Category Archives: Musing

Idle thoughts about current events, articles, etc.

Visual Perception, Abstraction and Reality

Posted on by
1

This could be a long post due to the depth of this topic.  However, I’m going to keep this one short. 

I suggest that our mind abstracts what our senses perceive to create context.  The context is dynamic as our senses measure change both in our bodies and in the surrounding “non-body”, aka the “world”, and both are in flux.  

When the mind abstracts, it chooses an abstraction model. We have a large number of them based on our experiences, and we can make more when needed which is often what is meant by the word “creativity”.  I use the term abstraction in the sense that it is a filter obscuring some sense input and some thought processes while focusing on and amplifying others.  This is common in our experience and easy to demonstrate.  Look out the window.  Make note of what you see.  Now, look at the wall of one building or a single tree or flower and focus on the colors, lines, cracks, texture and shadows.  This adjusts your abstraction model and allows information of this kind to be particularly noticed, but now you are not focused on the larger scale context.  In your first look out the window you did not see these details as the abstraction filter at that time was tuned to the scale of the entire landscape in front of you.  Scale, context, sensing, emotions and abstraction models are important parts of what the mind is doing.  I think these processes are what we mean when we describe what conciousness means.  I’ll not dwell on them in this post, but they are important, in constant flux, not static, and go unnoticed unless we take some effort to direct the mind’s attention to them.

There are a variety of optical illusions that demonstrate that once an abstraction filter is selected, we tend to keep using it unless we are confronted with a problem for which the filter is not useful.  The one I always use to illustrate this is the picture that can be seen as a beautiful woman with elaborate hat, or an old women with large nose and white bonnet.  If you see one image you can not see the other.  In fact, the first time you see this image your mind will select one context and associate image.  You will not see the other image until you are told there is another image and you should try and find it.

Optical illusions are a demonstration not only of  how the mind processes sensory data, but at a deep level, of the way thinking is performed.  We think with abstractions (filters) and without concicious effort, we do not immediately search for an alternative abstraction so long as the current one is “suitable”.  Here, suitable means self-consistent and satisfying.  We sense when the information we are thinking about, filtered by the abstractions we are currently using, don’t make “sense” of ourselves and the world in the current context.  We emotionally feel what “don’t make sense” is as an uncomfortable feeling of inconsistency, or lack of wholeness, or completeness.  I suggest that sensing inconsistency is part of what Pirsig draws attention to when he focuses on Quality and its role in his Metaphysics of Quality.  High Quality contains consistency, while lack of consistency lowers Quality.

Okay, now for a practical application of abstraction filters.  You may have been keeping up with the current political debate about the budget.  President Obama published and reviewed his proposal for the 2012 budget (note, we currently don’t have a budget for 2011 and continue to operate on “funding resolutions”, but that’s another story).  There is wide agreement on the necessity to reduce the deficit. This agreement is at the scale you saw when you first looked out the window.  The arguments are over the details and methods of achieving deficit reduction.  That shifts the scale of your thinking, so you should be open to shifting you abstraction filter.

To help you decide what is an appropriate abstraction filter for this scale of thinking, take a look at this diagram and direct your thinking to how you would create a consistent (higher Quality) path toward reducing the deficit.

http://www.nytimes.com/packages/html/newsgraphics/2011/0119-budget/index.html

In closing, its important to understand how systemic and instinctual the use of abstraction filters is for our mind as it makes sense of us and the surrounding world.  Once filters are selected we tend to continue using them, even when the context (scale) has shifted.  If you are more aware of the mind’s tendancy to keep using a filter, you can more freely look for other abstraction filters (or even create new ones if we want to) that are better suited to the context so the consistency of your thinking (Quality) is improved.

PS:  I just bumped into this article from O’reilly Radar and the accompanying video about the magazine business.  I think this illustrates the role of abstraction filters (in this context, the abstraction of a profit model in the magazine business) and the need to change them when there is dramatic shift in “scale”.

Video:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=QRtWGnNPTc4

Article:
http://radar.oreilly.com/2011/02/sam-jones-online-content.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+oreilly%2Fradar%2Fatom+%28O%27Reilly+Radar%29

Is It Time for Isaac Asimov’s Laws of Robotics?

Posted on by
Reply

I noted last night on the News Hour on PBS, a report on the IBM Watson computer playing Jeopardy.  And this morning, I happened across this note on “Trends to Watch, Formal Relationships Between Governments and Hackers“.  I could summarize that article as, “How the next world war will be fought and what the battlefield will be”.

If we combine these two articles, we get an interesting notion of a potential future.  One where computing can analyze human conversation, and act, and where the power of networks to connect, are used to disrupt a nation in war time. 

An unseen risk is the fact common components and software (think Intel chips and Linux for example) are becoming ubiquitous.  Exploits to hack these components can have wide ranging application.  Said differently, and in a biological way, if we develop a computing based species (as the Watson story hints at), it would be a good idea to have enough gentic diversity to prevent an infection in one species from overwhelming the entire “biosphere”.  We have seen this in the PC market where infections of Intel+Microsoft Windows “species” don’t carry over to the Apple, or RIM species.

