On attempts to resolve the consciousness problem

One has to remember, that any scientific attempt will be an attempt to model the mine. To find approximations that can replicate the observes behavior of the mind. This is again not how the mind works, and we should remember that one can find a model that extremely accurately replicates the mind, but still be completely wrong. Even on fundamentall logical matters. Take Newtonian mechanics as an example. It is a fantastic model of the mechanical reality. It was not possible to do any experiment that could invalidate it for hundreds of years. Yet still, it is merely a model that is not only wrong, it is even obviously wrong, even to Newton him self.

So, we should not expect science to explain consciousness. It can model it. But it will  ot attempt to capture the essence of being.

A comments on Veritasiums How electricity actually works

Derek over at Veritasium made a video on electricity that apparently spun allot of opinion, so he had to make an explanation and an extra video to explain and prove his original claims. Nice video and funny that it got so much attention. Of course, as a microwave engineer, thinking about fields all day, I was not very surprised about the claim.

However, I think he did make a mistake in the follow up video. Or at least again was intentionally vague :). In the video he seem to indicate the the waves on the transmission line is excited by capacitive coupling between the lines. I think this is wrong. The excitation to the transmission line is actually inductive. I have not done the math, but I would be very surprised if it is capacitive. There is really no charge variation when the switch is turned on. However, there is current, and thus it is the mutual inductance that excites the wave.

He also made another mistake in his model of the transmission line. In the circuit with the transmission lines, they are on each side of the source/load. However, that is not the correct model. The transmission lines are actually connected to a (very complicated) source in parallel, and then shorted in the far end where the wave is reflected back. I think this is a resonably accurate model of the system (ignore the actual values, which I did not bother to change):

A new publishing paradigm

Anyone that has been working with science has thought about the publishing process and the pitfalls that goes with it. So, I will not list those here. Instead I would like to propose an alternative to traditional publishing.
The main idea is very simple: instead of publishing individual articles, we should copy the modern software development process more or less straight-off. Someone, or several, maintains a "publication". This is simply a git (or some other vcs) repository containing something resembling a book. Any scientist that has something to contribute to the book can send in a traditional pull request to complement the publication.
There will be so many advantages with this: less writing for each published unit, more consistency, an updated modern and efficient peer review process, open access, simple referencing (by making versioned releases or referencing a commit hash).

The next step for the arXiv

The axXiv has become a standard place to put up pre-prints of journal papers. This is great with increased availability and distribution speed. But, it could be taken one further step. Add an automated peer-review process to the papers, and the system is ready to completely replace the blood-sucking bandits of publishing houses. This is money the science community can use better, and we are anyway doing all the work: the research, the paper writing, the peer-review. We could be adults and take full responsibility for the whole process and improve quality the same time.

So, my proposal: develop a review AI that does the first screening, checking things like language, style consistency and formalities such as affiliation, contact information and plagiarism. Next, the system can propose reviewers together with the authors. The system can also propose an editor that can do the work of the editor on a per-paper bases.

Seeing reality as it is is still a possibility. In fact, that is what we do. More or less

Hoffman just published another paper discussing his computer simulations indicating it is better to not experience reality as it is.

The ideas as stated are of course not new. They are present already in Plato's cave myth. But what should be pointed out I think, is that the ideas are actually not very interesting. Or perhaps even scientifically wrong.

First. We describe reality with models that approximate it. Hence, there is nothing new to anyone that we do not experience reality exactly as is. But what is more important is that there is, taking the scientific process to its limit over time, really nothing else to say about reality. Per definition. If there had been, it would be covered by some scientific theory. This is kind of the argument also against a supernatural being which I yet have not met any theist having a reasonable argument against: if an entity can interact with reality, that mechanism of interaction can be probed, and thus modeled. And then it is not supernatural any more. If there is no such interaction mechanism, they the entity has no implication on our reality.
Thus, in a proof by contradiction, there cannot be any supernatural entity.

On another note, of course an organism can be greatly successful and still not perceive reality fully. That's trivial. Take treas or any other plant. Surely their perceptive abilities are very limited and do not cover the whole of reality. They are still very successful as a spices. There is no problem here. However, a tree does also create models of the world. It is about light and temperature and nutrition. And the trees act according to those models. Surely, those models are quite good, they have made trees very successful. They approximate reality and the approximation is in direct relation to what that species needs. Trees cannot move, and hence they do not need models for kinematics.

This actually leads to an interesting thought - is evolution creating model-generating organisms? It looks like it. The genes are really an information processing system and as such, they are operating on some model assumption.

