Category Archives: Readings

Non-Genetic Memory on Plants

Right… perhaps you don’t make sense out of memory and plants.  Fact is, there’s more evidence that plants do find their way to communicate information.

As always this depends on how you define communication, or information.  This new study by Yang, X., Sanchez, R., Kundariya, H. et al. shows that gene activation as response to initial environmental conditions can be transmitted to further generations of plants with no new stimuli nor genetic change.  In some cases individual response to stress are transmitted down to next generations.

This is not hard to see as beneficial in evolutionary terms.  What is hard in this case is to make peace with our egocentric view that plants, as the inferior life form we labeled them, would not be able to achieve such divine prerogative.

As consciousness researchers in general often realize, and studies such as we find in Peter Wohlleben amazing book ‘The Hidden Life of Trees’ we should more often rethink our ideas on plant complex existence.

Death of the office – by Catherine Nixey @ The Economist

As the corporate staff shifts the better part of its days from the office back home, many will ask ourselves about the time we normally spend in offices.  As we move towards a new normal, what will be offices role?

“Created to ensure efficiency, offices immediately institutionalised idleness. A genteel arms race arose as managers tried to make their minions work, and the minions tried their damnedest to avoid it.”

Indeed, most of corporate labor has never experienced work outside office or even beyond office hours for a consistent period.  Nor has the habit of spending weekdays daylight alongside children or family.  Now we all have.

“The most transformatory aspect of offices was less the buildings themselves than the sheer amount of time we spent in them.”

At least for now, we have a critical perspective on how commuting, studying and working can be rethought.  This essay offers some well written suggestive paths.

“The office has further-reaching patriarchal ploys up its sleeve. Chief among these is its response to children. Or rather lack of it. For most of history, workplaces ignored children entirely... ”

Read full essay

AI-powered SaaS: Science as a Service by Charles Yang

Charles Yang’s ML4Sci is a cool newsletter on AI and Machine Learning applications.

On #8 issue, his description of how AI powered Science as a Service brief us on how AI can be used to distribute science.

“AI-powered models are beating domain experts in protein folding predictions, speeding up scientific simulations, discovering novel antibiotics, and outperforming numerical weather models.”

All fine, but I want to bring attention to an underlying assumption in the SaaS: being a Service.  Services measured by the results it provides such as more or less accurate its predictions.  Perhaps more keen to machine learning terminology, one should read how accurate its classifications are.

Predictions are core to scientific development for a long time.  Especially so in experimental science, the possibility of checking observations against predictions is an important part of what makes the theory falsifiable.

The novelty we see is that SaaS are not theories.  Especially when we talk of Bayesian probability, big data, and deep learning.  Often enough, small changes in the data bring very different results.  Not to mention overfitting and other problematic predictive illusions.

So what? – asks the reader.  So that instead of exchange of theories among scientists, science would evolve by sharing data silos.  And instead of knowledge, we see scientific progress distancing human understanding of the nature of the universe.

If the apparent difference is irrelevant when we are trying to predict rainfall, how about economics or biology?  Understanding the mechanics behind predictions in these fields may be as important as prediction accuracy.

In a broader picture, this may also lead to questions such as: if science becomes a service, wouldn’t we drive fast to a monopolistic scenario on science as we see in most data intensive AI business?

I will keep following both argument line in posts to come.  For now let’s pay attention on those interesting developments.

And by all means, give ML4Sci a try.

Collaborative AI ?

May 2nd, 2019.  Five hundred years ago today, Leonardo da Vinci died.  Some say he was the last man to master frontier knowledge in all scientific fields. 

The AI arms race appears destined to follow an unavoidable concentration pattern.  Almost as the natural consequence of the fact that corporations leading the AI development embed the winner-takes-all economy we live in.  It is hard to avoid top companies hoarding AI scientists.  Not to mention the prize at the end of the rainbow – singularity – that would potentially be the ultimate step when the first in closes the gates for others.  One AI to rule them all, so goes the omen.

For the last few hundred years, scientific progress has been a key drive for productivity and economic value creation.  And this very science – built by Newton, Bayes, Godel, Turing, Bohr, to name a few – is the giant shoulder AI stands on.  If we look back, despite the glorious contribution those geniuses individually made, the nature of the scientific progress in unquestionable a collaborative one.

