About Us & Other Minds

Recently, the possible existence of extraterrestrial intelligence has been much discussed in the media. The eminent cosmologist Stephen Hawking weighed in on his Discovery Channel Show entitled "Stephen Hawking's Universe" with a dramatization (see also msnbc post entitled "Hawking: Aliens may pose risks to Earth" dated Apr. 25, 2010). Perhaps, the interest is related to the discovery of ever more exoplanets. According to the Extrasolar Planets Encyclopaedia, the number of exoplanets currently stands at 452. It is only a question of time that a planet is discovered that may be similar to Earth, increasing the chances for alien intelligence to exist.

No doubt, alien minds are difficult to fathom. I once had the privilege to visit the Yerkes National Research Primate Center in Atlanta. I remember this visit vividly, because I had my first close encounter with chimpanzees. The settings are like in a zoo. We were urged to don protective gear. Though we kept a distance to the monkeys of perhaps ten yards, the usefulness of the garb quickly became obvious. Some chimpanzees lived in groups and behaved a bit like a neighborhood gang when a new kid turns up on the block. They eyeballed us with curiosity. They tried to garner our attention with posturing and acting out, producing an incredible racket. They immediately probed who was in charge. If you took your eyes off them for a second, they would spit at you, running away overjoyed when they landed a hit. We discovered quickly that chimpanzees command four hands. One young male was beating on a drum with his upper extremities. While we got distracted by his banging, he aimed pieces of feces at us using his foot with great accuracy. The band howled in pure joy. We were soiled and quite intimidated. We felt that without a fence they would outsmart us and, if they wanted to harm us, we would not stand a chance unarmed.

In another encounter, we approached a compound with two occupants. The monkeys were sitting high up on logs, biding their time, contemplating. We stood silently and watched. They watched us. I habitually scratch my head when I wonder. One monkey gazed at me with eyes like gleaming coal for what seemed an eternity. Her composure had a deep inquisitive, almost wise quality, as if she was questioning me, " who are you? What do you want from me?" She scratched her head.

I walked away from this encounter moved. The chimpanzees seemed so much like us. Yet, they were so different. I was wondering whether we shall ever be able to figure out the mind of a chimpanzee, let alone other species that appear to radiate a similar intelligence, but are even more removed from us. Will we be ever be able to understand the mind of a whale? I remain unsure.

However, I believe that though we may not be able to understand these creatures, we can learn a lot from them and should treat alien minds with respect.

Addenda

• Dimitar Sasselov estimates that one hundred million exoplanets in the Milky Way may support life similar to Earth. Watch his talk at TED2010 entitled "How we found hundreds of Earth-like planets" below (07/21/10):

• Claudia Dreifus conducted an informative interview with Diana Reiss who studies dolphin behavior. Professor Reiss elaborates on experiments she and colleagues conducted, demonstrating that dolphins recognize themselves in mirrors. The interview with the title "Studying the Big-Brained Dolphin" was published online in The New York Times today (09/20/10).
• The CNN video below shows an instructive demonstration of the dolphins' ability of imitating behavior, no simple feat. Rizzolatti and Sinigaglia (2008) suggest in their book entitled "Mirrors in the Brain" that imitating the others is the first step to empathy (01/14/11):

References

• Rizzolatti G, Sinigaglia C (2008) Mirrors in the Brain: How Our Minds Share Actions, Emotions, and Experience. Oxford University Press, New York.

Related Posts

• About Superior Intelligence
• Mary The Elephant & The Mind

Recommended Reading

• Goodall J (1992) Chimpanzee: The Living Link Between 'Man' and 'Beast' (Edinburgh Medal Lecture, No 3). Edinburgh Univ Press, Edinburgh.
  
• Köhler W (1976) The Mentality of Apes. Liveright Publishing Corp, New York.
  
• Morton A (2004) Listening to Whales: What the Orcas Have Taught Us. Ballantine Books, Munich.
  

Computers & The Mind

Yesterday, The New York Times published an illuminating article by John Markoff on the promises and fears inherent in the development of artificial intelligence and robotics. Experts in the field discussed the issues at a meeting recently convened near Monterey, California. Computers are our tools. They may store greater amounts of data and process more information faster than a person. However, there is more to intelligence than that. I have written about some fundamental requirements in my post dated Dec. 10, 2007.

