Me, transient,

spinning safely in my basin

of a sudden conditions change

circumstances change

parameters change

what attracts me, change

there's the floor, morphing

and with it, me, tracing

the path

of least resistance

so I foretell, where

this will impel,

me?

i know the direction

it's somewhere along

this multi-D space

of infinite potentials

and constrained paths

that branch indefinitely

that way

as i stroll so do the rocks beneath:

yesterday i was crossing a river

now am I hopping along.

The bible lies to us

My peers and I used to jokingly call the 'Principles of Neuroscience', edited by the nobel Erik Kandel, 'The Bible'.

It lies to us.

The first sentence of chapter 62 on Learning and Memory of the 4th Edition states bluntly:

"Behavior is the result of the interaction between genes and the environment."

So, my genes told me to say no. Because they interacted with the environment, through me, and concluded that actually behavior is the interaction of me with the environment. My genes do not want to receive all the blame for my flaws and mistakes. They do not want to be held responsible for my bad decisions.

Typical attitude of biological reductionists: focus on the nanoscopic to the eclipse of the organism.

Beware! The bible lies to us!

Ode to Neuroscientists

Yesterday I ventured upon
A fancy dream i’m on,
I wanted to probe it, so
I unleashed the tools I’m told!

Subject matter of my inquisition
Is an endless source of fruition
Many a scientist has gone at lengths
To study the mind, the brain, no less!

The brain is made of strange matter!
In the pinnacle strain, no better!

Is today’s mode the electro-intrusion?
First, I bore you with opaque introduction,
Then, do I lay down the bare facts
Next, explain them with swell locution,
But beware! To wise men, no caress!

Then gather some many firings
into a bunch of mysterious clusters:
Neatly convolved in this way
The birth of meaning awaits!

When all was done, I turned sad:
“All questions answered”, I said,
Though we know all, including pain!
In cranium-cage confined, we remain!

Contradiction resolved in a blast

Contradiction cannot exist in nature.
Things are either this way or that way.
Woudn't it be great,
if humans were thus constrained?

Truth and falsehood
mutually annulled
each other out

perpetrator un(im)ploded!

Back to the white board:

We hypothesized fact
it is either this or that
how about both?
boom! and good riddance!

This is a humble offering
For the love of language
And the hatred of
counterfactual conditionals
Or not?
Boom!

All your bases are belong to us

We (computational neuroscientists) come in peace.

Group Theory In Verse

James Newman summarized group theory as follows:

The theory of groups

is a branch of mathematics

in which

one does something

to something

and then

compares
the results

with

the result

of doing the same thing

to something else,

or something else

to the same thing.

Wobbling Shadows and Flickering Lights

Shining a light onto a suspended object against a surface projects a shadow, an aspect of the real thing. Imagine we have no access to the object, but only to its projected shadow. Imagine we can move a point light around the obstruction, a transformation, and we can choose the shape of the projection surface. Then, if the light emitted by a point and the center of the object are perpendicular to a plane projection surface, the shadow is a circle. Bringing the light source closer to the object renders a growing circle, and moving it further away, renders a shrinking circle. If we move the point light so that the line between the light and the center of the object is not perpendicular to the plane surface, then the shadow becomes an ellipsoid. Moving it further down renders a hyperbole, a section of the light cone. If the wall is not a plane, then the shadow is a product of the light cone and the projection screen, and will have features of both the object and of the wall.

Empirical methods of brain measurement are like a combination of a light source and a projection screen. The measurement produced is a product of all three, the object, the light and the wall. We want to discover the essence of the object, we are bound however, to the light and the screen.

Imagine further that if at every single time one shines a light, the projected shadow is a slightly different one. Say we cannot see the screen, but only the shadow. Measurements of brain function are like that. It is as if the wall is constantly changing, and the light source is flickering. We try to make out the occluded object, given the projected shadows that wobble as the light and surfaces change. We try to see beyond the light and the surface, summing up all the shadows, to try to discover the object itself. To find the truth itself: that there is no sphere.

The useful knowledge

Immanuel the wise wrote:

It is a real joy to see the ardour with which the older geometricians investigated these properties [of conical sections], not allowing themselves to be troubled by the question which shallow minds raise, as to the supposed use of such knowledge.

