Gill Eapen's Blog, page 75

Predictive templates

A recent study from Northwestern University (1), demonstrates that the brain uses predictive templates to identify specific smells. In many cases, this allows the brain to react to stimulus before it actually arrives. One could imagine such template driven decision-making in many cognitive functions. The ability to make decisions faster may have had an evolutionary advantage.

This is, however, a double edged sword. For most of the human evolution, the rate of change has been low. Today was similar to yesterday and hence experience generated from yesterday's interactions were relevant today. Experience based templates were, thus, expandable across time without the consideration of regime changes. This is not necessarily so for modern humans. In a world where today looks significantly different from yesterday, the value of experience based templates are lower. Further, such an architecture may lead us down the wrong decision-paths.

For example, visual templates may be a precursor to racism that is highly prevalent today. Such templates are highly sophisticated, using proxies such as the shape of the skull and the distance between the eyes to detect members of unfriendly clans. Early detection of the intruders based on physical characteristics has been an important survival mechanism for humans, till recently. The ability and the proclivity of the brain to use such templates in the modern world have pegged the humans back, as they separate themselves in less sophisticated attributes.

Understanding the operating system that drives the brain is important. Most of the brain is largely designed for the past. The cost to society due to "predictive templates" is high – as they are not generally applicable to modern humans. Much has changed in the last 1000 years and those who adapt to the new reality will survive and thrive. Those who remain prisoners to their instincts developed over 50,000 years ago will likely perish. A measure of how advanced a society may be, is the ability to override instincts and predictive templates. The primary role of education has to be to wean the next generation from these.

(1) Sniffing out the brain's predictive power, Published: Friday, October 7, 2011 - 16:34 in Psychology & Sociology

Optimum morality

A recent study (1) from Columbia Business School shows a counterintuitive and unexpected result – People with utilitarian responses to moral dilemmas also tend to have antisocial personalities. Utilitarian responses have been equated with optimum morality. However, such traits are not expected in those exhibiting antisocial behavior such as Machiavellianism.

The study dismisses the finding by noting that it was not able to differentiate the orgins of utilitarian responses – i.e. whether the person responded in an optimal way, because of underlying concern for society or if she is just suffering from emotional deficits. This is an escape – as the finding points to more fundamental questions about individuals and the society in general.

Optimization is a thought process imparted on professionals in many different fields. They are taught how to minimize cost and time and maximize speed and profits. It is integral to most education systems. Thus given a utilitarian dilemma, the tendency for the individual to optimize societal utility has to be the by-product of the scientific education. The "dark side," of such optimization cannot be just swept under the rug, as the study attempts to do. Such optimization, invariably means the process is disconnected from "human emotions." In fact, most engaged in this are taught to consider such qualitative feelings as noise, to be avoided at any cost. Antisocial behavior, thus, may also be a by-product of the education process.

So, a more fundamental question is whether humanity took a turn in its mental structure, when it chose Science many centuries ago. We are on a road with no possibility of turning back and we will drive every brain cell to respond in an utilitarian way. At the end of the road, we should have fully robotized brains with unambiguous utilitarian responses to every dilemma and along with it a complete elimination of human noise, that some call "social behavior." In the meantime, we can debate how "morality," is defined and how it should be optimized.

 (1) Antisocial Personality Traits Predict Utilitarian Responses to Moral Dilemmas. Science Daily, Sep 30, 2011 http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/09/110930153042.htm?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+sciencedaily+%28ScienceDaily%3A+Latest+Science+News%29

The face of migration

Both human genome studies and archeological evidence point to Australian aborigines as a population that has taken exceptional risk in wading through miles of deep sea into the far continent. This required exceptional skills and tremendous amounts of risk taking. What is not clear, however, is the reason why they did it. Was it the thrill of risk taking or were they pushed into a situation with no alternatives.

It is important to unearth what happened, It is also interesting to speculate why. As the 7 billion current occupants of a bland planet, with little differentiation among themselves, kill and mutilate each other for meaningless material possessions such as oil, gold and land, such thoughts may help us to recalibrate. Why did humans travel from Africa to the middle east to India, Indonesia and to Australia? What drove them to take such risks nearly 50,000 years ago? Was it really risk taking or were they actions with no options?