Integrated functional co-evolution

This might be a completely well understood and known thing, but I just realized that there is co-evolution within a single organism. Easiest is probably to illustrate with an example. Why do humans have arms and hands? They are really not very impressive compared to e.g. a cat's legs - sharp claws and strong so that they can jump 4-5 times their own height.
But the hands and arms have a completely unique feature - they are very generic. We can do many things with them. This would not be a very useful feature for a cat since they are fairly dump, and would thus not know how to use these generic tools. So, to be useful, they also have to go with a very large brain. Just as it happens, humans do have large brains. This is not a coincidence. Our brains have evolved together with our generic arms and hands. As we became smarter, new advanced things could be made with our hands, and then it would be beneficial to have more generic and even better hands and arms. E.g. with finer resolution.

This kind of integrated functional co-evolution is a different kind of evolution compared to how spices evolve in relation to it's surrounding. It is also different compared to ordinary co-evolution where different organisms co-evolve so e.g. be more and more specialized.

It would be interesting to hear if anyone can tell if this is well know process, or something novel. It would also be nice to test this in some kind to computer simulation.

Religion, Philosophy, Science

First there was religion; the belief in a magical non-understandable world with ad-hock explanations based on sentient, often supreme, beings - i.e. gods.
Next it occurred to some brilliant people that we can try to organize thought and thus Philosophy was born. It still consists more in understanding our selves than the world around us. It aims at grasping how we can deal with something. But now in a structures critically thinking way where nature is understood as existing outside of us and being structured without requiring a grand mover.
At some point, some master stroke realized some key point and turned a part of philosophy into science. It started with the most structured = easiest parts of human thinking; math. Then came physics, chemistry, and so on...
Now comes an interesting question. What is next? What comes after science? Is the something coming? I believe there is. Not completely shore about what though. I have two possible suggestions. It is either this (1):

or this (2):

 

1. If this is what is going to happen it is semi-depressing. What will happen is that the human population will split up in several sub-sets. The world will consist of people who know something in some area putting them in the science position (in that area), and in the religion position in others. Because the world outside of my special field is simply too complex.

2. If this happens, Something new might be something that resembles religion, or a synthesis of religion and science. Science and technology will create a world that is so complex that it is simply not comprehensible for someone outside of a very narrow niche area. But we will be enlightened and know that there is a rational explanation behind the phenomena we experience. That there is a fantastically complex machine behind it making it do the fantastic thing it is doing. This is enlightened religion with faith in other humans instead of a supernatural. But it is what will have to happen since it will simple not be possible to comprehend how things can be. This is already the case in many situations and is most obvious with how children perceive the wold.

Why does not humans have any grown weapons?

Most animals have bodily parts that are made for fight. Teath, claws, fangs, paws, poison etc etc. But we humans have none. We suck at fighting with our bare body parts.
Why is this? My proposition is that this is no coincidence. It is rather the direct result of an evolutionary path. A stable path that can be driven forward by evolution. The thing is that we are smart. Much smarter than any other animals. And the reason we are, is that we cannot fight so we have to be smart. That is our evolutionary trait. That is what makes us unique. That is our niche.

I think one can think of this as stable co-evolutionary directions. It is really the case that everything is co-evolution. Evolution happens against a static background or surrounding. But co-evolution happens when several species evolve together and the evolution of one species is affected by the state and evolution of another (this is just my complete novice term. I have no idea if the biologists have another proper term for this). And in that surrounding, an evolution path is what a particular species will follow. It is stable if there is only one change that can survive. It will bifrucate if there are several and it will die if there is none. One can thus only speak of stability locally since it might change down the road depending on how interacting spieces evolve.

Will scientific progress stop?

Some claim, such as the discussion here. My take on this is: of course not.
Just look at the enormous progress in technology currently at hand. It just cannot keep up with science. Soon we will have quantum computers, (true) AI, quantum AI, colonized Mars, and so on. It is strange that people never learn. How many times has it been said that everything to know is know or all progress has already be made?

On a modellistic world view

I need to write something. Regarding materialism and all the fuzz about spirituality and non-materialism. Again the discuasion is messing the point. It is not a question of weather our being is materialistic or idealistis or something in between. The question is if it is modellistic. By that I mean that it is fundamentally coherent and can thus be modelled by proper language (in some Wittgensteinian way). This is what is interesting and where a so called atheis and a theist differ in opinion.

But having a non-modellistic world view is absurde and self-contradicting. You can never hope to have a coherent view of something that is non-modellistic and hence what can not be said clear can not be said at all.