Some of my dear scientific peers seem to be assailed by the question that shallow minds raise. This comes to assuage (your research does not have to be useful) and incite (your questions have to be good).

If the outcome of your research is not a contraption (or a cure), should you contrite?

If the future we envision is about contraptions, yes. If the future is about wisdom, maybe not.

The questions we pose, solutions notwithstanding, form the social and cultural context for future questions. Live with it, you are important as a piece of the driving cog that poses questions. Your questions are their questions.

Research is not only about solving problems. It is about asking questions. Right?
Indeed, we are responsible for our research, but only inasmuch as it sets context.

We already have all the gadgets we can possibly need.
We will not find cure for society if we do not ask the right questions.

And on the seventh day, He rested

But what He should have done was revising.

Statistical Significance

This following dialog takes place in a hypothetical conference, a poster session, where scientific truth is sought for. A PhD student presents his latest data, about a particular phenomenon, quantified and plotted to the best of his knowledge. A prominent, statistically minded visitor regards intently the histogram plot in the poster. The visitor skeptically inquires:

- But it is statistically significant?

The student considers the question for a moment. He returns the intense stare of the visitor and defiantly replies:

- But are you?

The Meaning between Words

300 pages in one shot.
The meaning is there,

between the words.

In the space

between the words

anyone can draw
meaning.

(thanx to wordle.net)

The prickly problem of induction

We scientists (while logicians)
are left greatly perplexed
with the prickly problem of induction
(vide Rudolf)

What is the problem?
c ase
ca se
cas e
then rule?

this is no proof!
induced,
merely intuited,
may be indicted,
not vindicated!

Now.

Humans are induction tools
case case case rule
no problem!

Humans are induction tools
and this alone is evolution's sufficient proof
that induction works.

Sorta.

Scientist: the ventriloquist of nature

he believes
the puppet to be
the one saying
his words
but it's not

it is he who
is the puppet
and those are not
his words

those are strings,
waves that vibrate,
rever berate,
with the sounds
of his nature

Photogenic science

Science looks better in pictures.

The unfathomable of the wise

The unfathomable to the wise
Is the obvious to the dimwit
And vice-versa.

Who is who?

Psychology of Scales

The machine that will solve all the mysteries in science was inaugurated.
The Cern is there, up and running.
You may ask a question about the nature of the universe.

The New York times informs that the particle collisions that will answer that question require about 5 trillion electron-Volt. 5 Trillion.

Now. As a mechanical engineer I had to make the conversion to a unit that makes more sense to me. Like the Watt/second (W/s), or Joule.

5 10^12 / 1.6 10^-19 = 3.125.10^-7 J

That is, not that much energy, in fact. I don't suppose nature will sell its secrets so cheap.
(Yes, 3.125.10^-7 J is a lot energy for a particle. Is it enough?)

PS: Perhaps we find that the Higgs Bosom also does not have a mass.
Then what?

How many spikes in a J

A do-it-yourself experiment:

Question: How many action potentials (spikes) fit in a 'j'?

Step 1. Type the 'j' key (any key will do, really, just as long it produces a character. Shift, for example, does not), with one finger, in the editor of your choice, in intervals of t seconds, in this case t=4s.

Do it as fast as you can. (It is in principle not necessary. But in that case, in the end of the calculation you find the minimum number of spikes per jay. In math, it's cool to find the minimum).

jjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjj
jjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjj
jjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjj
jjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjj
jjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjj
jjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjj

Step 2. Count the numbers of 'j''s (or your preferred character) per line

jjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjj 24
jjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjj 28
jjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjj 25
jjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjj 23
jjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjj 22
jjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjj 19

Step 3. Calculate the geometric mean of j's per trial (see comments why), divide that by trial duration, convert to ms/j (1000/number). Here's the empirical formula:


where:
- nt is number of trials (number of lines)
- t is the duration of the trial
- ji is the number of j's in a trial

My Result:
170,2 ms per jay.

So, if the brain were sequential, 170 action potentials would fit in a jay.

