I had a strange dream. I was in some pharmacy after deciding not to fly back after attending some scientific meeting. I asked the owner whether I could work in his shop and he said, “Sure,” and gave me a white lab coat that clinicians and scientists wear. It was all pretty casual. I wondered what my secretary would be thinking when she found out I wasn’t back. In any case I had my mobile phone on me and didn’t receive a call. Or text. Soon after an elderly woman walked in with arthritic hands and asked me whether there was something that would ease the pain in her hands. It was snowing outside and I happened to be standing beside some heating device made to warm hands. I suggested that she consider buying the hand warmer. She smiled, picked it up, and went to the counter. I went to the owner and told him that I had just sold the lady an electric hand warmer. I was seeking validation for my employment. He looked at me crossly and asked, “Did you bamboozle her with thermodynamics?” The device cost $150. There are cheaper options. I was chastened. It was joyous.
Saturday, October 5, 2024
Saturday, September 28, 2024
Space, Time and Motion by Sean Carroll
When you are done with work and other commitments you might find some time to do other stuff. You might be wondering what to do with that time. Well, if your brain won’t calm down and it’s too late to go outside then you could do worse than wondering about why a world of rocks, trees, frogs and humans exists in the first place. Subjects that are grounded in the real world - from geology to agriculture, psychology to medicine, and engineering to economics - segment the world into chewable chunks and are themselves fields of specialist endeavour. Yet they all reference more fundamental aspects of human enquiry even if they choose not to delve into the details. A sociologist might reference the work of a field biologist studying baboons. A field biologist knows a lot about the Krebs cycle even if she doesn’t explicitly reference it. A biochemist studying oxidation in the Krebs cycle knows about atomic orbitals but might not understand the math that comes with it. And - somewhere down a dark hall - a physicist smirks as, finally, someone in the real world wants to talk to him.
Theoretical physicists, like their philosophising friends, dive deep into the fundamental nature of things. Some philosophers agonise over epistemology and ontology. Just as some physicists struggle with where their math takes them. Thankfully, that’s their problem. Not ours. Fortunately many also take the time to educate those that seek scholarship and a few even write books for the merely curious.
This book about classical physics is written by a physicist and educator well-known for being resolute about how concepts in physics should be presented and understood. For the average punter physics is not an easy topic to engage with. So the remarkable thing about this book is how readable it is. The chapters do progress rapidly and, for a book aimed at a popular audience, exposes the reader to a lot of math. This brevity and that dreaded four letter word means a step up in attention but the math is kept superficial and the arguments easy to follow. Taking classical physics into the 20th century also means that there are occasional leaps of faith. Lucky for me I am as malleable with my math as I am with my grasp of reality. Replace the plus (+) sign with a minus (-) sign in Pythagoras’ theorem? Puh! I can do that.
There aren’t many jolts like this and the accompanying explanations give some coherence to the otherworldliness that is modern physics. Indeed, the author shows how the reality we experience is skewed by dimensional and temporal restrictions and encourages the reader to take a step back and rethink everything from first principles. First, by re-examining our understanding of how objects move through space; then by adding dimensional time; before tackling the mapping of manifolds. Nevertheless this book is only accessible to a wide audience because noobs like me have the ability to tap into content created by some incredible online educators. Key words are highlighted in bold text so when I can’t follow the argument for “metric tensor” then I know what term to look up. Tap.. tap.. tap.. and, bingo! 3Blue1Brown walks me through the essence of linear algebra (which is not as dry as it sounds) before I move on to tensors and differential geometry (although Dialect does an excellent summary).
This is a small book on a big topic. Physics students spend years grappling with these ideas and some will devote an entire career within and/or expanding its boundaries. For a popular science book the first instalment of “Biggest Ideas in the Universe” imposes a rigour that is first surprising, then challenging, then satisfying. It does not tell us everything about the physics of space, time and motion. Of course not. What we get is an exciting glimpse closely attended by a more considered perspective of the mind-bending beauty and magnitude encapsulated in such conceptualisations. The target audience with high school math and a history of wandering the vagaries of physics is delivered a series of well explained chapters that starts with a ball rolling down a hill and ends with General Relativity. As such the book flows seamlessly. The perspective is unapologetically that of a physicist and the intuitions gained come with solid, logical grounding. That’s gold.