Modern day humans are remarkably the same as those who decided to walk on two legs, 2 million years ago in that they are driven by the same goals. Thus, today's humans should provide sufficient hints as to what drove our ancestors. Humans are clearly territorial and materialistic and those who got to India first would have claimed the land pushing the later arrivals to Indonesia. The story will repeat itself as the later waves are forced ashore, with over 25 miles of deep sea between the land owners and virgin lands across in the continent of Australia.

Migration is not a story of adventure and risk taking – it is simply a story of greed and violence – fundamental properties of humans.

Godly intuition

A recent study (1) apparently demonstrates that people with an intuitive thinking style are more likely to believe in God than those with a reflective thinking style. This is fair enough but one has to dig deeper into what is meant by "intuition" and "reflection." The study seems to define intuition as a process that is not systematic. In this context, intuition seems to be the same as instinct. This is an interesting thought that may require further analysis.

Some define instinct as hard wired into the brain. In simpler brains as in many animals, instinct is supposed to be imparted as part of the hardware. Kittens and puppies seem to know instinctively what to do in certain situations, away from their parents and with no training. Human babies, however, seem to lack instincts – their operating system comes with no preconceived ideas. What makes an individual is the software that is put on through training – by parents, teachers and other interactions. Thus, intuition, as defined in the article as a close proxy for instinct, likely misses the point.

How do humans acquire intuition? One could argue that intuition is gained by repeated experiments and the analysis of the inputs and outputs of those experiments. Thus, a human in the African Savannas will have remarkably developed intuition about where predators may be found and where water is likely to exist. On the other hand, a human in Wall Street, may have intuition as to how to convert a prospect into a client and how to maximize her profits. This "intuitive knowledge," comes from repeated experiments and close analyses of the results.

Thus, "intuition," is not a hard wired property, as the article appears to proclaim – but rather it is knowledge created from analyses of past information. "Reflection," on the other hand, is a process that is driven by status quo. The article is biased in that it assumes that the "status quo," i.e. "careful analysis of the situation at hand," by the scientific elite is somehow different from intuition. It has not provided any argument to make such a differentiation.

Thus, conclusions drawn from experiments with ex. ante biases are likely incorrect. Before differentiation can be made between intuitive and reflective thought processes, one has to have both a better definition for these terms as well as a robust understanding of the genetics of these processes.

Intuitive thinking may influence belief in God, Published: Tuesday, September 20, 2011 - 12:36 in Psychology & Sociology

Old bottle, new wine

Recent research from the University of Chicago (1) suggests that the value perceived by the consumer of a product or service is inherently linked to the effort needed to acquire it. In other words, the benefits that accrue to the consumer, regardless of the cost, is not considered independently by the consumer in the value assigning process. Also, the cost (effort) is generally considered to be positively correlated to value by the consumer.

On the surface, this appears to be a problematic observation. Most agree that such factors as the intricate design of the label on the bottle of the wine appear to correlate with the value assigned by the consumer to what is inside. In this case, the consumer is using the quality of the label and the bottle as proxies for the wine itself. This study appears to take it one step further in that the consumer perceives value to be correlated with the effort needed – i.e. making the label difficult to read actually increases the perceived value. The incremental value to effort, however, cannot be increasing monotonically – it is logical to assume that the consumer will walk away from the bottle of wine, if it is chained to the shelf, even though the effort needed to acquire it is very high in that case.

One way to rationalize this finding may be that the consumer has some extra "effort" to play with. As long as the incremental effort needed to acquire a product/service of equal quality is within this "budgeted effort, she will expend it and feel better from the purchase. However, if the effort needed is beyond that, it is likely that she will walk away from the product. Expending the budgeted effort brings the consumer incremental utility as the available effort (time, for example) may be perishable.

However, companies should be careful accepting the study conclusions literally and start designing their products and services to demand higher effort by their customers to acquire them.