Of course, the brain is parallel, so at any given milisecond, a number of neurons will be active. Say that the mean number of neurons activated per milisecond is between 10 000 and 100 000.

Then, the number of spikes fired for each of your j's ranges between:
1 700 000 - 17 000 000 (!)


I thought there would be less. It's just a jay.

Step 4. Now, do it with monkeys. If monkeys are faster than humans, publish it under the title:

"Typing: monkey needs less neuronal activity than humans"

All that is not here

All lists are fated to exclude what is not included in them.

Semi-Permeable Scientists

Science is a language,
and as such, it must be shared
before messages are transmitted.

Claude says a message needs
a transmitter, a receiver and a channel.

When we learn each other's language, we form a channel.
But we resist, a little, to infusions, or transfusions,
of meaning.

Like semi permeable membranes
Something passes, somethings stay.

The noise we see is not noise

As many may have noticed, digital cameras are subject to thermal noise, or pixel inversion.
Never mind the terminology.
But so are us. Subjects to noise, that is.
The darker it gets, the more noise.
Little colored pixels, that do not fit with the picture taken.
Perhaps a red pixel surrounded by black pixels.

Try this phenomenal experiment.
Close your shades and
Stare at the darkness.

Notice those little dots that flicker and fly around your visual field.
They are detrimental to the message, the information, the picture.
Your dark room.
The darker it gets, the more noise.

Those are equivalents to your camera's thermal noise, plus your brain noise.
Scientifically, it is really hard to tell the two apart, what is brain and what is eye.
But this is not the point.

The point is that noise is defined by 'that which is not signal'.
But we can see the noise. And can call it noise.
In that it becomes a signal.
A signal that you/your eyes/your brain are subject to random flickering.
But flickering is still a signal.

That noise is signal of noise*.
In that it ceases to be noise.

What a nifty perceptual paradox.

*E.T, with a high signal to noise ratio.

Meaning Plops into Existence

Meaning plops into existence.
It does not exist latent.
Does not exist without a perceiver.

It is not discovered, it is invented.

My claim: the apparatus for distinction is product of invention, not discovery. Invention of meaning is using (or co-opting) a system to perceive and act upon it.

Sometimes, we have no eye, and no ear, for distinction.
We cannot see the chemical gradients a bacteria does.
For it, there is meaning. For us, therein none.

So, things exist that are not distinguishable.
So, things exist, which have no meaning.
Meaning is only definable with an observer.

To Illustrate, a Behavioral Ecology Story:
Beavers protect their offspring from snakes by banging their tails.
That act dispels the snake.
The beavers invented a signal: banging tail.
The snakes respond and flee.

But it turns out that, according to research, the snakes shun from the heat, not from the noise or the sight or even the vibration, that the banging tails entail.
No infra-red vision beavers, AFAWK.

Essentially, Beavers cannot know, what the snakes perceive.
The meaning just exists, because the snake flees.
Not because the snake knows, what the beaver wants.

The meaning sent is not the meaning received.
But meaning is exchanged.
The participants behave meaningfully.
According to meanings they invented.
By being what they are.

A Slit in Reality

As a 1600x1200 wallpaper.

Epimenides Paradox Revisited

Recently published in Plos Biology:

Why Most Published Research Findings are False

From the article's abstract:

Simulations show that for most study designs and settings, it is more likely for a research claim to be false than true.

It's like saying: "All herein may be false, including this sentence"

Epimenides, would be proud: Science is but a version of The liar's paradox.
And simulations show.

Institute for Intuitively Advanced Physics - Time implicitly defined

Newton sees time as a divine chronometer:
every second is pulsating synchronous.
God's own stopwatch.

Leibniz sees time as motion. Everything moves.

Therefore, time is implicitly defined.

Affinity of compatriots, perhaps,
So, Einstein concurs with Leibniz.
He adds, when something moves fast,
the surrounding takes its time.

Or in other words, the fastest,
on the slower's eyes,
is also longer.

Picture a bunch of things,
moving at different speeds.
Call that time.

Everything at different pace,
Each racing its own race,
Each pacing its own rhyme.

Therefore, backwards in time is
No-more than vain construe
because:
time is defined implicitly
motion always takes the moving
away from now.

