Ronnys Blogg

Nothing ever comes from nothing. No invention is invented without most of its ingredients allready being invented. James Watt did not start the age of the steam engine, he merely tried to repair a steam engine made by Thomas Newcomen and stumbled upon a way to make it more effecient. The first artificial fertilizer was a failed attemt at making artificial diamonds, the first artificial dye was a failed attemt at making artificial quinine, todays strong steel was first made in glass furnaces, the electric spark was first used to find “bad air” because bad air was at the time what people thought malaria came from (“mal aria” is italian for “bad air”) and the perfume-spray is where the car manufacturers got their fuel injection system.
How then, can we expect that we will continue to make alot of new inventions and world-saving technologies when everyone get the same education, the same information, the same ingredients for making something new, did you invent something? Did any of your classmates? Did anyone in your school invent something? Did they add to scientific knowledge? Did any of you solve a problem? Did any of you figure out how to live a little bit longer? And if they invented something or added to scientific knowledge, did they need the information they got in school to invent that thing or to figure out that bit of scientific knowledge? And if they did use something they learned in school, did they only need a tiny bit of information from a single class in a single semester or did they need all of it? And when the people that decided what to teach in school looked through all the information, and obviously didn’t see ingredients that together could be put together to invent something world-saving or game-changing bit of scientific knowledge or technological invention (they didn’t invent something or publish a scientific paper based on what they decided schools should teach), how can we expect it will make others that learn this information invent something great? If the people that decide what schools should teach never gets an epiphany, never invents something new and never adds to scientific knowledge or scientific culture, based on what they decide schools should teach, then they obviously haven’t chosen the right information and way to teach.

School, all the way from the beginning, to the doctorate level, should be filled with good ingredients for invention, scientific progress, abstract questioning and cultural growth. There are those things we need to know to function in the world, like to add and multiply and to read and write, but when have you ever seen someone invent something because they remembered how to write a word or because they remembered what the name of a bird or cloud-formation is? When did you see someone figure out something new about the universe because they remembered when Napoleon fought a battle or figured out food supply was a military problem? When did you last see a physicist invent a new formula of mathematics that explains something about the universe, because he or she remembered how to solve an equation just by following the guidelines of how to solve a certain formula and not actually understanding the mathematics?

So how can we figure out what to teach, how to teach, so we get the true potential from education? I haven’t got a clue, yet. But be aware, however we teach the kids it better be good, because it is todays kids that will take care of you when you are old and if they lack a large enough perspective of time they’ll probably just dig a hole and toss old people into it not knowing they themselves will go there before their time. Can’t say I find it conceptually much different from what the previous generations has done to the future generations through pollution and all the rest of the shortsighted ideas that work extremely well, for just a while. I for one is extremely disapointed that you have spent all this money in ways that do not make us live longer, just because so many of you believe you’ll live forever after you die (did you not also teach us that one chicken in ones hands is better than ten hens on the roof?!).
But this blogpost is long enough, be glad old people; that it is seemingly impossible to travel back in time, if it wasn’t impossible we’d all be in big trouble.

Energy can not be created nor can it be destroyed, it can only transform into other types of energy. And no law of physics as we understand physcis, can be changed or broken. This means that no dice can throw itself because it would be like it got energy from nowhere, no atom can do something it was not made to do by something else otherwise it would be like it got energy from nowhere, and no particle in existence can do something that it was not made to do by some other particle or action, and all actions are in themselves reactions to previous actions, whos actions are reactions to previous actions and so forth forever. If any mechanism or organism is to do something it was not made to do by some action it must break the laws of physics. Thus, we cannot decide to do something we are not made to do as a result of other actions.
Action is in this case the wrong word, even the big bang was a reaction to something, and thus all the atoms moved in reaction to the big bang, some was on collision trajectories with other atoms, so they hit eachother and then followed a huge game of pool which only has to follow the rules of physics, one of such rules (laws) is that it is impossible for energy to be created out of nothing. Thus, the energy level of the universe stays equal (A pool-ball never push the ball it hits with more force than the pool-ball itself had). This means you and I think everything we think because a really complex chain of events, with interweaving chains of events, made the atoms in our molecules in our cells do exactly what they did exactly at the time when they did it. No matter how complex the system is, it can not perform an action independently, no dice can turn itself around on the table, so to speak, no matter how complex the dice is. To move it needs the energy to turn itself around, for example from the sun or a battery, then the dice only turns around because the energy sacrificed by the sun or battery made the dice turn around, this also holds true to a dice that thinks, it only thinks because it consumes energy, and everything it thinks and does can be traced back in time to its singular or more likely many reasons that made it do and think what it does and thinks (even if we can not imagine all the reasons to why something happened, it happened because that was the way it had to react to follow the laws of physics).
There are those who would now say “wait a minute, I think what I think because I decide to think it”, but no matter how much we believe and percieve, it is not evidence that we ourselves decide to think or do something, just as the colors we see are not evidence of the existence of colored photons (photons have no color, they have frequency, which our brain reacts to in such a way that we percieve colors). There is alot of research in neuroscience about this, and it has been shown that decisions can be known even ten seconds before we think we have made them, based on the sometimes predictable series of reaction to reaction to reaction etc that happens in our brain when we are told to choose between options.

