Tit for tat

As a kid, I have seen and been part of fights that would start with a friendly pat but would soon turn into a fist fight. In most of the cases, the friendly(or playful) pat by one kid would not be felt as a pat by the other kid, but rather too strong for a pat. The other kid(victim) would reciprocate even more strongly and the fight soon escalates. Daniel Wolpert has an interesting theory on why that is the case.

Apparently brain has a predicting machinery, which has a pretty good understanding of the real world mechanics. This machinery predicts the impacts of one's own sensory commands. For instance, when you're shaking a ketch up bottle, you have a good sense of how much force you're applying. Because you can always feel, if somebody is helping you get the ketch-up out of the bottle. Its as if your brain knows what to expect from its command and any additional force is attributed to external causes. It subtracts out "what to expect" component from the sensory feedback that it obtains, to know if there is external causes or force. Well this is also the exact same reason why you can't tickle yourself. Your brain's predicting machinery sort of subtracts out "what it expects" from that of the sensory feedback and hence there is no (or less) residual sensation/information for the brain to be tickled about.

In the case of kid-fights, escalation happens because each of the involved kids would claim that the other kid hit harder than oneself. Wolpert concludes that  the aggressor often underestimates the impact of his force on the victim. This is because his predicting machinery is actively engaged and knows what to expect from his actions,  often makes him underestimate his force on the victim. In other words, if the agressor were to inflict the same amount of force on himself (or if he were to simulate it), he would feel the impact less intense than if he were to inflict it on somebody else. This results in a never ending tit for tat scenario, escalating in bigger fights.

Simplicity of Wolpert's conclusion is quite impressive and  it probably has a deeper implication. Words also have impact on people's reactions and emotions. Any sensible person  tries to predict the impact of his words on other people. So, I guess, the same could be extended to verbal exchanges between people as well.

I'm reminded of something that I came across long time back, in which the author explains how communication between people can get way too complicated. Speakers try to predict what listeners might think and try to be subtle in conveying messages. Listeners also  predict what the speaker tries to convey both explicit and subtle messages.  To further complicate things,  it is not uncommon for people trying to predict what other person predicts about what they predict.  Things can get really loopy when the predicting machinery is on overdrive!

Greatest wonder

Everytime I hear about an untimely death of a person, I'm reminded of this conversation from Mahabharata, where Yudhistra had to answer the questions of  a Yaksha to revive his dead brothers.

It was  part of a chapter in my 8th std. English textbook. 

One of the questions goes like this,

Yaksha: What is the greatest wonder in the world?

Yudhistra: Everyday men see creatures depart to Yama's abode (death) and yet, those who remain seek to live for ever. This verily is the greatest wonder.

It left an indelible impression on me.

Artistic frame of mind

Quotes can be particularly striking, especially if it articulates some of our vague impressions in a clear, concise manner. Here is one from Glenn Gould which seemed to capture my own thoughts

Glenn Gould: “For me, the lack of an audience—the total anonymity of the studio—provides the greatest incentive to satisfy my own demands upon myself without consideration for, or qualification by, the intellectual appetite, or lack of it, on the part of the audience. My own view is, paradoxically, that by pursuing the most narcissistic relation to artistic satisfaction one can best fulfill the fundamental obligation of the artist of giving pleasure to others.”

Persistence and stubbornness

Can persistence manifest as stubbornness?

Stubbornness is defined as "unreasonably holding on to an opinion or purpose". Perhaps sound reasoning doesn't form the basis of an idea or an action of stubborn people.

Persistent people on the other hand have the ability to pursue their goals inspite of numerous odds that they might face. They don't give up easily. The spirit of not giving up easily has to arise from strong ideas/opinions, which defies logic.

The patterns of thinking between a persistent and a stubborn person could be similar. Perhaps our mind (or our brain) is not compartmentalized well enough to differentiate stubbornness and persistence. Hence the act of being persistent on one occassion can manifest as stubbornness on other occassions.

Note: Persistence can manifest as stubbornness and not vice-versa.

How do we avoid being outlandishly persistent?

We barely know how our minds work. We don't understand our limits and potential of our own abilities. Persistence is probably an evolved trait, that helps us explore (or expand) our abilities. Most often persistence relies on the "intuition" of the subject, to accomplish despite the seemigly improbable obstacles.