We are surounded by a world we do not understand

There is for sure nothing controversial with the statement in the title. When we are born we basically do not understand anything, then we learn some things. We go to school and learn some more. However, somewhere here it starts to differentiate. As adults we know and understand different things. And this is important and is gong to be more pronounced in the future. This is due to specialisation.
However, more and more of the specialised understanding is understanding of man made systems/phenomena/... And these man made phenomena can be exploited more and easier then the physical world it self (e.g. via bugs or particular features).
Take a thing like bitcoin, and all the applications behind the blockchain. We will be surrounded by them. But only a few will understand how they work. This is of course the case already with different IT systems and other things. But the new thing, and for the future, these will be more and more abundant. And more and more of our core reality will be based on it.

This, in turn, will generate a new (or a more pronounced) class system dividing those who know and can and those cannot.

Why is there no antimatter in the Universe?

This question is widely discussed in the physics community with no answer yet presented. It was recently demonstrated that Hydrogen and anti-Hydrogen have the exact same excitation spectra, further strengthen the standard model in this respect.

So here is a wild (and as usualy not very firmly grounded since I don't know very much about this) suggestion to the assymetry.
Maybe there is some kind of process that can oscillate between matter and antimatter. Currently the universe is in the matter oscillation stage. Maybe there is a gradual process towards antimatter or maybe the big bang was initiated from the antimatter state some how. That is, e.g. the big bag was preceeded by an anti matter bug crunch.

Another thought regarding this is, since there is no difference in the spectrum, how can we be sure that the other galaxies, or galaxy clusters, actually consists of matter? Maybe actually they consists of antimatter and everything is much more symmetric then we think. But a quick googling indicates that this is unlikely.

Are we living in a computer simulation

This is a hot topic at the moment with many people having thoughts on the matter. My answer to the question is: of course we are not. The answer is depending on what is meant by a computer simulation, and here I am referring to a situation similar to the Matrix, which is what is usually considered in the current discussion. However, I think the discussion is not very different from what actually Descartes already had when he was discussing his demon and Kant with das Ding an sich.
Anyway, my arguments against the idea that we are living in a computer simulation are:
1. Evolutionary extrapolation. It is often claimed that extrapolating the current pace of technology advance indicate, on an evolutionary time scale, that there should be machines capable to performing these kind of simulations at some point. However, this is a logical error, because current pace of technological advance has not occurred on an evolutionary time scale. Thus, it can not be extrapolated on an evolutionary time scale either. There is no predictable way to tell what will happen with technology over long time scales.
2. Ethics. We know from our own civilization that once we get advanced, we also have ethical ruses. E.g. we do not allow for any type on animal experiments. I am guessing that the kind of simulation referred to in the discussion would be considered highly unethical, and not be allowed to be run.
3. Computing power. If the world is constituted in a way similar to ours. That is, the presumed simulated structure is similar to the world in which the simulation is run, then it seem to follow that it will be very hard to simulate it accurately. It is not easy to simulate it self.
4. Epistemologically. If there is no way to detect that we are in a computer simulation (actually Neo noticed in the Matrix), then the discussion is not a very interesting one at all. Since then we have no way to test the hypothesis. Further, is it not likely that if we are in such a simulation, that just by design, we would not be able to detect the boundaries of the simulation. Any "flaws" in the simulation would appear as how the world is constituted to us (maybe this is the reason behind cancer, chaos theory, the Republican party, ... and other crazy-ness).

The plasticity of our brains

I am getting older. And I have recently gotten aware of a new state of mind. I literary feel how the plasticity of my brain is disappearing. It is a very interesting feeling.
As an undergraduate, when I was taking a class in vector calculus for example, learning about the curl operator in 3-space you were given the definition and you were building a conceptual feeling for what that operator was doing with a vector field. You could actually feel the spatial properties being molded to you head.
This does not happen nearly to the same extent any more. And I think this has to do with me getting old. But it is interesting to speculate in how this plasticity manifests it self. Is playfulness a consequence of this plasticity? And if humans manage to significantly extend our lives, lets say to 500 years or so, I think it will be crucial that we also manage to control brain plasticity. If you only develop significantly during the first 50 years or less, a 500 years life will probably be quite painful.

What comes after innovation?

Over the centuries different things have been valued differently. It has been physical strength, art, religion and science. In our time it is innovation.

It should however be noted that innovation does not have any simple relation to science. Science focuses on what is true in some objective sense and on the method of structured reasoning. But this is not what matters to innovation, which puts sell-ability first.