Heraclitus already said so.

The fading universe, at the edge of influences.

Premise:
Things generate fields, magnetic and gravitational.
Disclaimer:
They may or may not be unifiable, and for my next argument, it is irrelevant.
Theory:
Both these fields fall with the square of the distance. That is, fast.

Question:
where is the end of the universe?
Many of us have been taught to believe that the universe does not have an end.
Some of us have been told that it is a senseless question.

Answer:
The universe does not end, it fades out.
It goes asymptotically to nothingness.
Devoid of influences.
To exist is to interact.

Conclusion:
The something that IS, ONLY IS when it influences - up close.

Blocked by Abstraction

A thousand words.

Idolatrizing Bubbles

Ideas are like bubbles in a boiling pot.
When the temperature gets close to 100 C, there will be a 'first' bubble to bubble.

Ideas are the bubbles of the Zeitgeist, of the context, of the circumstance.

Had the first bubble waned, had it been frustrated, others would inexorably come.
Tautology: the first one to bubble is the first one to bubble.

Ideas want to effervesce.

Words like 'father of this', and 'seminal that' point back to individuals. But ideas are like droplets of water from saturated vapor: they will condense out of sheer necessity.

Condensation is an event, Evaporation is an event.

The primacy of the first bubble is irrelevant.
Given the normal conditions, it will boil.

No one ever heard of bubbles fighting over who bubbled first.
T'would be silly.

Simple Problems, Complex Solutions

Assume there exists a behavior of an organism one wants to model in a robot.
Assume further, there exist properties of the underlying structure, usually neurons, you hypothesize the behavior to be based on.

Know this: A solution can not be more interesting that the problem posed.
Again, differently: How interesting a solution is, is bounded by the problem.

To make a little robot avoid walls and to follow lights, mostly any property of a neuron will do. Those include delays, multiplicative synapses, spiking neurons, channel plasticity, moving dendrites, large networks, neuromodulators, different time scales, field potentials, and the list goes and goes. All afford equally interesting solutions.

Each not really very much, though.

Einstein said, and everyone knows: " make your solution as simple as possible but not simpler".

He could be talking about modeling of neural systems.

Continuous or Discrete?

As much a dilemma in physics as in the brain,
it is my contention it can be solved with a blurb.

Continuous is discrete smeared, through stochasticity,
Discrete is continuous lumped, through statistics.

Solved!

Circular solution, admittedly, but those are good.
It tells us reality is not made of formalisms.

The Fall of the Fugitive Fancy

This little idea was born,
vaporous brevity, since bygone,
such a deviously defiant smile!
I long to meet you again,
If I have it my way, in a mini-while!

Now in pursuit,
of the spirited fugitive.
Soon i'll have it,
the slippery evocative

Little Brat!

I feel I know it's trace
we've been there together
I tread it back to the very place
back to our subject matter!

Oh, I feel, I'll soon have it back,
it left its clues, I smell its scent
Oh, you hiding beneath the stack
Layer after layer - deep you descent!

Gotcha!

You won't escape me now,
Feel my tight embrace,
You, transitory little you!
as if from me you could cut loose!

Why, you gag? what's the issue?
you can't breathe, can you?
Are you in need of tissue?
Oh, it's air you want, you suffocate!

Oh, my furtive unborn child
In unbound love of thee
strangled thee, oh beloved child!
Wanted to have you so badly
I put you off for life!

Alas, perhaps t'was best.

Act after the fact

Are GMO's (genetically modified organisms) good or bad?
Truth is, this is a case-based case. Decision depends on the case under gaze.

Problem: the outcome can only be seen when it's conspicuously there. We may discuss all the potential danger, but until one turns out to be the case, it is just an exercise in conjecturing.

But. We humans cluster judgements - from conjectures into laws - because if we don't generalize, we can't act.

So, inexorability of disaster: between the hypothesis of hunger (no GMOs) and worldwide intoxication (with GMOs) we will only know when they are there.

Makes our efforts in preventing them pretty pointless. Put us in the brink of disaster.

Sound the Alarms! Run like a mad man! Whatever direction!