For some time, science fiction has provided stories of many futures where computing becomes sentient.  Isaac Asimov in the I Robot series in 1950 explored this notion.  Perhaps its time for a modern version of his three laws of robotics to be applied to computing in its broadest sense as we seem to be heading down a road where world-wide agreement on the “rules of war” in a cyberage, before we wage that war, might be a good idea.

Words, Language, Reality, Fragmentation and Flow

Posted on by
6

I’ve been doing some reading along a particular vein of thought that is rooted in metaphysics and which I first encountered in Robert Pirsig’s book “Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance“.  After a conversation with my friend Pete who just read the book, I quickly created a post, Everything is Connected, that tried to blend physics (cosmology) with Zen.  I like the 1st part of the proof, the Big Bang, but not the second part,  “YOU” are reality.  So, I decided to reread Zen and the Art which I hadn’t done in a while.

I had commented in my post on Minds, Knowledge, Well Being and Education about the need for deeper theory about how the mind works, how we acquire knowledge and well being (IMHO, you need to strive for both) and how these are influenced by the formal education model in the United States.  That lead to me to some observations about brain plasticity courtesy of Rachel who provided me a book on that subject. 

As often happens when you focus your mind on something, serendipity occurs.  I ran into an article in this month’s Scientific American, How Language Shapes Thought, about a study of how language affects the understanding (knowledge) of time and space.  And then, of all places, I ran across an article, “Etiology of the Motorcycle Phenomenon”, by James Smith, February 2011 issue, pg 82, of the BMW Owners News, published by the BMW Motorcycle Owners of America, with references that led me to “Wholeness and the Implicate Order“, by David Bohm.

My, that was a lot of background wasn’t it?  Sorry about that, but you need some context for what comes next.

So, here’s the train of logic that’s growing out of all this. 

Knowledge defines your Reality (aka, worldview, mythos, truth, certainty, etc.) 
Language defines your Knowledge. 
Words define your Language. 

Humanity has a LOT of languages around 7,000 or so, so on a cultural level, there could be about 7,000 classes of reality going on at the same time.  All of them “real” by the way.

Pirsig tackles the question of what “reality” is (hint, it’s not a thing, more like a process, so it’s dynamic, not fixed), illustrates what insanity is (by personal experience) and along the way talks a lot about two fundamentally different ways to acquire knowledge, loosely defined as eastern and western.  He talks about how at the beginning of the western way (at the time of the Greek civilization) there were two branches of how to become knowledgeable about reality, one of which was like the eastern way.  He shows how one eliminated the other, and identifies Aristotle as the archetype of the winning side, now known as “western thought” or civilization.  He hints at the roll of language in defining what is “knowable”, how it is known and ultimately, how it fixes reality into the mythos and logos. (loosely, culture and logic), ultimately leading us away from a workable understanding of reality in today’s western culture.

I’m reading Bohm’s book, which I haven’t finished yet, and he provides in the 1st 60 pgs or so a concise discussion of the problems in western society, the role language has played in creating them and proposes a new set of words to overcome the limitations of our existing language so our knowledge of reality is more complete. Pirsig and Bohm are amazingly complimentary in their writing and the confluence of the two is very thought provoking.

To sum it up, both agree that unbounded fragmentation is the root cause of much (all?) of the dysfunctional behavior of western societies (Pirsig identifying this dysfunction with a growing inability to recognize the role Quality plays).  Both draw attention to why “flow” is important and how it gets overlooked — in part, due to language that doesn’t adequately convey its meaning and so, keeps its value and importance out the conversation.

Now, it’s the focus on “flow” that got the article published in the BMW ON magazine as a metaphysical basis for the reason MC riders do what they do.  One of the references cited lead me to Bohm’s books.  It’s the pursuit of flow and corresponding reduction of fragmentation that motorcyclists seek. (That could explain my posts on 1,000, and 2,000 mile rides 🙂 )

If you let that one soak in for a bit, you start drawing some conclusions about why we avidly pursue the things we do, what makes some of us hate our jobs (or life in general), and even why Egypt and Tunisia are engaged in the changes going on today.  I think its “flow” that balances knowledge with well being.  Humans need flow to achieve that balance, and both Pirsig and Bohm’s metaphysics are based on flow as the unifying principle of reality.   

Just thought I’d share … I can hear you chewing, but am waiting for the sound of swallowing.

I’m Curious … Annoyed

Posted on by
3

I’ve had a number of incidents in the last week, starting with my first ski trip of the season, which caused me to scratch my head in curiosity … after being annoyed.   

I’m curious, is self-absorption acceptable now?

As I am starting to get into the line to get on a chair lift, a young man on a snow board slides into me at the entrance to the line, unbuckles his boots, and proceeds to get in front of me.  He looks right at me, and says not a word.  So, I engage him in conversation.  Nothing, absolutely no response, and he is still looking at me.  So I continue to try and get his attention with “Yo, do you speak English?”.  At that point he removes the ear buds from his ears and says “What?”.  I apologize for having bumped into him in the lift line.  He stands staring at me with his mouth open.  Yes, he bumped into me, not I into him, and his reaction clearly shows he knew that he did.

