We’ve all seen the stark headlines: “Being Rich and Successful Is in Your DNA” (Guardian, July 12); “A New Genetic Test Could Help Determine Children’s Success” (Newsweek, July 10); “Our Fortunetelling Genes” make us (Wall Street Journal, Nov. 16); and so on. The problem is, many of these headlines are not discussing real genes at all, but a crude statistical model of them, involving dozens of unlikely assumptions. Now, slowly but surely, that whole conceptual model of the gene is being challenged.
First, laboratory experiments have shown how living forms probably flourished as “molecular soups” long before genes existed. They self-organized, synthesized polymers (like RNA and DNA), adapted, and reproduced through interactions among hundreds of components. That means they followed “instructions” arising from relations between components, according to current conditions, with no overall controller: compositional information, as the geneticist Doron Lancet calls it.
Then it was slowly appreciated that we inherit just such dynamical systems from our parents, not only our genes. Eggs and sperm contain a vast variety of factors: enzymes and other proteins; amino acids; vitamins, minerals; fats; RNAs (nucleic acids other than DNA); hundreds of cell signalling factors; and other products of the parents’ genes, other than genes themselves.
https://aeon.co/essays/your-brain-does-not-process-information-and-it-is-not-a-computer
Robert Epstein
No matter how hard they try, brain scientists and cognitive psychologists will never find a copy of Beethoven’s 5th Symphony in the brain – or copies of words, pictures, grammatical rules or any other kinds of environmental stimuli. The human brain isn’t really empty, of course. But it does not contain most of the things people think it does – not even simple things such as ‘memories’.
Our shoddy thinking about the brain has deep historical roots, but the invention of computers in the 1940s got us especially confused. For more than half a century now, psychologists, linguists, neuroscientists and other experts on human behaviour have been asserting that the human brain works like a computer.
To see how vacuous this idea is, consider the brains of babies. Thanks to evolution, human neonates, like the newborns of all other mammalian species, enter the world prepared to interact with it effectively. A baby’s vision is blurry, but it pays special attention to faces, and is quickly able to identify its mother’s. It prefers the sound of voices to non-speech sounds, and can distinguish one basic speech sound from another. We are, without doubt, built to make social connections.
A healthy newborn is also equipped with more than a dozen reflexes – ready-made reactions to certain stimuli that are important for its survival. It turns its head in the direction of something that brushes its cheek and then sucks whatever enters its mouth. It holds its breath when submerged in water. It grasps things placed in its hands so strongly it can nearly support its own weight. Perhaps most important, newborns come equipped with powerful learning mechanisms that allow them to change rapidly so they can interact increasingly effectively with their world, even if that world is unlike the one their distant ancestors faced.
Senses, reflexes and learning mechanisms – this is what we start with, and it is quite a lot, when you think about it. If we lacked any of these capabilities at birth, we would probably have trouble surviving.
But here is what we are not born with: information, data, rules, software, knowledge, lexicons, representations, algorithms, programs, models, memories, images, processors, subroutines, encoders, decoders, symbols, or buffers – design elements that allow digital computers to behave somewhat intelligently. Not only are we not born with such things, we also don’t develop them – ever.
We don’t store words or the rules that tell us how to manipulate them. We don’t create representations of visual stimuli, store them in a short-term memory buffer, and then transfer the representation into a long-term memory device. We don’t retrieve information or images or words from memory registers. Computers do all of these things, but organisms do not.
Computers, quite literally, process information – numbers, letters, words, formulas, images. The information first has to be encoded into a format computers can use, which means patterns of ones and zeroes (‘bits’) organised into small chunks (‘bytes’). On my computer, each byte contains 8 bits, and a certain pattern of those bits stands for the letter d, another for the letter o, and another for the letter g. Side by side, those three bytes form the word dog. One single image – say, the photograph of my cat Henry on my desktop – is represented by a very specific pattern of a million of these bytes (‘one megabyte’), surrounded by some special characters that tell the computer to expect an image, not a word.