Not that all science is to be replaced by AI, of course.  For the time being, at least.  Some science is, though.  Additionally, a big part of scientific production now relies back on AI.  It is hard to imagine theoretical physics, chemistry, or genetics nowadays without AI.   This feedback loop would place scientific production into an analogous winner takes all path.  Competition, not collaboration, would be the way to go.

Now: is it so?  Let me dare to propose not:Continue reading→

Fake memories in the making

Fake news, fake photos, fake audio, fake videos… all very bad compared to our own real objective reports, real image perception, real conversation reconstruction, real memory of witnessed events, right?

Wrong.  All fake.  No one really know the whole thing, but science indicates that all stories are subjective, our eyes don’t capture 3D images, we guess and forget and great deal of what we hear, and impression of memories are live reconstructs that can be altered as the whim of your mood.  Which, by its turn depends on your gut bacteria health.

I am not saying all the new fake is welcome, nor that all innate fake is bad.  But when we get great articles such as We’re underestimating the mind-warping potential of fake video
By Brian Resnick @ Vox we must remember that what is at stake is the privileged status of faking reality.  Old ways, such as education and culture are in.  New such as fake video, is out.Continue reading→

Less sugar is not less sugar

It is now commonplace to hear that whenever people try to fix overeating with eating other stuff it is not really changing, but adding.

Here’s another study pointing to this.  Likely to be ignored as any other warning that eating less is in most cases much simpler and effective than eating better.

In “The Influence of Sugar and Artificial Sweeteners on Vascular Health during the Onset and Progression of Diabetes” authors Brian Hoffmann , George Ronan, Dhanush Haspula alert for the risks of artificial sugar as replacement for regular sugar may be statistically linked to impairment and progression of diabetes and obesity.

Seems like our body is not equally (if at all) fooled, as our gluttony persistently advocates.

Skip A.R. – Embodiment is the real thing

“Non‐invasive brain stimulation of motor cortex induces embodiment when integrated with virtual reality feedback”

by M. Bassolino ;  M. Franza ;  J. Bello Ruiz ;  M. Pinardi ;  T. Schmidlin ;  M.A. Stephan ;  M. Solcà ;  A. Serino ; O. Blanke @ European Journal of Neuroscience

Researchers tested feeling of embodiment by non-invasive brain stimulation.  Instead of traditional visual, tactile or spacial illusions, scientists used magnetic (TMS) and visual (BR) stimulus to interact directly with the body’s representation in the brain.Continue reading→

Is Bitcoin halal or haram?

Working paper by Mr. Muhammad Abu Bakar – Mufti certified by the Jamia Darul-Uloom in Karachi, Pakistan under the supervision of Respected Sheikh Mufti Taqi Usmani – proposes s critic cut on Shariah status of bitcoin.

Interesting paper including exposure on history of money. development of Bitcoin, blockchain, Islamic property definitions and practices, and Bictoin in light of previous Fatwas.

Skipping to conclusions of the working paper:

  • Blockchain is evolving, so should Shariah opinions as scholars do their own research
  • Blockchain may act as a ledger recording value and cash transfers.
  • Depending of jurisdiction and legal status, Bitcoin could be seen as permissible.
  • Store of value, welath and data integrity arguably permissible.  Buying  cryptocurrency for investment purposes is not advisable.
  • Beware of ponzi schemes.

Data Commons

It is clear by now that you don’t own your data (arguably neither your money).  Shouldn’t it be the case then that our data takes part of a Data Commons.

The case is building, at least since 2016 but it is gathering supporters among the scientific community.  Examples here, here, and here.

This is cause for appraisal and kudos alright.  And as science gets more and more data hungry, it’s no wonder scientists seek free access to data.

What about the science that will be built using our data?  Open source, creative commons as well?  Right?

 

 

Civil rights to autonomous artificial systems

In an open letter to the European Commission a group of ‘Political Leaders, AI/robotics researchers and industry leaders, Physical and Mental Health specialists, Law and Ethics experts gathered to’ voice their concern about negative consequences of legal status to robots.