I’m curious, does rushing mean you are allowed to be rude?

I’m working on a project with a short deadline that includes about 10 other people in different departments.   I get Emails that don’t even contain my name at the beginning.  They just start with a demand to do something.   It’s been my experience that time pressure leads to short fuses.  So politeness is more, not less necessary.  Is this a generational thing?  If so, I’m glad I’m a member of “my generation” and not the ones addicted to rushing and using it as an excuse for rudeness.

I’m curious, does random action trump thoughtful planning?

I’ve been on far too many conference calls lately where no one wishes to plan anything, or be thoughtful about the consequences of their actions.  Attempts to have a published agenda, keep on track to the topic or raise questions about complex issues are met with “Well, we don’t have time to boil the ocean.”  The inevitable result is “scrap and rework” at the 12th hour when there is even less time to think through the implications of last minute, rash decisions, and the deadline often slips as well.  How does this deliver value, profit or any sense of pride in one’s work?

Just thought I’d share.  Are you as curious as I am, or am I the only one without a clue?

Everything Is Connected

Posted on by
2

Really, is that true? 

As background, I had lunch on Friday with a long time friend and fellow motorcycle lover, Pete Mathews.  He had just finished reading one of my favorite books, “Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance” by Robert Pirsig.  I mentioned to him some time ago it was a great book and he should read it some time.  As I worked on the build of my 1975 R7/6 into an “S” model, I also wrote about Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Rebuilding, because I found myself living quite a number of the examples of “gumption traps”, which lower quality quickly, that Pirsig describes in his book.

Pete was … “captured” is the word … by the scope and premise of the book and the life of Mr. Pirsig.  I mentioned that I had reread it about eight times since I bought the book in 1975.  He asked, “Why?”, and I had to stop and think about that question.  I said something to the affect that I reread it when things got too fragmented and confusing and I needed to revisit the cohesive beauty of Pirsig’s world view. The book was written in the early 1970’s at a time when the country was very fragmented, and in part, Pirsig wrote the book to illustrate a way to remove that fragmentation and the needless animosity and misunderstanding it fostered.  I felt that Prisig wrote the book so he could focus on the question of what can unify technology and its adherents with the arts and their adherents.  He came up with a simple “grand unified theory”, which is quality and its pursuit. 

As an aside, I suspect Pirsig believed that as the pursuit of quality unifies art and technology, it also unifies the individual and keeps him sane.  He himself achieves a unification after he went insane, partly due to electroshock therapy and partly due to the his refusal to stop pursuing quality. For the rest of the story, you should read the book.

Now, I want to offer a demonstration, if not prove, that everything is, and always has been, connected.  That’s part of what Pirsig wrote about, the connection of seemingly disparate things by discovering easily overlooked connections. 

Let’s start at the beginning, The Big Bang, as science has pretty convincing shown, was the start of it all.  You will find that the Big Bang is a point – literally – and as such, contains everything that is evident (and not so evident) in the universe.  For the not so evident part, look into the subject of Dark Matter and Dark Energy (not related), both of which were “not evident” until recently.  If the Big Bang contains everything, then at the moment of the Big Bang, there was only one thing, the point.  Since then, and from that point, in both time and space, all the diversity of the universe evolved, including you. 

Hmm … So Everything WAS connected at the FIRST moment of the Big Bang.

Now, let’s move from the Big Bang, where quantum physics and cosmology are unified, to living things: to be specific, YOU and only YOU.  Let me ask a simple question, “What is reality”?  That question and it’s answer, of course, is not something entirely within the realm of science, but bridges over into metaphysics, philosophy and religion.  There are paradoxes and conundrums deep within that question, and Pirsig digs into them to a certain extent in his book. 

One view, which I am growing to accept, is that reality can not be defined as something distinct from your existence.  Without your existence, there is no reality.  Said differently, YOU connect everything together based on how your brain creates patterns out of the simulus it constantly receives.  The system that you call reality always consists of the world around you AND more specifically YOU, and YOUR brain’s mental patterns: its all inseparable. 

Trying to separate YOU from the rest of reality introduces the conundrums and paradoxes I referred to a moment ago. Pirsig shows in his book that when you artificially separate things: for example separating YOU from what you are working on, such as a motorcycle; or separating art from technology; then you miss out on quality, which is what connects YOU with everything you do.  And, should you create two realities, one for the world around you and another one for YOU, well, that way lies true mental insanity, at least it was the start of his insanity.

 Hmm — so Everything IS connected, at this very moment, by YOU.

Now, I said that everything WAS connected at the Big Bang which contained all time, space and everything within it, including YOU.  I also said that at this moment, everything IS connected by YOU, your brain and its patterns.  The Big Bang started it all, YOU are a part of it all, and YOU are what defines the present moment.  Therefore, everything is connected, and has been, for all space and time.

Ipso Facto, Everything is Connected.

What do you think?