(1) "From Inherent Value to Incentive Value : When and Why Pointless Effort Enhances Consumer Preference." Sara Kim, Aparna Labroo – Journal of Consumer Research http://www.jstor.org/pss/10.1086/660806

The mystery of Astrophysics

 

NASA's Fermi gamma ray telescope team recently released a catalog of nearly 2000 objects with high emissions (1) . Nearly 1/3 of these objects are mysterious in that they cannot be associated with any known class of objects or phenomena.

This is instructive. Planet hunting has become the most popular activity in Astronomy lately and although it is interesting, finding a new planet or even a dozen of them do not substantially advance our understanding of the system. Granted, every now and then people get excited about finding "an earth like" planet or a massive planet too close to the star – as if "earth" is something special and they are surprised that classical Physics does not always work. Since there is only a limited band width of brain and observational power available, it is important to allocate that in the most profitable way for humanity. If fundamental questions remain about the structure of the universe, then it is important to focus on it first to get a higher level of understanding. The fact that dark matter, energy and flow remain to be "plugs," in the equation with no new insights, should give scientists pause.

The mystery unearthed by LAT is yet another example that we are nowhere close to a reasonable understanding of the system. Such experiments, that study the fabric of the universe holistically, are much more important than finding water molecules in some obscure planet. We already know water and planets exist and thus there will always be planets with water – it does not require a lot of energy and time. It may be time to reevaluate our priorities.

(1) http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/GLAST/news/gamma-ray-census.html

Tax perception distortion

A recent study (1) concludes that a "flat tax system" makes people less happy than a progressive tax regime. This is a "distortion" in the perception of tax systems. A flat tax system had nothing to do with whether the overall tax regime is progressive or not. It is important to get the terminology right. By posing questions this way and conducting irrelevant research, academics create more confusion in the public.

Taxes have to be looked at in its entirety. When an individual pays a variety of taxes – such as sales taxes, property taxes, licenses, capital gains taxes etc. in addition to income taxes, focusing on just one component – that shows up in their pay check explicitly, distorts how she view taxes. The fact that a large number of people prefer "progressive taxes" as opposed to "flat taxes" on income just means that a large number of people think they will pay less in such an income tax regime. Additionally, most do not internalize the cost of collecting" "progressive income taxes" and the cost of compliance. It is estimated that Americans spend 8 Billion hours (3.8 Million jobs) just collecting and filling in the data in the complex income tax forms they are given every year.

Tax policy has to be holistic. It has to take into account both the benefits and costs of taxes. The US can easily create a revenue neutral tax policy that includes a "flat income tax." Such a policy can be designed to be "progressive" if all the components are taken into account. In such a system, property taxes, sales taxes on luxury items and other discretionary items will dramatically increase. An ideal system will be one with zero income taxes that will release nearly 15 Billion hours into the economy immediately – an equivalent of 5 Million jobs. A zero income tax regime can be consistent with progressive taxation with properly designed consumption taxes.

Using labels in the wrong context can be damaging whether it came out of ivy walls or ivory towers.

(1) A More Progressive Tax System Makes People Happier, Association for Psychological Science. http://www.psychologicalscience.org/index.php/news/releases/a-more-progressive-tax-system-makes-people-happier.html

Full circle

A recent study (1) explains how bacteria could be used to kill off cancer cells. A surprisingly simple mechanism – the proclivity of Clostridium sporogenes to grow in Oxygen depleted environments because of their origination early on in the Earth's history when Oxygen levels were low – make them prefer the cancer cells to normal cells. This brings us back to where it all started.

The history of medicine is dominated by the discovery and application of agents that remove micro-organisms from the human body. Nearly every disease till recently had a parasitic origin. Man (and woman) handsomely won this war, but soon found themselves in a corner. As the parasite loads on the human body were lowered, it started to fight against itself. The immune system – suffering from boredom began to imagine things. What is the point in having a BMW in the garage if the speed limit is only 25?. The immune system, built for the era when humans were suffering from high parasite loads, suddenly found itself less valuable. Ego is not limited to the human, it is equally applicable to the systems she carries.