Computers, quite literally, move these patterns from place to place in different physical storage areas etched into electronic components. Sometimes they also copy the patterns, and sometimes they transform them in various ways – say, when we are correcting errors in a manuscript or when we are touching up a photograph. The rules computers follow for moving, copying and operating on these arrays of data are also stored inside the computer. Together, a set of rules is called a ‘program’ or an ‘algorithm’. A group of algorithms that work together to help us do something (like buy stocks or find a date online) is called an ‘application’ – what most people now call an ‘app’.
Forgive me for this introduction to computing, but I need to be clear: computers really do operate on symbolic representations of the world. They really store and retrieve. They really process. They really have physical memories. They really are guided in everything they do, without exception, by algorithms.
Humans, on the other hand, do not – never did, never will. Given this reality, why do so many scientists talk about our mental life as if we were computers?
…
— CONTINUED —
A Glimpse into El Bulli and Ferran Adria
The El Bulli lab starts at 11:30
Ferran Adrià Cooking Demonstration at the Worlds Premier Culinary College
I teach during this time (12:00 - 3:00) on Tuesdays. Maybe we could demo lounge systems last?
Best,
Byron
On Wed, Nov 21, 2018 at 7:03 AM sxw asu <sxwasu@gmail.com> wrote:
Hi Everyone,--Let's do as we can an extended campfire Tuesday Nov 27 afternoon 1:30 - 3:30 in iStage / Lounge to demonstrate what’s been done this semester.For example:Stauffer• Cafe / Leslie, Connor, Yanjun, Christy (walk to Stauffer Lounge)• Stauffer Lounge tour / Byron• ? Lamps / AlexiaiStage• Cafe / Leslie, Connor, Yanjun, Christy (walk to Stauffer Lounge)• Lamps / Alexia• Thermal economies; light games / Garrett, Andrew• Modalys instruments; physical modeling / Emiddio• State engine workshop: Brandon (bring your own laptops + sc)Please add to this what else you’d like to see / show from this Fall.Since this week we don’t have Synthesis ops — American Thanksgiving! — confirm by email.Megan, can we document this? Everyone do also take your own pictures for respective project pages…
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Byron Lahey, PhD
Arizona State University
School of Arts, Media and Engineering
Arizona State University
School of Arts, Media and Engineering
Assistant Professor, Digital Culture
Honors Faculty
byron.lahey@asu.edu
byron.lahey@asu.edu
Very cool! Lots of interesting work. The science toy work looks really fun.
I'll do everything I can to evolve our projects here.
Best,
Byron
For those of us interested in animate materials, responsive environments, sonic interaction design,
Prof. Karmen Franinovic is a friend and alumna of the pioneering TGarden and txOom responsive playspace environments who’s become a world authority on animate materials and responsive environments. Karmen is probably coming with students to TEI from Zurich.
Shall we plan on having work on animated light, animated materials, puppetry ready to show Karmen by February? It would be marvellous to connect with that network of creative researchers in the EU.
Xin Wei
Begin forwarded message:From: Franinovic Karmen <karmen.franinovic@zhdk.ch>
Subject: Re: Arizona in March
Date: November 23, 2018 at 9:36:06 AM EST
To: Sha Xin Wei <shaxinwei@gmail.com>
Here is the test for the one we would showand the one we wouldn’tYes, it would be really great. I have a parallel line of work wich goes more open environments - we did a research project on airand worked with students at Stomboli and this year in Pula, and plan to do a course on underwater environments!So desert is also appealing - have been looking at the work you did with Maja and RonHugs and looking forward to exchange soon!KarmenOn 23 Nov 2018, at 15:11, Sha Xin Wei <shaxinwei@gmail.com> wrote:Hi Karmen,Wow That'd be great to see!You know, it’s been incredibly gratifying and inspiring to see the marvelous trajectories of work that we each have done since the TGarden....Including the state-engine work we’ve finally matured in a fresh generation with the “sc” responsive media environment that now works with all sorts of variable fields of light, sound, video, mist, water, and air. We’d love to work with your poetic materials — maybe when you’re out we can see if we can join forces to make some inspiring events or installations!By the way we’ve re-launched a new search for Expressive Mechatronics and Robotics. I’ll send out the job call asap!Xin Wei
Hi Everyone,
Let's do as we can an extended campfire Tuesday Nov 27 afternoon 1:30 - 3:30 in iStage / Lounge to demonstrate what’s been done this semester.