The only loophole I have found thus far that can let us have an ounce of actual free will, is that we humans seem to have the ability to not do something right away, so something in the past made us react in such a way that one of our possible reactions to something, is to not do anything at all (I am really unsure if many animals have this ability in any level). If I want to more freely choose between lets say items of food or possible futures, I can increase the number of reasons behind my choice simply by spending more time making the choice. A metaphor is that if I let the dice roll and roll and roll down the hill instead of reacting to the number shown at the top, then it must by definition be more reason behind the choice the longer you let the dice roll.
There are also uncertainty principles in quantum physics that also determine what we think and do and everything else that happens in the universe, but even if something is uncertain, it follows the laws of physics, it is uncertain in a certain way, so to speak. And there are mechanisms in our brains and bodys that make us, us. Genes, neurons, experiences and enviroment have made us the mechanism we are today, and everything we sense and think (even if we do not think without being made to think it by some mechanism), is exactly how it would be given all of our unique mechanisms. We are in fact more unique than we imagine day to day, but we do not have our own will in every sense of the word. We have mechanisms that simulate free will, choice, perception, conciousness, that we decide what we think as we think it, but what we percieve that we think is thought before we percieve it, just as what you see on your computer screen is computed before it is shown on the computer screen, and it waits for feedback from the keyboard, modem, mouse etc, before it is instructed to something else (but what it is instructed to keep doing regardless of input, like time and storage).

I know there will be those that feel morality and alot of other things are left in ruins, but I have thought about morality in this argument, and I must conclude that everything that do good, do good because it was made to do good by all the reactions so far in the universe, and when what I have decided to do would not be good, I let the dice roll, and try to do nothing until what I want to do is something good (an example would be to not determine punishment of a murderer right after he/she is found guilty, but instead wait until you do not decide to kill the murderer, and decide to find another way of making the person a productive member of society, he/she was afterall made to kill by his/her history and all the cumulative reactions he/she reacts to, and our need to react to the incident is caused by the same thing that caused the person to murder).

There are those that try to use the complexity argument, that “the human brain is so complex it is an exception to the rule and thus can perform an action that is not a reaction to anything”. But complexity is not relevant, a computer, no matter how complex, will never do something it was not made to do (even if it was made to act intelligently everything it would do would be because of what it was made to do, even if you made it decide for itself, it would not have truly decided for itself), and no human will ever make a laptop do something else than what the human was made to make the laptop do. The super complex laptop can if made to do so, believe it is a laptop and believe it decides how much light its screen has and so forth, but even if it was able to learn, what it learns is also only a form of it reacting and learning in the way that the laws of physics decide, and thus even if it discovers the answer to everything and the meaning of life, that result was ultimately decided by the big bang and the laws of physics, not by any mechanism or organism between the beginning and the end. And if anything, the fact that we believe we choose to do what we do is probably something we have in common with all life with X number of braincells, imagine the animals that felt themselves do something they did not feel like they decided to do themselves, they would see their arms and legs move seemingly without their aproval, they would likely not function as well as the animals that feel they decide to do everything that they do (If you do not feel like you are the one that moves your arms and legs you would likely not be able to ski or run or even walk or crawl, its why the steering wheel of a car has to give feedback forces otherwise it is like seeing the car do things you do not feel certain you have made it do). That we feel we do everything we do, and that we are so well timed that our mechanical brain makes us percieve we do what we do by choice exactly when we percieve it, is why we can ski, why we can perform so well, why animals can run as fast as they do, fly as fast as they do, move as fast as they do, is because their perception of what they decide to do is atuned to their abilities (the ones that are not so well atuned do not produce as much offspring as as those better atuned; See Richard Dawkins’ books for a comprehensive walkthrough of evolution and what is meant by natural selection).

This means that it is impossible to create artificial intelligence with true free will, since no organism or mechanism can have true free will. Artifical and biological complexity can immitate independent will, and indeed believe it has free will, it can in some types of machinery percieve feelings (feelings is a sensory perception of what the status of its current situation is, through evolution it has become a dominant reaction to shy away from negative status reports) and and it can travel the stars and maybe figure out the meaning of the universe, but they will merely be a machine, like us, doing what it was made to do by the laws of physics and whatever started it and affected it since the big bang. Everything we think and do is within our mechanism’s ability, which would explain why we come up with better scientific theories in leaps only so and so long. The new scientific theory is a reaction to the previous one (among alot of other mechanisms), which is why we no matter how smart we are don’t invent a whole field in its full complexity right from the start, but have to work/react through the reactions in order (sort of like when you learn to count, you start at the beginning and need to reach a certain point before you can react by counting to infinity).

