's doing the thinking, and can't say anything definite at all about anything else, since everything else might be an illusion. (The "brain in a vat" theory of the Matrix shows that absolutely everything we think we are experiencing might be an illusion; just electric impulses shooting through our brains).
In doing this, Descartes introduced the "subject-object dichotomy" into philosophy. This suggests that the "subject," me or you or whoever is perceiving, is fundamentally different from the "object," or everything perceived. The gap between the two categories is unbridgeable, and suggests that the categories are separate, they don't affect each other. The subject has a priveleged position of objectivity from which he/she can view the object, and furthermore the subject has no effect on the nature of the object.
Heidegger and other phenomenologists suggest that this dichotomy is a false one. They state that there is no such thing as consciousness that is not consciousness of something. If there is nothing for the consciousness to perceive, to be conscious of, the consciousness cannot be said to exist. Hence, the "subject" is dependent on the "object." Furthermore, the "subject" and "object" influence each other--the things that we perceive affect the way we perceive things, and the way we perceive things affects our "reality." We can't be entirely objective, our prejudices and past experiences will always intrude on the way we perceive things--these prejudices and past experiences are what give order and meaning to what we perceive, without them there would be just a meaningless booming-buzzing of data. The best we can do is be aware of our prejudices and acknowledge that we have shared values and standards (which is not to say we have no control over them, but only that we can't pretend that we don't have them).
On to the concept of the computer consciousness that would be able to transcend us and become god-like. A computer "consciousness," even if it was much, much better and faster than ours, would still be limited to what there was to be conscious of. If you set the computer in a room and equipped it with "eyes" including microscopes and telescopes, and arms and legs or the equivalent with which to manipulate its environment; it would probably be able to learn a lot more a lot faster about the stuff in that room than a human. However, it would still be limited to the data available in that room; and would be limited by the capacity of the microscopes etc. with which we equipped it.
Now, the computer might be able to perceive the cellular and molecular structure of the stuff in the room, and make some deductions as to what other things made out of those building blocks might be like. It might be able to itself construct better telescopes, microscopes, testing, etc. equipment than we have, and hence transcend us in that way. But it would always be limited to what its sensory equipment can tell it, and hence would not be "god-like" in any sense of being independent of those things. Also, insofar as the universe is presumably infinite, it would never be able to achieve a god-like complete knowledge and awareness of the universe, because it would exist in time--however much less time the computer would need to learn much more about the universe than we can; it would still need time, and due to the limitation of physics (at least in time it would take to create better microscopes and so forth) this would take a significant amount of time, not seconds.
Even if the computer became god-like at least in relation to us, if not God (as we might be said to be god-like in relation to other species), the computer wouldn't be God. It might be better at manipulating its environment than we are, but it wouldn't be omnipotent--because it would still be limited by space and time as we are. If one could say that it wouldn't be, due to dimension-jumping or some type of physics thing that I wouldn't understand, then I'll have to reconsider. However, so far the computer has only transcended us in knowledge of, or let's say awareness of the universe. Would this somehow lead it to achieve self-awareness, emotions, perceptions of truth and beauty and the like? Is improved processing capacity what led to those things in us? Perhaps those things aren't necessary to "consciousness," but if not, I go back to my position that a computer "consciousness" would still be qualitatively different from that of a human.
A friend and I once took an evening class with an anthropology professor who had some pretty unique theories. I had some difficulty staying alert in that class, it being a long evening lecture class and all, but these theories would be enough to wake me up and cause me to wonder if I'd just fallen asleep and dreamed that he said that.
One of the less wacky theories was that children are optimal foragers (the class was about hunter-gatherers). He said that because of our hunting-gathering origins we tended to prefer foods that had the highest fat, protein, and carbohydrate levels because those are the three nutrients that keep us from starving to death--vitamins & minerals are of secondary importance. Children are the best at this which is why they like stuff like macaroni & cheese & fruit juice. So when we try to eat healthy and lose weight, we're going against our natural tendency to eat foods with the highest amounts of the above nutrients, which I guess is why it's difficult to choose salad over a hamburger. Okay, so maybe it's not that interesting, but it has stuck with me all these years.
A somewhat weirder theory was that the plants are going to kill us. The prof maintained that because we are focused in on only a few species of food (wheat, corn, and what have you); ultimately these species will evolve defense mechanisms that will make them poisonous to humans, to prevent us from keeping them from reproducing by consuming or confiscating their seeds. Now "the plants are going to kill us" is prima facie wacky, and more difficult to maintain from an evolutionary point of view, since domestication has actually increased the habitat of these species probably several thousand-fold; and they are so genetically engineered they don't have much hope of any natural mutation working its way in to the general population. But maybe I didn't fully understand his argument. Either way, the important thing is that I got to use the phrase "the plants are going to kill us" in my blog.