For example:
Stauffer
• Cafe / Leslie, Connor, Yanjun, Christy (walk to Stauffer Lounge)
• Stauffer Lounge tour / Byron
• ? Lamps / Alexia
iStage
• Cafe / Leslie, Connor, Yanjun, Christy (walk to Stauffer Lounge)
• Lamps / Alexia
• Thermal economies; light games / Garrett, Andrew
• Modalys instruments; physical modeling / Emiddio
• State engine workshop: Brandon (bring your own laptops + sc)
Please add to this what else you’d like to see / show from this Fall.
Since this week we don’t have Synthesis ops — American Thanksgiving! — confirm by email.
Megan, can we document this? Everyone do also take your own pictures for respective project pages…
From steam to fusion to alchemy
Final keynote for the
Leonardo 50th Anniversary Convening
San Francisco Art Institute
4 November 2018
sensor data ≠ emotions!
sensor data ≠ emotions!
sensor data ≠ emotions!
sensor data ≠ emotions!
sensor data ≠ emotions!
Piet Hut
astrophysics, computation, awareness
Institute for Advanced Studies
Princeton
YHouse Research
The main theme of YHouse research is the study of the origins and nature of awareness. Awareness is an umbrella term that includes consciousness, cognition, intelligence, and similar terms that have more specific meaning in particular academic fields, and sometimes rather different meanings in different fields.
Consciousness is clearly correlated with brain states, but is it produced by brains? If so, it's very different from the way an organ like the liver produces a compound like bile. What does it actually mean to use the word production to talk about consciousness? It can be easy to fall into the trap of thinking about consciousness as a kind of subtle substance.
Cognition is a term that covers more than consciousness, applying to unconscious processes that lead to knowledge. But it is also less complete in other ways; typically studying consciousness from the outside, from a third-person view, leaving out the perspective of first-person direct experience.
Intelligence is often seen as highly successful logical inference, as in the term artificial intelligence, thereby excluding notions such as emotional intelligence, or street smarts – behaviors that can be associated with intelligence, but in a way that cannot be easily quantified or formalized.
Five Modules
What should a university look like in the 21st Century? Part of the YHouse mission is to explore that question, to find a better way to do research, and to help grow a brand new generation of thinkers. At YHouse, modules are not traditional departments, they are low-walled zones of focus, specifically designed to foster abundant interdisciplinary collaboration, coexisting beneath one physical roof.
Individual modules have a strong disciplinary core of three senior researchers carrying out top-level disciplinary work together but also pioneering explorations in novel interdisciplinary directions across modules. A larger number of early-career researchers and postdocs divide their efforts according to their interests at any given time, either focused within specific modules or linking across few or even many.
In their investigation of awareness, Modules 1, 2, and 3 represent the three main stages of biosphere evolution: from the origins and major transitions of life, to culture, and to technology. These stages date back, roughly speaking, to four billion, forty thousand, and forty years ago, spanning the first living cell, the first cave paintings, and the first practical applications of artificial intelligence.
Modules 4 and 5 reflect on the similarities and differences between the structures studied in the first three modules, in pursuit of the origins and nature of awareness, as well as the nature of the transitions between those modules. Module 4 focuses on philosophy, in the widest sense of the word, while module 5 has more directly practical aims; bringing science, philosophy, and wisdom to bear on the major problems currently facing the world.