A Walk in the Forest
So if any of you remember the previous version of the Quantum Flux site, you might recall a section called A Walk in the Forest. This is the title that I have given to I guess what you would call a book (although it's more like a collection of ideas) that I have been working on for quite a few years now. A Walk in the Forest refers to an analogy describing how information flowing through a physical structure can result in the development of what could be described as an intelligent information processing system, or in other words a structure such as our brain. In addition to understanding our brain's ability to take in information and make decisions based on this information, many people wish to understand another aspect of what our brain does, which is to produce the phenomenon of consciousness. Also as part of a Walk in the Forest is an explanation of how consciousness arises, how it is an inherently occurring epiphenomena of how the brain works to do its day to day job. In a nutshell, consciousness arises as a result of the simultaneous presence of a sequence of perceptive states of the world, in a logical order through time.
One of the things that you realize as a scientist or researcher is that when you come up with a new idea, chances are somebody else has come up with that idea too. Over the past few decades the evolution of the Internet and the huge increase in availability and transfer of information between people has made this even more obvious... you come up with something that you think is really unique, you run a search on it and find out that 100 other people have also come up with the same idea. But a lot of the ideas that I had in the Walk in the Forest I think were somewhat unique. I mention all this I guess because I'm somewhat irked; I recently watched one of the episodes from the excellent Discovery Channel series called Through the Wormhole, narrated by Morgan Freeman. It's called Does Time Really Exist, it's the third episode from season two in case you wish to watch it. Anyway about eight minutes into the show they describe my ideas about consciousness almost verbatim. It's not so much that I would've liked to have been referenced at some point, it's more of a reminder that I want to get all my writings and work organized in a collected format. So over the next few days I am going to get the Walk in the Forest pages backup online, and hopefully you'll see a link to them soon. I want to set it up so that it's easy to comment on and perhaps start some discussions going about these ideas on the site.
And by the way, a thank you note to the people who have donated in response to my posting of the new versions of the software; as it has always been with this project, when people go to the trouble of registering or donating, I suppose it mainly lets me know that there are some other people who find this stuff interesting, and I'm not just wasting my time releasing software and with the site, just talking to the web crawlers and bots. Anyways, thanks again.
VIM 2.0
So the Virtual Intelligence Matrix 2.0 is now available for download, compatible with Windows 7. I must say I have some mixed feelings about this; on one hand I put an incredible amount of work into this program and I'm glad to see that it can still run on modern systems now. It even works with NVIDIA's 3DVision glasses, and it's kind of cool to see the VIM walking around in full 3-D. But it is also very dated in terms of graphics, which makes it easy to underestimate how much work went into it at the time. And with large software companies picking up the ball and creating virtual world programs and life-sim games, it seems in many ways quite dull and limited. It is unique and different than other software, but I know it just sounds like I'm defending it when I point these things out. The differences that it is not a script driving the character - it is making decisions on its own as to where it wants to go and what it wants to do. So it's really the subtleties of what's going on that you have to look for.
I think the best part of releasing the VIM programs has been the incredible range of people that I have interacted with as a result of all this. I received letters from everyone from soldiers stationed at remote military outposts in Siberia who would watch the program as a place to go for a while, to posttraumatic stress disorder groups who would use VIM is a way to relax and focus. And perhaps most importantly through the VIM I discovered a lot about how information can be processed by intelligent systems to perform useful functions, and this knowledge I apply my work as a neuroscientist. In my lab we study things like the changes in synchrony patterns between neuronal ensembles in patients with autism, and how certain neuronal circuits can define a brain prone to epilepsy versus one that is not. And I suppose all these ideas get worked together as we try to move forward to an understanding of what we are and how we work.
So VIM 2.0 is the updated version of VIM 1.0 - I know I changed my numbering scheme over the years, but basically 1.0 was the one that returned to the original theme of planting a garden. The next(last?) one I'll update is VIM40, in which the VIM paints on a wall in the landscape. Anyway I hope some people enjoy the program, even if it is for nostalgic reasons!
Michael
VIRaptor 2.0
Today I am going to release the first of the updated versions of the Virtual Intelligence software. While VI Raptor wasn't as popular as the VIM in terms of downloads, in many ways it was always one of my favorites. The reason for this being it was one of the purest demonstrations of the underlying mechanism of not only the programs, but life itself. And I'm not being facetious here... one of the points that I have been trying to demonstrate with this project is how randomness is really at the core of why things are alive, and where the ability of living creatures to do all the amazing things they do comes from.