Now, we have completed the full circle. Parasites are re-introduced to either cure the body of its ill-advised excursions such as cancer or keep it occupied to take its mind off to alleviate allergies. Exclusive use of synthetic chemicals to cure and alleviate diseases has run its course. A new approach, that includes the balancing of the human system with the parasites it used to, may be in the offing.

(1) e!Science News http://esciencenews.com/articles/2011/09/05/harmless.soil.dwelling.bacteria.successfully.kill.cancer

Innovation frontier

In a world of high specialization, knowledge is largely created by going deep in the selected domain. Sheer complexity has driven every knowledge seeker to dig deeper and narrower tunnels in her own area of specialization. However, such knowledge is incremental with little ability to effect breakthrough innovation. This has important implications for education, policy and the innovation rate of the overall economy. 

At one time, biology, chemistry and physics were considered orthogonal avenues of pursuit. Till recently, the concepts used in engineering and computer science in the understanding, design and creation of physical and information systems was not considered to share any usable ideas for those engaged in biological systems. Even now, most of the medical sciences run on the basic proposition of affecting a biological system through synthetic chemistry only. Engineering design of biology – synthetic biology – is a nascent area that begins to break these barriers between domains – giving glimmers of hope for a higher level of innovation. At the heart of such innovation is an effort to systematically understand uncertainty and inter-relationships rather than prescriptively dig deeper in one direction.

In the modern world, replete with highly complex but segmented specializations, innovation has to happen in the boundaries. Synthetic biology is an important first step in this direction. But such a merger need not be limited to science and technology. Higher level innovation can happen in the boundaries of fields such as science, art, religion and philosophy – areas currently considered to be orthogonal, with nothing to share. These segments are rendered rigid by educational systems, media, policy and business, limiting what is possible. This will require a fundamental shift in how knowledge itself is defined and what society considers to be innovation.

Much excitement may be in stock for the next generation, if they can shed the arcane and rigid labels imparted on them during a regime of incrementalism. Being the master of one may be inferior to visualizing the mixing of a few.

Ref: Flexibility. http://is.gd/flexbook

Is Entrepreneurship rational?

Entrepreneurship is the act of being an entrepreneur, who can be defined as "one who undertakes innovations, finance and business acumen in an effort to transform innovations into economic goods" (1).  This definition is tricky as most successful entrepreneurs are not known to have undertaken activities with the explicit intent of transforming "innovations into economic goods." Rather, successful entrepreneurs are driven by a passion to create something or transform the status-quo. Economic profit has been the last thing most of them focused on. This is true for every successful entrepreneur from Hewlett and Packard to Steve Jobs. This has profound implications for those who are diving into the murky world of entrepreneurship and ignorant universities attempting to impart this art on its graduates through a series of courses and case studies.

More importantly, it is unclear that entrepreneurship is a rational activity. Most fail and the probability adjusted aggregate returns to entrepreneurs is mediocre at best. From a utility perspective, this is not a comforting thought for budding entrepreneurs setting out to change the world.  Why do they do it? Why do rational men and women leave their jobs and attempt something with the highest probability of failure? Why do they voluntarily commit suicide? Academics are excellent in statistical analysis and they have figured out that the "average return" to entrepreneurship is positive. Accordingly they have set out to publish papers, create courses and initiate processes that will churn out entrepreneurs like pancakes from their ivy covered campuses. However, finance, marketing and "leadership (proxy for testosterone driven managers)" seem to have done nothing for entrepreneurship, This has resulted in just the opposite – the venture capitalists have poured syrup on the ivy pancakes and made them wet and ineffective.

Entrepreneurship is a fundamentally irrational activity. No amount of accounting and marketing education is going to make a business graduate, an entrepreneur. Entrepreneurs are, indeed, a different breed of people, who are willing to jump out of airplanes with a parachute that has never been proven to open. It is time universities got out of the business of training the entrepreneurs. They should have known this for over 3 decades as they stare into the lives of successful entrepreneurs, who dropped out of their elite campuses.

Entrepreneurship is fundamentally an irrational activity – those who teach rationality are ill-equipped to create one.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

(1) Wikepedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Entrepreneurship