Yesterday Andy and I were discussing the concept of artificial intelligence and how it always seems to be perceived as hostile to humanity. I maintain (ha, you thought you were going to get out of this without one of my own personal wacky theories) that if an artificial "intelligence" or "awareness" could be created, it would be very different than human intelligence. First of all, I don't think you can create a "consciousness" that has nothing to be conscious of--it would have to have sensory equipment and the equivalent of arms and legs with which to move around and manipulate its environment (based on the theories of Husserl, Heidegger, and other hermeneutical theorists, which I am incapable of reproducing here). Second, while I can imagine a computer becoming aware of its surroundings and able to act and solve some problems better than a human, I can't imagine it writing a poem or painting a picture or having an emotion of altruism or love or hate. It might be able to mimic such things very well, but it would not be having the experience that a human has. Computers now can't do anything but what a human tells it to do, and they have only the data that a human gives them or equips them to gather. My idea of an "aware" computer is one that doesn't need a programmer--it recognizes problems that threaten it or whatever its mission is, and programs itself to solve that problem. I don' t see how we can program a computer to have an emotion, or to have a human-like consciousness--largely because we ourselves have only a very sketchy notion of what human consciousness is. I mean, that has been one of the big debates of philosophers over the millennia, and we haven't come to any kind of concensus yet. Science doesn't seem to be able to throw much light on the phenomenon either, and the humanities and social sciences only study the artifacts of consciousness. In any case, I'm not too worried about the "the machines are going to kill us" hypothesis--I mean, if it's not the machines or the plants, it's bound to be something.
Let's see...back before the cat stuff, the gaming, the church stuff, the pity party, and the digressions, there was the holidays. New Year's was quite fun this year, especially in comparison to other New Yearses I've experienced. One year, some time in the mid-nineties, we had gathered at a friend's house to celebrate New Year's. We were expecting another friend to come by after work, but she never showed up. We got really worried about her (I worry about people when I don't know where they are), so another friend and I decided to go look for her. We drove past her place of employment and she didn't seem to be there, so we went on to her house. We didn't want to freak out her mother if it turned out she wasn't home, so we tried to sneak up to the house to see if the light was on in her room (her room was in the basement, so we had to get pretty close to the house to see). Unfortunately, her mother noticed two suspicious figures creeping up to the house, and called "who's there" tremulously out the front door. We admitted it was us, and tried to figure out whether her daughter was home without actually asking. Fortunately, she was. Another co-worker had wanted to go rent a movie after work but couldn't decide on one, so she was stuck staring at a copy of Prizzi's Honor as the new year came in. I don't know, New Year's just isn't my holiday.
But this year it was good. We spent it with some friends who made dinner for us, followed by a game of Settlers of Catan (not the time I won--the New Year's curse no doubt).
Before that was Christmas, which was very relaxing. Andy and I opened presents and had a very enjoyable day. Presents were very multimedia this year--several DVDs including Indiana Jones, Mr. Bean, The Tick (the live action one), The Matrix Reloaded; also Game Cube games and books. The cats got canned food which seemed to make their day.
Instead of an advent wreath, church had different windows from houses attached around the sanctuary with candles in them; and a picture of Salvador Dali's "girl at a window" (I forget the exact name). It was quite cool. I looked through a Salvador Dali book at Schuler's the other day. Most of the pictures in the book wouldn't be suitable for church.
I've been playing a lot of games during the past few weeks. Only 6.5 weeks until my comprehensive exams, that seems appropriate. Andy got Soul Calibur and Mario Kart for Christmas, both of which I've spent a good amount of time with. SC includes strange phrases like the above--Andy says they make sense if you know the back story, but I find it difficult to imagine what such a story would be like. Mario Kart is also quite fun. I don't use the adjective "trippy" very often, but it's really the only one suitable to describe the last map, which Andy unlocked recently.
We've also played Magic a few times lately. I'd played it in college a few times, but never really got into it. I find it more fun now, maybe I'm just better at losing games now. I used to get really competitive about games, especially Monopoly for some reason.
Andy and I played a game called "Settlers of Catan" with varoius people over the holidays. It was quite fun. I expected to be awful at it, since it requires strategic planning which I am bad at; but I actually won once. It's kind of a board game, in which the board is made up of hexagonal pieces which you colonize in order to gain resources, build new settlements, and establish cities. It comes with little wooden pieces representing the towns, etc., which you can use to build small structures while waiting for your turn. I think you should get extra points for building the most interesting structure, but I haven't been able to sell any of my co-players on that idea yet.
Little update on the cats: They went back to the vet yesterday. Still don't know what's the matter with them, but the answer seems to be spending more money. They now have pills that I give them with a scary-looking contraption called a cat-piller. I think the cats think it's a cat-killer, from they way they react.
This was obviously an enterprise begun by an immature mind, one with an utter lack of ability to comprehend its cost in dollars, time, effort and standard of living; or with any hope of being able to meet that cost. Already it has cost more money than anyone is likely to see in one place at one time, and every day it continues, it plunges us further into financial chaos. Even after months and years of dealing with an ever more difficult and time-consuming task, there is no clear concept of how or when it's going to be resolved; and it shows every sign of dragging on for years more. Meanwhile, on the home front, money is tight, and any improvement in the economy hasn't yet improved the situation. It may already be too late to get out of this thing unscathed--financially, morally, mentally, and emotionally.