Mental Joystick

The brain was evolved for controlling hands, not pong.

Wouldn't it be cool if we could control stuff with the power of thought?
Consider the following musings.

In control, we sometimes have the impression that our hands get in our way. That they are the ones that make us clumsy. We are convinced that in our heads the action is perfect, and precisely specified. So, we cogitate, wouldn't control be better if we could execute it, bypassing the hands? By manipulating the ideal in our heads, we achieve Platonic perfection!

Beware! There is an ideal of the perfect action in our minds, but the actions that our mind deploys to achieve the ideals are not ideal.

Think about a circle. Your head can do it, why can't your hand? Wouldn't it be better to output the ideal, instead of the actions to achieve it?
Problem: you would be surprised to know that your idea of a circle might not be as round as you first thought.

Actions in space and time need correction. In learning we don't educate our hands, we educate our brains, to control. The hands get exercise, the brain gets feedback.
And the error feedback comes in forms, maybe sound, maybe visual. We may pursue an ideal, but in incremental steps.

Get rid of the hands, and we have the impression that we are going to be more efficient.
But when we have anesthetized hands, that is, numb and without feedback, we become all clumsy. It is not the hands we can't control, is that there is no isolated ideal of the action, without the feedback the action is not the same. Don't blame the hands, they only goof off when they are not there!

We think that our thinking executes perfect actions because we have them in ideal mental form. But we will learn that to implement ideals, in the world, is the result of a recursive process of (1) execution, (2) comparison and (3) correction. In the world, the mental joystick requires hands.

Cognitive Neuroscience: Concealing the Obvious

A title of a recent article in Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience (MIT Press) is:

Moving on Time: Brain Network for Auditory-Motor Synchronization is
Modulated by Rhythm Complexity and Musical Training

What it says is in fact this:

It is harder to play an instrument, when the rhythm is difficult and without musical training.

One easy way to get published in cognitive neuroscience in 3 steps:

1 find some blatant truths about cognition
2 confirm them using expensive equipment.
3 come up with a convolute title that obscures the obvious.
4 get published in a major journal

5 Optional: go back to step 1

The most important part of speech

According to Aristotle, is the noun. Because without it, there is nothing to talk about.
True, but without adjectives, you cannot define 'important'.

Canonical problem of reductionists: focus on one side, to the eclipse of the other.

For organisms, the meaning of object integrates adjectives and nouns.
For organisms, to perceive an object is to know, at once, whether it's good or bad.
For organisms, there is no object devoid of value.
Because no value, means no organism.

Mark says shakespeare said "There is nothing intrinsically bad, but thinking makes it so".

Polarizing the Debate

Talk about something, and suddenly it pops into existence.

Nature reports on a peer-reviewed journal, edited by creationists.
(Nature 24, Jan. 2008, Vol. 451, N. 7177)

No doubt, the Nature article discredits the creationists journal as pseudo.

But talking about it makes it salient.

As does this post.

Selling gold claims cheap

In the European Conference for Artificial life, some of my dear peers complained about the average quality of the articles.

It reflects the experience of my peers with scientific publishing.
My experience mirrors theirs, but.

I recall: the first contact with Artificial Life is a refreshing and dazzling experience. But the more one reads (anything in the field), the more anything starts to sound uninspired and repetitive.

True. But ideas are as gold (novelty) in mines (journals): the more one extracts, more elusive the gold.

But t'has always been so: explorers are the discoverers.

Heraclitus said: those that search for gold dig much dirt and find little.

Disbelievers have always stayed at home or given up in face of adversity.
Selling their gold claims cheap.

Lump of clay metaphor

I understood Genesis, and the birth of man. In a godless way.
The key to the metaphor is:
Creation is conception: out of nothing, something.
´Human is clay´ is a developmental statement.

Bollocks to the literal interpretation of the scriptures.
Great books.

Shoot First

Occurred to me yesterday, cued by the fireworks.
If you are ever involved in gun duel, shoot before your hear the other´s gun bang.
The bullet´s faster than the speed of sound: you will hear the bang after receiving the bullett.
Obvious, but i would hate to see a friend of mine being killed because he never thought about this.