This echoes the concept that granted corporations personhood legal status, and the long debate over its convenience, how this notion spread and became usual in modern law.

The paragraph 59 f  from report cited in the letter is by its turn based on the recommendations to the Commission on Civil Law Rules on Robotics that can give a thorough view on the grounds of what moved the Committee on Legal Affairs to propose it.

Reputation Inflation by Filippas, Horton, Golden

Reputation Inflation, by Apostolos Filippas, John J. Horton, and Joseph M. Golden

Great paper showing how perceived relative costs to rating systems can loop into system lower effectiveness.  As raters react to incentives to report public rating, bias is introduced and can lead to a rather boolean outcome: anything different from perfect score is serious statement of reproval.

This at first may be seen as a problem.  However, those proposing rating mechanics may in fact use such bias to get a stronger grip on those being rated.

Data Brokers – A Call for Transparency

Cambridge Analytica’s may deservedly be set apart for its practices and the way it collected data.  And 50 MM user’s data sounds like a lot, right?

Now compare to this 2014 report “… one data broker’s database
has information on 1.4 billion consumer transactions and over 700 billion aggregated data elements; another data broker’s database covers one trillion dollars in consumer transactions;
and yet another data broker adds three billion new records each month to its databases. Most importantly, data brokers hold a vast array of information on individual consumers. For example, one of the nine data brokers has 3000 data segments for nearly every U.S. consumer…”

And this was what U.S. Federal Trade Commission found from nine data brokers.  In 2014.  And by the fact that “Seven of the nine data brokers in the Commission’s study provide data to each other. Accordingly, it would be virtually impossible for a consumer to determine how a data broker obtained his or her data…” this is now far out of reach of any action by Facebook or CA themselves.

Not-for-profit Projects Hub

Using Ethereum smart contracts to leverage community service projects

The problem

Working on local projects for community and nonprofit organizations one usually tumbles in an chicken-and-egg situation.  Often enough community support seems at reach and probes show that community members would back the project financially if only it was effectively happening.  Despite governmental incentives is not unusual, the initial setup of an organization present costs.  From registration to basic structure some projects rely on volunteers who can’t financially fund projects themselves.  And raising funds in a start-up nonprofit is particularly tricky since unviable projects not only fail to deliver service but also would not be able to refund early donors.  Moreover, projects that are not yet in production usually don’t have legal determination status, jeopardizing tax benefits to donors.

Continue reading→

Sharing economy, not power

Researchers Alex Rosenblat and Luke Stark´s paper “Uber’s Drivers: Information Asymmetries and Control in Dynamic Work” looks into labor relations in Uber.

There is evidence that automated performance and rating systems bring more power to Uber than traditional ‘non sharing’ way.

If one consider the possibility down the road of replacing human drivers for autonomous fleet it looks like our brave new economy will play old inequality plot.

Free will strikes back

The point of no return in vetoing self-initiated movements, published at PNAS by german researchers Matthias Schultze-Krafta, Daniel Birmana et al. brings evidence that people can stop ‘spontaneous’ movements even after brain is ready to execute this.

Even if it is the case that brain activity is ready as-if movement decision from 0,5 to a few seconds before awareness, conscious will may overrule this readiness and block movement as late as 200 ms before action.

Free will is on constant attack.  Apparently as soon as men were able to reason they sought scape goats.  Fate, wrath of gods, astrology, determinism, historical materialism, psychologism, providence, so on always look for arguments for their case.

Following contemporary trend, recent neurological studies are used in this debate.  If brain activity preceded awareness of some movements, our conscious ‘decisions’ would not be such at all.  Not only it was not conscious, since action was triggered before us being aware, arguably it was not our decision to begin with; ‘mere’ synaptic determinism.

Above mentioned researches focus on simpler processes when compared to typical free will debate, such as moral and social options.  Nothing of the sort about other decision making, from choosing one’s socks to dress to moral or political issues.

Read their research and their engineous approach to the matter.