Now the big question is: What will come next? I have no clear answer, but my bet is on something where the human is even more in the center than now. So it could be some bio-related stuff. For example nerve-connected people, viz artificial telepathy. It could also be something new in the arts. Or something connected to other lifeforms,  animals or AI.

Can RF radiation cause cancer?

This silly question just refuses to go away.
Finally after 11 years NTP released a report. And, waaah, they found something.

Really? What about scaling to humans, publication bias, statistical significance,  realism, ...

And also - of course it is cancerogenus. Seriously, I am sure it is. But what is not? If we would apply the same care with tobacco,  alcohol,  sugar,  fat, chemicals, fossil fuel residues, well, most things that are nice. Not much would be left. Isn't there better ways to spend $25M?

Wikimedia foundation the ideal publisher of free scientific papers

The issue of open science is a pressing one. The large publication houses, Elsiver, NPG and the others make huge profits publishing scientific papers. And the situation is actually absurd! The publishers really do nothing - they do not write the papers, perform the research, do the review, or the typesetting (ok, maybe thy do typesetting, but really it is to a minimal degree with the modern typesetting systems).
There is a slow drive for so called open access. However, this is something that even further increase publishers income since open access papers are funded by huge fees from the publishers to the authors.
So, we need some new actor stepping in and taking publishing responsibility, including review assignment, This is really the key problem that needs to be solved in true free science. How to manage the review process.
My suggestion is to have a process similar to how Wikipedia works. Maybe in combination with other elements such as a score system similar to Stack Exchange. And really Wikimedia is the ideal organisation to take on this task. It is the natural extension of their current operation, maybe in connection to Wikiversity. But a completely new project would probably be even better.

We need a couple of new pronouns

Exciting things are going on. I think we need at least one new pronoun. It should be used for entities that are made of AI technologies and interacting with us in a "human like" fashion. You can already now hear people talking about robot vacuum cleaners or Siri or other "smart" devices using "he" or "she". This is of course incorrect. On the other hand, apparently it is quite unintuitive to speak about these things using "it". Hence, we should come up with a new pronoun for there entities.
I suggest "mai", short for machine artificial intelligence.
Of course, this will have to be complemented by the other forms for the pronouns first person and so on.

In addition, I think we need a new pronoun for cyborgs. People and machine will merge in the coming 100 years or so and it might be appropriate to consider how different entities should be denoted. In Sweden this discussion has been around for some time in connection to a gender-neutral pronoun. We use "han" for "he", "hon" for "she" and the new "hen" for the gender neutral version. It might be that this pronoun should be generalized to denote someone also with cyborg qualities.

However, there is an important thing to note about the usage of the word "hen". There are two different cases. First we can talk about a person without knowing its particular gender, e.g. a general teacher or something like that. Or we can talks about an explicit person but which to not disclose (or it might even not be possible) that persons gender. It is not completely clear to me that these two cases should use the same word.

Super conductors at room temperature

I read this very interesting post about the new supra conducting material that actually works at temperatures above the lowest of what have been sighted on earth.

Now that got me thinking, as they speculate in the article, maybe one could have something actually working at temperatures around 20C, where we operates. But then I thought, but wait, if such a material exists, shouldn't evolution have found it by now?

Well maybe not? Then I asked my self, what we expect evolution to find? That is an extremely interesting question. If we can parameterize the space we can expect evolution to have found optimal solutions in, we can stop searching for stuff there. That would be something awesome,   no?

On scientific knowledge

I was watching this very interesting debate between some great thinkers of our time. And of course I was thinking: "no, that have to be wrong"!
The question at hand is: is all knowledge empirical? Kruass is strongly advocating thing line. Dennet and Pigliucci is a bit more vague, but at the end seem to lean to the same conclusion. I would claim that this is wrong. There is knowledge (if we even can define the term!) that is not empirical. My example of this is basically mathematical knowledge. Krauss is claiming also mathematical knowledge is empirical since the basis (the axioms) is empirical to their nature is not correct. There can be many axioms not at all connected to any empirical facts - in fact ZF is an excellent example of this. Even the designers of the damn thing did not like it since it was counter intuitive with all these axioms. Nevertheless we would all agree that "the integral of 1/x is ln(x)" is knowledge. Or an even better example, the properties of the monster group constitute knowledge.

I think I would rather go further actually and say that all knowledge is of non-empirical nature. Empirical stuff is what can be observed. However observations can never be trusted. Never. However, deductions (which might be based on observations) can be trusted and render knowledge. But all that knowledge is of the for "if a the b". If a is observed, that b can be deduced. Thus, the knowledge does not depend on the empirical fact, but is only claims something about logical consequences given the empirical fact.