I refer, of course, to graduate school.
The biggest adventure of the past few weeks (and this is a good indication of the usual excitement level of our lives) has been administering medicine to our beloved pets, Misty and Teti. They both developed little scratches or something that didn't seem to be healing up, so off to the vet we went. The vet didn't know what was going on with them, so she decided to charge us for everything--er, I mean she decided to treat them for everything. So for 10 days I had to squirt liquid antibiotics into their mouths and anoint them with Tresaderm, twice a day. No one enjoyed this process one little bit. I got better at medicating them as time went on--the first couple of times more medicine got on their faces, my hands, my jeans, the floor, and whatever else was within a three-foot radius, than in their mouths. They go in to the vet again tomorrow, and I'm hoping the vet will say they're okay.
Last week I got an unexpected phone call. I've gotten good at weeding out the telemarketers, who usually show up on the caller ID as "unavailable" or "private," and the do-not-call list seems to have reduced the volume, despite whatever ridiculous legal maneuvers are going on with that. If it's a local area code, I usually answer though; those are normally either for us or for the people who last had our phone number, as the phone co. seems to be reluctant to change the number over to our name, for whatever reason. I didn't recognize this number and half-expected it to be the phone co. again (they seem incapable of getting the right name connected to the correct number, and seem to wish to be rewarded for this stellar service by having us switch our long-distance to them). It wasn't, though, it was a Jehovah's Witness. I've never gotten a evangelistic phone call before, but I did talk to JW's on many occasions in Hyde Park, where they stop people on the streets and offer them Watchtowers. I got a really good impression of the JWs from those days--they were always really polite, didn't try to keep you if you were in a hurry, and took an interest in you as a person if you cared to stop & talk. Also, the Watchtowers were by far the most pleasant itemI was ever offered by strangers while walking down 53rd Street. I can really see how lonely, disaffected people, of whom there are a lot in Chicago, would be attracted to JW because of that. I think we can learn something from their approach to evangelism; they get their point across without being annoying or pushy.
The lady on the phone was no exception. She did do that annoying bait-and-switch that a lot of evangelists seem to do; draw you into a conversation about one thing and then try to lead you into another. However, she was really nice and we had an interesting conversation about end-times (and by "interesting" I mean I did quite a bit of the talking :). I got to air my pet theories about end-times, which I will do again here, since I enjoyed it so much the first time:
I don't worry about the end-times much, because God said we don't know when Jesus is coming back, and I'm willing to accept that. Though he gives us some indications in prophecy of what end times will be like, I don't believe these are meant to be formulaized by us, I think they are just hints to help us along. Also, I think Revelation etc. describes things that happen in all ages and to all Christians, and it is meant to provide comfort to us in every generation, not just at the end times. I think the lady on the phone was trying to get me to admit that we probably were in the end times, because she started out by talking about the problem of violence in GR, and asked if I thought things could get much worse than they are now. I said that I thought they could get much worse; I mean, when have things ever been better, at least for most people in this country?
She asked if she could call back some time, I said yes. I haven't yet decided if I'm going to answer the phone (good old caller ID).
Actually, things have been going pretty well lately. I figured that a post with the above header would garner more readers than one entitled "Actually, things have been going pretty well lately," however.
It's been a while since I posted, so I'll work backwards in time through the missing month; and you the reader may play Merlin to my King Arthur (sounds like someone thinks a lot of herself).
Yesterday we had our first new-members meeting at the church we've been attending. We have really been enjoying the church, the services are an interesting blend of traditional worship and interesting readings, artwork, etc. Andy remarked, and I agreed, that the people there seem to take faith really seriously, and engage it on an intellectual as well as emotional level. I think that intellect is too often seen as antithetical to faith in conservative Christianity. I believe that God desires to and does engage our intellects as well as our emotions. I think that the passage "trust the Lord...and lean not on your own understanding" means that we should offer our intelligence up to the Lord, and allow him to work through it; not to ignore our capacity for reason altogether. Once when I was flipping through channels on TV, a woman on one of the many televangelist channels we seem to get was urging her audience to act on their "gut feeling," and not let their brains get in the way--honestly, the only thing my "gut" ever tells me is when I'm hungry, and unless the Lord wants me to do nothing but eat cookies for the rest of my life, I think that I will continue to assign relatively low significance to "gut feelings."
Anyway, this is the first time I've ever really selected a church. In the past, I went to my parents' church when I was home, and just went to the nearest Methodist church when I was elsewhere. In fact, one of the main things that first drew me to the church I attended in Chicago was the familiar sight of the Methodist hymnal ranged along the pews. I enjoy looking through hymnals, as they give a pretty good impression of the denomination responsible for them. The Methodist hymnal always includes John Wesley's rules for singing, and begins with the hymn O For A Thousand Tongues To Sing:
O for a thousand tongues to sing
My great Redeemer’s praise,
The glories of my God and King,
The triumphs of His grace!
by Charles Wesley, of course.
Next installment in the exciting story of my action-packed past month will involve adventures with the veterinarian and Jehovah's Witnesses.