You really have to think about it for a while, but in a universe with strict rules and laws governing the cause-and-effect, the existence of randomness itself is pretty amazing. And in fact I would say it is still a perhaps philosophically debatable issue as to whether or not randomness does exist, or if what we call randomness is simply a process that is predetermined and just too difficult to understand. At any rate what randomness has done for the universe is allowed things that happen under the same circumstances to turn out differently at either different points in time, or in different instances. I cannot stress the importance of this more. For one, this is the driving force of the evolution of life, but that of course one could write a book on, or even several books. But for now I should stick to behavior and the program.
The thing to watch as the program runs is how natural the behavior of the birds appears. For a lot of the time as they fly around their behavior is being driven randomly. So as they change directions, fly up or down, much as this is just random behavior. But it does look "natural"...so the first thing to notice is that many life forms exhibit a core behavior that is basically random. But then you put a selective pressure on that random behavior, and everything changes. If some behaviors are better for the life form than others, all you need to do is bias the system slightly towards those beneficial behaviors and then when you observe takes another jump. So the second thing to notice is when one of the birds sees the other one, it modifies what it's doing slightly. Now all of a sudden you have a much more complex behavior arising that again looks very much like what we see in nature. Whether its schools of fish or herds of zebra, or the flow of people through the streets of NYC on the last shopping day before Christmas, by putting a very slight bias towards a goal, randomness drifts in a specific direction and no matter how you choose to describe it, it starts to look like what we see living things doing all the time.
The third thing that the program does is in addition to the goal-driven modification of random behavior is an emotion-driven modification of the goal-driven behavior. So when you put a physically based selective pressure on a random system you will make it function more efficiently in achieving a goal such as survival. But if you can then randomly generate a bias in the system that has no clear physical rationale (emotion, to simplify terminology), then you have a whole new spectrum of behavior to overlay on top of the logical, practical behaviors. And with these three steps virtually all of the behaviors exhibited by life forms can be created. You start with a random framework which allows a variety of behaviors to be expressed (what they can do); you put a selective pressure on the repertoire of behaviors, grounded in survival in physical reality (what they have to do); and finally you put a random pressure on the system to drive it in an unpredicted direction (what they want to do).
Now it's easy to see what the first thing that is going to happen here will be. Step 3 feeds back right on top of step 2. Because as we all know sometimes the emotional response is not a good idea for what is necessary to survive. And thus the richness of behavior begins...
As usual, I digress. I've tested the program out on several systems and it seems to be working fine under Windows 7, both 64-bit and 32-bit. It's a single zip file containing a single .scr file. I suppose screensavers are not that popular anymore but you can run it by simply double-clicking on the file, or install it as a normal screensaver if you wish. Actually I suppose I should put the readme file in there as well to explain what's going on, so I'll wait until tomorrow to post the file. Anyway the first time you run the program it will go to the configuration dialog box so you can set the screen resolution that you want to run at. If you ever want to change this you just right-click on the file and select Configure. Other than that you use the plus and minus keys to zoom in and out on the birds, the spacebar switches between the two birds, and the arrow keys will direct the flight of the bird that you're looking at. A bit anyways, until it's matrix kicks in and overrides whatever it is you telling it to do.
So since the program is not new, and many people have supported it over the years, you no longer have to register it to unlock extra features etc. There is simply a donate button, so if you wish to help support the project and the site, it would be much appreciated. Thanks, and I hope you enjoy the program!
Michael
Oh well...
I'm not sure if a lot of people know how the mechanics of scientific research goes in academic institutions, but certainly isn't easy. I'm reflecting on this because we just had a paper turned down for publication, granted from a very prestigious journal, but still we had our hopes up. We have a very important story regarding maternal health that we want to get out there, but the final steps in the whole process of doing research can often be the most difficult. In a nutshell you can follow a line of research for let's say two years, then you spend sometimes months writing the manuscript, getting all the figures made up, having people read it, getting comments back, changing things and basically working on it until you think it's perfect. Then you submit it to a journal and within 24 hours sometimes they can tell you, no thanks. Then usually the next step is to set your sights a little bit lower, you rewrite the whole thing into a new format and send it into a lower impact factor journal. So yes I am procrastinating on starting the rewrites tonight by posting this...
There is an absolutely awesome video that went somewhat viral, at least among nerdy research types; it's a takeoff on Lady Gaga's Bad Romance video. It's called "Bad Project", and considering it's done by real researchers, I think they do an excellent job with it. And it is dead-on accurate...