In his article, Markoff poses the question whether computers may take over our lives one day. In my mind, they already have in fundamental ways. Think of contemporary warfare! Christopher Drew reports in his article for The New York Times published Mar. 16, 2009, that the U.S. Department of Defense seeks to  expand the use of Predator drones for missions in Afghanistan. The unmanned drones are piloted out of military bases in Nevada and Arizona. After fighting the enemy, the pilot returns to a peaceful family life at home. The war is left halfway around the globe for another day. The enemy's chances of reaching Las Vegas or Phoenix are minuscule. The pilot's life is never in danger. No doubt, this type of progress is greatly desirable. However, the situation produces a profound disconnect between our actions and their consequences.

When I was a student, we had a professional photographer as next-door neighbor. Erich Plöger was quite a character. He was of a much older generation. As as a little boy, he had seen Hitler in the flesh. According to his recollection, Hitler was "a small man wearing a big hat, eyeing people nervously from under a wide brim, while making his way through the crowd in great haste. April must have been close.

Despite the age difference, Erich's profoundly independent lifestyle endeared him to us students. He freelanced out of his apartment. A gigantic Hasselblad bellows camera was towering in his living room. Its large cassette film plates were developed in the bathroom. Prints were also made there on a wooden board placed on the tub in the light of a dim light bulb hand-painted red by Erich himself. Erich and I spent quite a few hours in this room, printing the pictures for my Master's thesis. I had to supply the paper. Everything else, plus expert advice, was on the house.

On one visit, Erich showed me a remarkable book he had co-authored on the peoples of Afghanistan. Erich had won awards with his photography. The pictures were of stunning beauty. I still recall vividly the wild expressions of horse and rider in the pictures he took during a Buzkashi game. Only Erich could have taken such photographs. He had the same wild streak. The book entitled "Buskaschi in Afghanistan" is out of print, but can still be found used and new.

His journey through Afghanistan had taken several months. He traveled in small company. I pelted him with questions. Wasn't it expensive, I wondered. “Not at all,” replied Erich. “Wasn't it dangerous, being pretty much all by yourself?”  “No, not really,” was his answer. “Do you speak the language?” “Very little,” he said, “but the locals were very helpful and hospitable.” They felt honored to have an "effendi" from a far-way land as a guest who wanted to learn about their way of life.

Erich must have undertaken his journey in the 1970s. Since, decades of war have ravaged Afghanistan. Westerners had a heavy hand in the events, changing local attitudes substantially. At present, American drones rule the skies. It is a good assumption that Erich, attempting to repeat his adventure today, would have been kidnapped or worse on the second day. Insights that open our eyes to the peoples of Afghanistan are ever more difficult to come by. Robots play a crucial role in this alienation.  They permit a physical and mental distance that removes us from an immediate understanding of the consequences of our actions.

Albert Schweitzer would have been more alarmed than ever at the computer-facilitated disconnect, numbing our sense of empathy.

Addenda

• Elizabeth Bumiller's article entitled "Remembering Afghanistan's Golden Age" in yesterday's New York Times provides a good impression of the country during Erich's visit. I remember that just about every visitor to Afghanistan at that time returned with a sheepskin jacket like the ones shown in the slide show (10/18/09).
• Today, Terry Gross interviewed Jane Mayer on National Public Radio's Fresh Air. Ms. Mayer published an insightful article on the use of drones in this week's issue of The New Yorker with the title "The Predator War". The interview (hear podcast) lays out the pros and cons of the current clandestine U.S. drone program, operating on the border between Afghanistan and Pakistan (10/21/09).
• No one more aptly foresaw the future problems in the region than Richard Reeves. The insights in his book "Passage to Peshawar: Pakistan, between the Hindu Kush and the Arabian Sea"published in 1984 are still pertinent today (10/23/09).
• The events of recent months have demonstrated in great clarity the strengths and the weaknesses of the drone program. The drones have become sufficiently sophisticated to eliminate leaders among the Taliban with unprecedented precision. However, every warlord has a brother, son or cousin ready to step into their shoes when the time comes and carry on their mission without substantial interruption. The Mehsud are a case in point. A drone attack killed the clan's leader Baitullah five months ago. The organization was able to mount a lethal retaliatory counterattack with equal precision last week. The person on the left in the video below is the clan's new leader. His weapon is seated on the right. The drones may instill great fear among the Pashtuns. But will they help bring peace to the peoples of Afghanistan (01/10/10)?
• According to Greg Miller's report with the title "Increased U.S. drone strikes in Pakistan killing few high-value militants" published online in The Washington Post today, 118 CIA drone strikes eliminated at least 581 Taliban and al-Qaeda militants in Pakistan last year, among whom between one and three dozen were considered 'high value' commanders, depending on definition, and only two were on the list of most-wanted terrorists that the U.S. maintains.
• The Afghanistan campaign appears to be turning into yet another March of Folly. We seem unable to disengage without a loss of face (08/09/2011).
• The Pakistani journalist Ahmed Rashid, author of Descent into Chaos: The U.S. and the Disaster in Pakistan, Afghanistan, and Central Asia and Taliban: Militant Islam, Oil and Fundamentalism in Central Asia, Second Edition, wrote an insightful opinion piece with the title "Hate Begat Hate" published online in The New York Times' SundayReview Sep. 10, 2011, on the development of Pakistani relations and perceptions towards the USA over the past decade. The comments are worthwhile reading as well (09/11/2011).
• An insightful insider's perspective on the changes in Afghan life over the past fifty years (12/06/2012).
• If you cannot find Erich Plöger's book, on May 4, 2014, National Public Radio published an impressive multi-media documentary under the headline "Buzkashi" about Afghanistan's most favorite past time (05/07/2014).

