Sychronicity and the Singularity

About a week ago I had an interesting experience with Synchronicity, you know, when a bunch of things happen in a row that seem to be causally related, but there is no evidence that they actually are. Here’s what happened:

First, my Dad sent me an article from the Atlantic Monthly about a guy who had gone to the Loenber Prize Convention in England. At this conference they administer the Turing Test and then give out a prize to whomever does the best on the test. The Turing Test is a test that was thought up by a philosopher named Alan Turing in 1950 and published in a paper called, Computing Machinery and Intelligence. This was obviously long before there was anything even close to resembling a computer so when wrote this paper it was just a thought experiment. I had read the paper numerous times in college so my dad thought I might find this article interesting. He was right.

The test is brilliantly based on a simple question, “Can machines think?” In his paper, Turning proposes that the best way to answer that question is to sit a person down in one room (room A) and put a machine and a person in another room (room B). The person in room A then gets 5 minutes to ask the machine and the human whatever questions he wants. The person in room A can’t see anything in room B. When the five minutes are over, the person in room A has to choose which conversationalist is the human one. If the person in Room A chooses the machine, then we are in big trouble because machines can think and we are all doomed to become their underlings, which is a huge bummer if Asimov is right in "I, Robot".

This convention actually uses instant messaging to administer the Turing Test. Remember when you used to be able to chat with bots on AIM that would respond to you in strange ways when you inexplicably cussed them out because you were an easily amused teenager? Well, I do, and it was pretty fun the first few times, so don’t judge me. Anyway, these bots have gotten pretty good. In fact, apparently at last year’s conference, they almost won the competition and brought an end to human dominance on this planet!

So, this article had gotten me thinking about this robot/thinking machine issue and then, the next day, I open up nytimes.com and see this article. Again the robots are trying to mount an attack! This time the robots actually won, but I (with the help of a friend) I beat this version of the "test" and saved us from complete annihilation at the hands of the soulless robot overlords. You’re welcome humanity.

The Atlantic Monthly article was actually really good and had some interesting points and perspectives. One of them was, “if everything that we thought hinged on thinking turns out to not involve it, then … what is thinking? It would seem to reduce to either an epiphenomenon—a kind of “exhaust” thrown off by the brain—or, worse, an illusion.” Here he implies that it would be a bad thing if thought were just an illusion. There are many who would disagree with this and argue that all thought, and indeed all existence, is merely an illusion… but I digress.

The next stop on my little synchronistic trip was the release of an album by one of my favorite artists, Bright Eyes. In one of the songs, “A Machine Spiritual” the lead singer of the group, Conor Oberst, refers to the idea that machines may be getting uncomfortably close to human thought. The song begins,

The people’s key

Riding through the arena seats

The black machine

Played it all from memory

When he talks about the people’s key he is referring about the key’s of C and E on the piano and guitar respectively. These are supposedly the easiest keys to “stay in” when playing those instruments. As you can see in the song, he is specifically referring to a time in the future when songs could be written and performed by machines. In a Huffington Post interview he refers to a future in which, “artificial intelligence will pass human intelligence and we sort of get to a stage of existence where our bodies are no long required and death becomes obsolete. It sounds far out, but it's really pretty conceivable.” This is a direct reference to ideas advanced by Ray Kurzweil and others such as the Singularity and mind uploading. These ideas propose a hypothetical future where there will be an explosion of technological advances that will result in superhuman intelligence and even the ability to upload our consciousness to a machine. This may sound crazy, but there are people at the Singularity Institute for Artificial Intelligence who are taking this very seriously.

You can stream the entire Bright Eyes album, The People’s Key, here:

In other musical news, I went to a festival this past weekend in Bangalore called the The Fireflies Festival of Sacred Music. After all this talk of technology eclipsing humanity, the idea that music is somehow sacred resonates with me. As I stood under the open sky and looked up at the moon on the outskirts of Bangalore, music did seem sacred. Even though I was surrounded by people from all over the world and listening to music in a language I didn't understand, I somehow felt connected and it was the music that brought us together on that farm in middle of the night.

That Atlantic Monthly article also refers to Daniel Gilbert’s, “Sentence” vow in which every psychologist should complete the sentence, “The human being is the only animal that _______.” at some point during their career. If we are really getting to a point in history where there are going to be different kinds of thinkers, maybe we need to alter that sentence and begin trying to complete another sentence, “The human being is the only thinker that______." In his song One for you and One for me, Oberst refers to a Rastafarian concept, "I and I" which is intended to remind us of the oneness of humanity. He sings, “you and me, that's an awful lie, it’s I and I” Maybe, just maybe, the human being is the only thinker that can overcome that awful lie.