“Women’s Works” by Peter Adamson

“Despite the ancient Oracle’s advice to ‘Know Thyself’, it’s only relatively recently that we philosophers have started wondering why so few of us are women. In fact, gender disparity among professional academic philosophers has now become something of a scandal. (…)  in the earlier ages studied by those historians, women were even more shut out of the discipline than they are today.

(…) The early modern period especially featured numerous prominent female thinkers, such as Margaret Cavendish and Anne Conway. They were active in the mid-1600s, more than a century before Mary Wollstonecraft’s 1790 work Vindication of the Rights of Women (I’m guessing that this is the earliest philosophical treatise by a woman that most philosophers would be able to name).

If we look further back, we find that the history of women in philosophy is as old as the history of philosophy itself. In the time of the Pre-Socratics (6th C. BCE) there was Theano, an associate of and possibly the wife of Pythagoras. Plato famously argues in his Republic that women would be philosophers in his ideal city. (…)

(…)

By the way, non-European traditions have also featured women. We find several female disputants in theUpanisads (6th C. BCE onwards), for example.

Of course, it is not enough to acknowledge the existence of these women thinkers and then turn back to studying only their more famous male contemporaries. (…) After all, when we study Aristotle or Kant, we don’t usually start with the observation that they were men; so why should we see Hipparchia or Hildegard as women first and philosophers second? (…)

If female philosophers are to be rescued from their undeserved obscurity, it will be by using the same tools that can illuminate male historical figures.(…) And if this richer historical picture gives encouragement to women who are considering whether to devote their lives to philosophy, then an improvement in our understanding of philosophy’s past might just help improve philosophy’s future.”

read full article

the rise of consciousness as a problem

In “I feel therefore I am“, an essay published in aeon, Margaret Wertheim sketches the history of consciousness as a problem.

“In An Essay Concerning Human Understanding (1690), John Locke wondered if ‘the same object should produce in several men’s minds different ideas at the same time; for example, the idea, that a violet produces in one man’s mind by his eyes, were the same that a marigold produced in another man’s, and vice versa.’ Now known to philosophers of mind as the inverted spectrum argument, Locke’s query points us to the mystery of subjective experience and its attendant problem of ‘consciousness’.(…)

First coined in 1995 by the Australian philosopher David Chalmers, this ‘hard problem’ of consciousness highlights the distinction between registering and actually feeling a phenomenon. (…)

As one of the founders of empiricism, Locke believed that knowledge comes primarily from sensory experience, with real knowledge beingfelt by conscious beings. In the 17th century, René Descartes had also insisted on the irreducible centrality of subjective experience (…)

(…)

The idea that the laws of nature might be able to account for conscious experience – a position known as physicalism – steadily gained supporters in the 19th century and was given a particular boost with the advent of Maxwell’s equations and other powerful mathematical frameworks devised by physicists in their golden age. (…)

Yet, as some philosophers of the early 20th century began to point out, physicalism contains a logical flaw. If consciousness is a secondary byproduct of physical laws, and if those laws are causally closed – meaning that everything in the world is explained by them (as physicalists claim) – then consciousness becomes truly irrelevant. (…)

These are fighting words. And some scientists are fighting back. In the frontline are the neuroscientists who, with increasing frequency, are proposing theories for how subjective experience might emerge from a matrix of neurons and brain chemistry. A slew of books over the past two decades have proffered solutions to the ‘problem’ of consciousness. Among the best known are Christof Koch’s The Quest for Consciousness: A Neurobiological Approach (2004); Giulio Tononi and Gerald Edelman’s A Universe of Consciousness: How Matter Becomes Imagination (2000); Antonio Damasio’s The Feeling of What Happens: Body and Emotion in the Making of Consciousness (1999); and the philosopher Daniel Dennett’s bluntly titled Consciousness Explained (1991).

It has been said that, if the 20th century was the age of physics, the 21st will be the age of the brain. Among scientists today, consciousness is being hailed as one of the prime intellectual challenges. My interest in the subject is not in any particular solution to the origin of consciousness – I believe we’ll be arguing about that for millennia to come – but rather in the question: why is consciousness perceived as a ‘problem’? How exactly did it become a problem? And given that it was off the table of science for so long, why is it now becoming such a hot research subject? (…) ” read full essay