This also entails we did not need the brainpower to choose to use tools through free will, and probably used simple tools like sticks, stones etc for millions of years in varying degrees. And it was no point in which we “became intelligent” or invented for example painting or other signs of intelligence, it came gradually, reacting to the previous reaction. The first person to paint probably just made a slight gesture as far from painting as counting to 1 is to doing the first algebra equation. The only unique bit about the last ten or so thousand years is that the reactions brought alot of easily percieved reactions because instead of only ourselves reacting, we reacted in such a way that we began making our surroundings react to us instead of us reacting to our surroundings. We grew food, and thus made permanent homes, and eventually grew enough food so someone could react by not having to farm for food, but perform some other form of labour that the person was perhaps better at, and this also happened to make free time avaliable. Not much you can react to when you spend all your time reacting to hunting conditions (once we had time we used our hunting and gathering experience taking the first steps towards jewelry, religion, irrigation etc, by using existing knowledge and skills).

What we should take away from this is that there is no law of physics that limits us from solving the meaning of life, finding meaning in life or living good, extremely long lives.
The worst thing we can do to improve our lives is to react to something, anything, in such a way that it spawns negative reactions. Not that you can’t tell someone they’re idiots if you really have reason to feel that person is an idiot, but we should spend a reasonable amount of time thinking of some other angle to take, and more time to determine if any reaction will give a positive outcome (if all I get from reacting is a status-report (feeling) that says all is well now because revenge or opinion is served, I usually do not react at all and find something else to do, feelings are afterall not often a good indicator of what the status if ones world really is).

Error in our brains processes and our perception of the brain processes that normally tells us we’re doing everything the brain is doing with significant lag-time between thought and decision (first) and the perception of thought and decision (after), is likely the ilness known as schizophrenia. Symptoms of schizophrenia include but are not limited to “auditory hallucinations, paranoid or bizarre delusions, or disorganized speech and thinking, and it is accompanied by significant social or occupational dysfunction. The onset of symptoms typically occurs in young adulthood, with a global lifetime prevalence of about 0.3–0.7%. Diagnosis is based on observed behavior and the patient’s reported experiences.” – Source, wikipedia Schizophrenia page. Give an electronic engineer an hour and he’ll draw up a circuit-diagram of a simple binary system that counts something and verifies what last counting was and then point out how it could fail to verify correctly and stop being able to detect all or some of what it counts. Such a system would give false information of what it has done to a perception system, and would likely have input-output problems as it will relay false information which is then processed incorrectly and responded to incorrectly compared to what its status really is. Miscommunication between the input, output, decision and perception etc parts of the brain could easily make things that the decision part of the brain does seem outside of the perception, as if its not done by the percieved mind, and in such ways to explain the other symptoms of schizophrenia, and possibly other illnesses.

There are laws of physics, mechanics of the universe that makes certain things possible, and also make certain things impossible. Like for example, it is as far as we understand the laws of physics impossible to travel faster than light particles. Thought is to any neuroscientist based on chemistry and physics (which when complex enough is called biology), and thought must then by definition be a chemical and physical reaction to what happened a nanosecond ago, two nanoseconds ago, all the way to the start of the universe (and even the start of the universe was likely a reaction of an unknown action (if the action was done by a mechanism or organism is another topic)). How we think is not completely known, but we have figured out alot, and everything we have figured out thus far follows the laws of physics, thus how we think must follow the laws of physics regardless of what the details are of how we think.
Because how we think, and thus what we think, must follow the laws of physics of our universe, then there are things that are possible for us to think, and there must be things that are impossible for us to think.
I adopt a similar system of impossibility as I have seen Professor Michio Kaku use about stages of civilization:
(PS: software is in these cases considered thoughts, the particular pattern of cells firing in your brain to complete the thought, and the hardware is the body and the brain itself, not the patterns of cells firing)
-Category one impossibility thoughts.
This is any thought your brain and body can think in its current condition, in a way all the software your hardware is able to run.
-Category two impossibility thoughts.
This is thoughts you lack the hardware for, in a way all the software that can not run on your hardware, and you would need to change your hardware to be able to think these thoughts.
-Category three impossibility thoughts.
This is thoughts that are impossible to think given any hardware that is able to exist within the laws of physics of our universe. In other words, anyone/anything in our universe would need to change the laws of physics in order to think these thoughts, or in a way build a thinking hardware that does not conform to our laws of physics. If you, anyone or anything that have or will exist, can think a thought, that thought is not in this category of impossible thoughts.

Dette er et elektronisk brev jeg sendte til Helse- og Omsorgsdepartementet Tirsdag 14. Februar 2012.

Jeg viser til nyhet: http://www.nrk.no/nyheter/verden/1.7993783
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