I’m somewhat tired, but I’m going to try to bang out this blog post. Please forgive the like of organization that is likely to appear in this post.
So today I went to the second neuroscience/theology lecture thing I mentioned before. This guy was the dude, one of them anyway, that wrote Whatever Happened to the Soul? Anyway, he talked about how he doesn’t think dualism, the idea that we are a physical body housing a metaphysical soul, makes sense anymore due to information from modern neuroscience. Back when dualism was conceived of it was thought to be impossible that tasks like reason and morality could be controlled by an organ. Now we have strong evidence that the brain indeed does do all that stuff.
So he says there are two ways of going so long as you accept the evidence of neuroscience. One, you can be a physical reductionist, someone who believes ultimately our decisions are the product of impulses in our neurons, which are the result of molecules, which are the result of random subatomic interactions. Two, you can be like this dude, and be a physical nonreductionist… I think that’s what he called it. Anyway, the deal is you don’t believe in a metaphysical soul, all we are is matter, but there are emergent properties in the complexity in the matter. The idea being that there is complexity in the sum of the parts that cannot be accounted for solely on the quality of the parts.
Now, I’ve heard this idea before, and it seems like not much of an idea to me. Apparently there are types of emergence and whatnot, that people get into on the forefront of the reductionist debate. It seems fairly obvious that complexity can emerge from simple pieces, but it is rather difficult to objectively say that that complexity is not explainable by the simple pieces. My understanding based on the Q&A portion of this most recent talk is that simple emergence is the idea that the complexity of the super-system can be accounted for by the properties of the sub-system’s components and number of components. I guess then that non-simple emergence would be the idea that the super-system is just can do more than can be explained by the properties of the subsystem components or the number of components. I dunno if that’s right, but the point is the simple emergence thing is what makes sense to me currently.
Obviously having many simple things can create a complex thing, especially when organized. Dots can form an image, sounds can form language, etc. etc. I don’t see how the emergence of these complex properties necessitates the interference of a mystical energy however.
Anyway, this emergence thing is cool, mostly because it can apply to lots of things. One interesting level, for me, is the step just above an individual. In theory, the complexity of a group of individuals could have properties emerge that are beyond than the properties of the individuals. It makes sense that these properties exist, and probably can be observed and studied, it’s just somewhat difficult. I think now that the idea is relatively prevalent, however, that changes in these properties, or new emerging properties, will be recognized. This will be helped, possibly, by radical changes in our societies due to technological development.
This sorta lead nicely into that rant I said I wanted to give many posts ago about people being tied up in inconsequential things. I’ve since calmed down slightly, so that’s good, but here is the general idea.
We’re, people, technologically on the cusp of a lot of things. It’s not entirely unlikely that people my age will live for hundreds of years in good health (possibly nearly forever) and that cybernetics will enhance human mental and physical ability. These things are the ideas that are in the worlds fairs and stuff, just like flying cars and such, so I realize that not every scientific idea pans out, but I have to say I think a lot of these things are fairly close.
One idea I particularly like is that the internet is forming a new step in man’s evolution. Not biologically, but socially or something. An example of a previous evolutionary jump of this nature would be the ability to read a write. A literate person, at the time when it was new, had a resource that expanded his experience many times giving the literate person an understanding of the world so much more comprehensive than an illiterate person that communication between the two became fairly limited. Literate and illiterate were essentially two classes of human.
The idea for the internet is similar. The amount of information available on the internet will be so great, and so easily accessed, that those able to utilize the resource will essentially experience a different universe than those who can’t. Ideas will be formed, examined, expanded, discussed, and rejected or accepted at a rate far faster than is possible without a network like the internet. Those outside the internet community will no longer be able to keep up. This will rapidly lead to the internet users outstripping the non-internet users in cultural ideas and these changes could be fairly divisive rather quickly. A sign of this would be Wikipedia. The basis of Wikipedia is that information should be shared freely and that every one’s opinion counts. This is dramatically different than the current/old idea that knowledge is power, and therefore valuable, and that information must therefore be carefully controlled.
I dunno, it’s certainly fun to imagine living in that Wikipedia type Utopian future. And I hate that so many people seem oblivious to the fact that these issues exist, and that their whole world could be turned upside so quickly. What if some guy at Cambridge figures out how to extend every one’s life 100 years in the next 5 years? Nobody is even talking about it. All they want to talk about is who is gay or how expensive oil is or whatever. Clearly I’m just a biased naive scientist, but as those who know me know, I’m usually right, so you might want to at least remember the possibility of these things happening that I’m talking about.
Ok, that was some good ranting I think. Probably way more than anyone wanted to read, but I hope you read it anyway.
In other news I just watched a DVD sent to me by Southwestern Medical Center. It was about an hour long and was a full DVD movie really. Kinda an infomercial for a grad school. I dunno what to think, because obviously they’re biased and whatnot, but it still seemed really nice. So nice I dunno why they think they’d admit me. I totally want to go to the place in the DVD though, although I’m not certain it exists in Dallas. I’ve got some time to think. I wish the DVD was online so you all knew where I was coming from.
8’s back from her concert thing. I guess that means I’m really up to late. Couple more things though to ramble about.
I actually got asked questions in front of people at the Senior Comprehensive Exam thing today. Kinda mock exam thing. I think I did ok. I think I sound way more put together than most people, and on certain things I definitely know a bunch. I did start to mess up towards the end when he was asking me stuff I really didn’t know anything about, and a couple things I really should know, but I’ve still got 12 days to learn all that. Anyway, I think it was generally a good sign.
In lab, signs are not so good. Nobody seems to be getting blue spots on their Southern Blots, so something could be horribly wrong. I hate when that happens. Something is already not so great for my partner and I, and that is that about half of our blot is in pieces. A Southern Blot, for those of you who don’t know, is a technique that allows the transfer of the bands (DNA) from an electrophoresis gel, onto a membrane. Then one can do fancy things with this DNA, like block parts of it and bind colorful things to the other parts, to show that what you think happened really did happen. Anyway, our, and several other, membranes, have crumbled in the process. The prof suggested the membranes could have been old, which I like as an explanation, because she is a new professor and probably just found the membranes that the last professor bought back in the early 80’s or something.
I have a lab write up for this experiment due on Wednesday. First lab write up of the class so sorta uncertain and stuff. Plus it’s a large part of my grade so I am trying to psych myself into getting an early start and whatnot. To go with it I have a new program we’re starting in CS, plus the obvious Senior Comprehensive Exam. Stat’s is easy. Oh, and my MCB prof informed us all today that she was going to be “harsh” in grading our first take home test, that one I turned in Friday. So… whatever that means.
Oh right, so I totally didn’t mention this up there with all the society emergence things, but there is a book I half read where money is gone and instead people just give each other “Whuffie” which is basically points for doing good. Like a universal favor exchange program. Kinda a neat idea, cause it’s exactly like money, except it doesn’t exist so one can pretend all the problems that exist with money wouldn’t exist. Anyway, someone is working on making it a real thing. I support this, cause trying things from sci-fi books is awesome.