(instead of happy new year)
Moment's greetings.

The world was never simple

In evolutionary psychology, it is usual to refer to evolution as adaptation to increasingly complex environments.

Was there ever a moment when the world was simple or static?

Both, the world for the archea and bacteria, and ours, are comparable in complexity.

So, evolution was not aiming to open the perception channels to complexity.
Or was it?

The universe is tasteless

and also colorless.
Neither cold nor hot, it sees
neither bright nor dark, its touch is
neither soft or hard. It is,
therefore, senseless.

It is neither far nor close,
so directionless,
neither big nor small,
so sizeless,
neither now nor then,
so timeless.

But our world is not.
In our world, the universe is
cooling down,
cooling down, cooling down.

Praise Protagoras.

Just add feathers

Evolution is a tinkerer, and does not foresee forthcoming adaptations. 

A friend of mine causes upheaval when he moves his ears.

The muscle for that is, in all likelihood, not adapted for this particular function.

But just imagine if the ears became wings.

Sure shot selective advantage.

I would be jealous. I can't move my ears.

The Measure of all things

Rhetoric question for Protagoras:

If the man is the measure of all things,
what is the measure of man?

We are our only instruments for measuring reality.

Evolution in the making

Australians have a problem with rabbits.
They built a fence to stop the spread. Bunnies die of hunger, as they are unable to cross it.
Now, an evolutionary dilemma:

How to evolve?
A small mutation could make a male rabbit jump higher and up the fence.
Another could make a female rabbit grow teeth to cut barbwires.*
But, in all likelihood, the offspring of this putative rabbit couple will lose the mutations. Pure statistics.

Conclusion:
Imposing fitness doesn't alone create function.

So: adaptation doesn't work under pressure.**

How is that for counter intuitive.

*Even with the assumption that the step of evolution in these two cases is possible.
** More (and better) on this: 'Spandrels of San Marcos', by Stephan J. Gould and Richard Lewontin (1978).

Gridwars Logo

Great Game. Had no proper logo.
Problem solved.

Happy Neural Groups

I recently held a lecture in my dear univeristy of osnabrück on Gerald Edelman's theory of neuronal group selection. I am partial to the theory, because despite its strongly analytic character, has some models that have the right feel to them, as in the post below.

It inspired me to produce a neuronal group. This one is a fractal i rendered with the nice fractal generating software context free.

Explanatory Inertia

For my science peers:

Have you ever considered that even if the truth* had already been found, that we will linger on, in oblivion?

Academia and Scientific Publishing just have too humongous a mass, to be able to stop.

The 1989 RCI model of the visual system strikes me as truer than bleeding edge.


* That is, assuming for a fleeting second that there is some such thing as Truth.

Science needs visualizations

What would be of our Results
If we could not form the data
To fit with our Mental Imagery?

As you can see,
This plot means something.

(to clarify: this post is sarcasm laden. See the axis.) 

Amusing Sidetracks

A friend has pointed out to me that my posts betray a paradoxical relationship with science.

My response: reality's cake has to be eaten by the borders.

Science is THE sidetrack to THE GREAT QUESTIONS.
But, at least science's grasp feels more SOLID under probing fingers.

Nonetheless, as Einstein says: "don't believe the scientist, for to the purporter of theories, the products of his imagination might appear to him as given realities".

The difficult problems amuse us in conversation,
The soft problems amuse us at work.
Soft problems are solvable,
Hard problems give us perspective.

I see no paradox, but i apologize for misreadings.

The paradox of scientific beauty

O Beauty, that product set
Of Nature and Intellect,
Both or either cannot select
Unless emotion, in turn, attests.

Though seemingly mutually exclusive
In Nature, Intellect and Emotion
Intertwine and mingle, inclusive,
As though in a perfect potion.

Albeit, alas, science intrusive
Pulls them apart, as body from heart
Ripping the veins (this is no art),
Tools too sharp: abstrusively obtrusive!

FFF, La Antena

This week in Köln happens the Fantasy Film Fest. I went yesterday to see 'La Antena'.
Beautiful surreal black and white silent picture.
But such shallow symbolism.

All the same, recommended. Perhaps you spot the missing depth.