About Superior Intelligence

Are creatures from Space visiting us? This a pertinent question warming presidential candidate debates. My father believed so. He was convinced that they were way smarter than us and too wise to reveal themselves. He also believed that they must have a good time watching us making stupid decisions. Ever since he shared his hypothesis with me, I have been pondering the idea of what it would take to be decisively smarter than humans?

All processes in the universe seem sequential, unfolding with the flow of time. The timing of events decides cause and effect. If we cannot peg the time, analysis and reason fail. Therefore, our ability to resolve the timing of events is of existential importance for our perception of the world. The nerve cells in the brain and the connections they form with each other determine the limits of this ability. The nerve cells in the cerebral cortex may be able to distinguish between subsequent events only, if they occur more than about 5 milliseconds apart.

Technology had to be invented to permit us to understand happenings in shorter time. We had to invent clocks with highly precise movements for this purpose. We had to discover optical atomic clocks to be able to reach for the timing of light. Although these technologies help us to better understand cause and effect in the universe, our mind remains bound by the condition of our nervous system, limiting our responsiveness.

Therefore, a nervous system with a greater temporal resolution seems a prerequisite for superior intelligence. If extraterrestrials were to resolve time better than we do, they would be able to distinguish between causes and effects where we perceived only coincidence and thus could address a situation more appropriately. Such minds could distinguish better between causality and complementarity.

Of course, greater temporal resolution is not the only requirement. Nerve cells in the brains of echolocating bats resolve binaural differences in the timing of tone pips smaller than a millisecond (Harnischfeger and others, 1985). Though atomic clocks may provide fascinating remedies for our mental shortcomings in this respect, I do prefer the exquisitely-crafted, fine time pieces by Raymond Weil,but settled for a Festina.

Addenda

• On Mar. 20, 2009, National Public Radio's All Things Considered broadcast a segment entitled "Smart People Really Do Think Faster" by Jon Hamilton on recent research findings providing evidence that higher intelligence can indeed be associated with greater nervous processing speed (03/25/09).
• They may exist after all. Read here. Watch this (04/22/09):
  
• According to Kate Kelland's post entitled "Scientists say "super-Earth" has rocky surface" on Reuters today, astronomers have discovered 330 exoplanets so far. Exoplanets revolve around suns different from our own. Most are very large gas giants. But recent studies indicate that a smaller one is rocky like Earth. The universe seems filled with plenty opportunity (09/16/09)!
• According to the Extrasolar Planets Encyclopaedia, the number of exoplanets stands at 452 today. Paul Davies who heads the BEYOND center for fundamental concepts in science at Arizona State University published an insightful essay entitled "Is Anybody Out There?"  on the search for extraterrestrial intelligence in The Wall Street Journal on Apr. 10 (10/22/10).
• A NASA spokesman provides some insights where the agency is looking for extraterrestrial life in an interview with CNN's John Roberts (04/29/10):

• The eminent cosmologist Stephen Hawking wrote an insightful essay entitled "How to build a time machine" published online in the Daily Mail yesterday, explaining why causality is a fundamental condition in the universe and whether traveling in time is theoretically feasible. The idea of speeding around a black hole to advance in time is the theme of Brian Greene's wonderful book "Icarus at the Edge of Time" for children with the only difference that Icarus manages to travel faster forward than Hawking postulates (05/04/10).

• The first planet has been detected which may support life under similar conditions as Earth. According to this estimate, a visit may not be entirely out of reach (09/30/10).

• The possibilities of life different from ours seem boundless. Listen to today's report by Rebecca Davis and Christopher Joyce on National Public Radio's News with the title "The Deep-Sea Find that Changed Biology" on the discovery of lifeforms that thrive without oxygen in total darkness near deep sea vents (12/05/2011).
• If you wish to join the Kepler team's search for exoplanets, you may visit planethunters.org (12/24/2011).