"Intuition" is not a product of logical reasoning. It is something our mind perceives as truth. Its like skipping several steps of logic and arriving at the conclusion. We "feel" the conclusion is right without any logical basis. However working our way back to those "skipped steps" can tell us how credible our intuition is. This could possibly save us from being outlandishly persistent.

Hacker koan

In the days when Sussman was a novice, Minsky once came to him.

"What are you doing?", asked Minsky.

"I am training a randomly wired neural net to playTic-tac toe", Sussman replied.

"Why is the net wired randomly?", asked Minsky.

"I do not want it to have any preconceptions of how to play", Sussman said.

Minsky then shut his eyes.

"Why do you close your eyes?" Sussman asked his teacher.

"So that the room will be empty."

At that moment, Sussman was enlightened.

Moral:

"If you wire it randomly, it will still have preconceptions of how to play. But you just won't know what those preconceptions are."

Source: wiki

The itch

Quite a remarkable article on "itch". Long one, but its hard to resist after about a couple of pages.

http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2008/06/30/080630fa_fact_gawande?currentPage=1

"Neuro-bubble"

This conversation was overheard in a school, at the height of so called "neuro-bubble", sometime during the latter half of 21st century.

Student A: I heard this time around teachers are going to be rated by "synaptometer" readings of students

Student B: I'm not sure monitoring the incremental change in the number of synapses during a class is an accurate way to rate teachers. Did you attend the class for "Statistical dynamics of evolutionary politics" ?

Student A: Unfortunately yes. My synaptometer reading is way down. I heard infact some of the people in the class had negative synaptometer reading

Student B: What?! Hows that possible?

Student A; A dull lecture, apparently when it crosses the "boreness threshold" can result in unlearning things that you have mastered before. It can stop synaptogenesis altogether and can weaken the existing synapses.

Student B: Thank God ! I was daydreaming in that class. But that unfortunately had resulted in a higher synaptometer reading. Would that result in a better rating for our teacher?

Student A: Wow, thats a neat trick. Not to worry, your synaptometer readings and your grades will be correlated while rating the teacher. So a bad grade and high synaptometer reading will result in a bad rating for the teacher.

Student B: I feel sorry for our teacher though.

Student A: I hear that he is in great demand for "criminal rehabilitation center"

Student B: What?!

Student A: Apparently his services might be valuable for criminals to unlearn some of their crooked tricks which landed them there in the first place.

Student B: Holy shit ! I pity those criminals. They are in for some mind numbing torture.

Student A: Human rights activist can't complaint against it as well. Hence the law enforcers are planning to use his talents, so to speak.

While the synaptometers were highly limited to elitist and academia. It didn't quite evoke the common man's interest. Nevertheless, there was a growing popularity of detectors to quantify and keep track of our emotions. One such instrument was the "Happymeter". Conceived by one of the leading neurobiological engineering company, it measures the levels of serotonin (a neurotransmitter) and a host of other parameters to quantify how happy and contented people are during a period of time. This set off a spurt of start-up companies to develop various instruments and it created what is termed as a "neuro bubble". The bubble didn't last long.

Infact "Happymeter" got so popular that , in a sweeping news, the Dalai Lama, who was quite tech savvy introduced this device in his monastery, claiming that it will guage the progress of his monks. His claim was that it would also provide information about the efficacy of Buddhist meditation techniques.It took about couple of years before the monastery saw a huge reduction in the number of monks. Many monks were suffering from anxiety and stress disorders caused by a frustration that their meditation methods were not producing high enough reading in their instrument. They were just checking it too often to see any significant improvement. Monks running away from a monastery due to stress was quite unheard of, Dalai Lama had no choice but to ban it from its premises.

Rumor has it that, Pope, in a bid to rival the Dalai Lama, tried pushing for a "sinmeter" that keeps track of people's ethical and moral violations. He wanted followers to have this all the time so that they can keep track of their sins. In fact some of the most conservative economist claimed that a "sinmeter" is necessary in the workplace of financial industry, so that people don't make reckless and unscrupulous decisions, which causes periodic economic collapse. Unfortunately none of this took off. The financial industry supposed to fund the idea thought that, a sinmeter could jeopardize their workplace and declined to fund. Rumor has it that even politicians thought that they would be next target for sinmeters and made deliberate attempts to crush the idea altogether.

In fact a research group in a leading university concluded that people are better of without such an instrument. It pointed out that in most cases brain itself had pathways to understand the emotions and react. Any external device causes them to over-react and can lead to potentially catastrophic consequences. That blew the final death knell to all such companies.