Tommy G or Tommyji: Part 2

Swamiji, Tommyji, and the Dalai Lama

I went to see the Dalai Lama two weekend s ago and, I must say, it was pretty amazing. His talk was entitled, “How to find happiness in troubled times,” but really he was just seemed to be free associating without much structure. The Dalai Lama is supposedly the reincarnation of the Buddha of Compassion and is certainly the acting political and spiritual leader of the Tibetan Buddhists. Whether or not you think that he is the Buddha of Compassion or not, there is one thing that is difficult to deny, this guy knows something about compassion. In his talk he spoke of the Chinese in positive terms, pointing out that there is more religious freedom there now than there has been in many years. This is the same China that has forced him to remain in exile in India for the past 52 years. It takes some compassionate chops not to use his platform and extensive influence to continuously bash the Chinese, who could reasonably be held responsible for the economic hardships described in this less than compassionate ad from Groupon:

Aired during the super bowl

He also talked about India, mentioning what he considers to be the two greatest attributes of the country, namely, its commitment to non-violence and its amazing ability to maintain religious harmony. I have to agree with him on these points, particularly with respect to religious harmony. There is no other place on earth where religions live so closely, and as peacefully, as they do here in India. It is so refreshing in this time in human history to come to place where you can look around and see people who are religious, but not fanatical; devout, but not bigoted. That is not to say that there is no bigotry or religious violence, there is, but for the most part people live and let live in a very real and touching way. If you are religious or spiritual or agnostic or atheist or whatever you are, seeing people give a damn about each other, despite where they are on that spectrum, is beautiful.

One of the more interesting tangents he went on was about what he thinks religion is, and what its role should be in society. You would think that the religious leader of millions of people would be in favor of a specific religion, but really he doesn’t seem to favor any one religion or even any religion at all. In fact, his talk, somewhat strangely, reminded me of an article by Sam Harris, who is one of the anointed “new atheists,” a silly designation if you ask me, but I won’t go into that. Here is that article if you are interested: http://www.samharris.org/media/killing-the-buddha.pdf

So, he wasn’t particularly dogmatic in his talk, but he did have a point that he wanted to get across: A calm mind is very important. He told a story about how he was in the hospital to get his gal bladder out and the nurses and doctors where surprised that he was always laughing, jokinging around, and teasing them from the time he got to the hospital, until the time he went under for surgery. They were even more surprised that, at his age, he was able to leave the hospital so soon after the surgery. Ho contributed this healing time to nothing more than a calm mind. His ideas that a calm mind can affect the physiology of the brain are echoed in this recent NY Times article: http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/01/28/how-meditation-may-change-the-brain/?src=me&ref=homepage

Another interesting religious/spiritual figure who has been around is a guy I call Swamiji. This guy is pretty groovy. He is about 70 years old and he is a monk who walks around in bright orange clothes all the time and is better shape than most 19 year olds I know. We were at lunch the other day and a friend of mine asked him what he meant when he referred to, “God.” You could tell Swamiji enjoyed this question, or rather that my friend had asked this question because he immediately giggled and asked him, “Well what do you mean when you ask me what God is?” He then went on to tell a story:

Many years ago I wrote a book. I had always wanted to write a book on this topic, but I could never think of the right title for it. Regardless, I decided that I would go ahead and write it, but then I would give the book two titles and release it under both names. After the publisher had agreed to my plan and the book was released, I decided that I would go to the bookstore and watch the people who came in to peruse the two books . This particular book store had put the two differently titled books in opposite windows so that you could see both titles from the street. As I watched the people come in from the street I noticed that some people would go directly to one side and the others would go directly to the other. Once more, unfailingly, the people who would go to the right side of the store would look to the left side with disgust as they were picking up the copy of my book that looked interesting to them. The exactly same thing would happen with those who went to the left side and picked up that copy. What these people didn’t know was that they were both reading the exact same book. The titles:

"God: who, what, when, where, why" and "The origin of the Cosmos"

Then Swamiji proceeded to tell us that he just thought of that story as he was taking a leak in the bathroom a few minutes before. I will let you take whatever you want from that story.

I will leave you with a quote from one of my favorite authors that I happen to come across this week:

"I believe that reading and writing are the most nourishing forms of meditation anyone has so far found. By reading the writings of the most interesting minds in history, we meditate with our own minds and theirs as well. This to me is a miracle." – Kurt Vonnegut

I certainly don't claim to be one of the people Mr. Vonnegut is referring to above, but thank you for meditating anyway...

Until next time, don't forget to keep a calm mind.

Tommy G or Tommyji: Part 1

Tommy G

Indian newspapers have a funny way of mixing in pictures of scantily clad women and strange articles, with legitimate news stories. For example, the other day there was an article about charges being brought against the Chief Minister of Karnataka State, a serious and relevant news story, and right next to that article there was a picture of two women, wearing very little clothing, and an accompanying article entitled, “Women don’t mind if men have gay affairs.” Yes, that is a real article. The fascinating study that was detailed in this article then went on to clarify that, apparently, men don’t mind so much if women have gay affairs. Thank you for the details newspaper.

In Bangalore, they also have a small insert in the larger national paper, the Times of India (a very well respected news source) called, The Bangalore Times. Now, I can only assume that the Bangalore times is supposed to be a place for the local news from Bangalore, but really it is just 6 pages of pictures of celebrities and socialites with titles like, “JLo’s cousin is a Bollywood item girl!” and “We’re the dancers!”

What’s particularly fun about this insert is that there is a section colloquially known as, “Page 3.” Page 3 is collection of pictur

es of socialites from around the Bangalore party scene. One of the groups that have parties that end up on Page 3 is called the Bangalore Expat Club. The group is pretty groovy and there are some really cool people that show up for the events. I happened to catch wind of one of the Bangalore Expat parties a couple of weeks ago and decided to make an appearance. While I was there, a guy was taking some pictures for what I thought was the club’s website, but lo and behold, when I was doing my daily check of the Bangalore night life a couple of days later -- there I was! Apparently Tommy G is a socialite. If you will notice, there is a caption on one of the pictures I am in that reads, “easy people” Pretty presumptuous if you ask me…