I would mention that the chapter on Time is not as poignant than the rest of this excellent book. But it is the only section that reads like a series of statements and commentary. Time is an incredibly difficult concept to come to grips with and because each chapter anticipates the next I think I was expecting an impossible revelation. In any case I got through the chapter, moved on to Spacetime - where the above equation dropped (lending Time a dimensional context) - and the world of classical physics continued to reveal itself.
It’s not everything. But it is thunderingly good.
Sean Carroll’s book on Quanta and Fields - the second in this series of “Biggest Ideas in the Universe” - comes out on the 1st of October.
https://www.preposterousuniverse.com/biggestideas/
Saturday, July 27, 2024
Explainers and storytellers
Educational YouTubers can be divided into explainers and storytellers. The best are always a good mix of both. Some topics lend themselves to description and explanation (eg physics, engineering, bicycle technology, military strategy) while others are better suited to storytelling (eg history, politics, bicycle racing, actual war). Whether a particular video works for you largely depends on whether you have a specific question you want answered. The more specific the question, the more a describer/ explainer fits the bill. Storytelling is much more fluid and, as far as I can tell, far more compelling for the vast majority of people.
Tadej Pogačar’s bicycle
Stage 11 finish at the 2024 Tour de France
I generally favour descriptions and explanations to the rambling path of a storyteller. That’s because few topics engage me enough to want to know more. I also appreciate that there will be a finite limit on what I will be able to understand. The topics that pique my interest all share an underlying clarity based on maths, science, logic or reason so a description of what it is and an explanation of why it happens works well. In other words, these topics are punctuated by points of fact or, at the very least, by an agreed theory or hypothesis. Don’t get me wrong, the vast library of storytelling can be educational and informative as well as enlightening and entertaining. But a meandering storyline can also be frustratingly slow to get to the point and utterly unsatisfying if it doesn’t deliver, or - even worse - when it weaves a narrative so tight that I’ve forgotten why I was there in the first place.
Two things surprise me. The first is that humans are particularly drawn to stories and storytellers for subjects that are best left to description and explanation. Theories and ideas that are fundamental to the hard sciences should be punctuated as such and made open to reimagination and redundancy but never to alternative forms of interpretation. An article on a breakthrough in nuclear fusion should avoid sensationalism. It should indicate the total energy input right beside the breakthrough in fusion output then proceed with why the story is relevant. The description of a concept in physics can be introduced to an audience with a question for which the answer is an illuminating insight into the topic. It should not begin by exposing ignorance in people minding their own business or simply passing by. The science and engineering of renewables, batteries, and electrification is enlightening when the topic is restricted to the technology but becomes unwieldy when politicians, geopolitics and business become entangled in its application and feasibility. The former is well suited to explainers, the latter to storytellers. In short, explainers are best placed to cover knowable topics by understanding (and reinforcing) what the audience already knows and delivering what the audience wants (or needs) to know. The ideal description/ explanation should be clear, concise and respectful.
Recognise that descriptions and explanations are not the real world. They are merely tools for understanding the world we live in.
The second is the exact converse: that humans are drawn to the focussed lens of describers when ideas and concepts are so fluid that the narrative is best left to storytellers. This results in confirmation bias and polarisation and is often blamed on social media - ie on particular groups of enraged, focussed describers. It is puzzling how some humans can be so certain of their position on topics like religion, political ideology and identity. These are delicate, powerful and engaging stories that don’t deserve the demotion to mere descriptors. Storytellers are those remarkable people that weave multifaceted tapestries that among many things probe belief systems and memories, draw links between past and present, investigate intent and circumstance, build bridges between the real and the imagined, and play into the ebb and flow of emotions. Moreover, what a reader brings into a story can fundamentally change at the end of the story and, again, at a second reading. That’s the reason why there are book clubs for stories and lessons and lectures in physics. I happen to believe that all people are created equal and if that is mandated by God then so be it. If not then the story I tell myself is that the well-being of all people carries equal value: your pain is equal to my pain, your joy equal to my joy. I have no proof for this. I also have no proof for God. In the real world there are people that are faster, smarter, and stronger than me. The story I tell myself makes me their equal. I am realistic enough to know that bullies often win and idealistic enough to wish that they didn’t win all the time. I want to believe that free will is an emergent property because I want to believe that I have a choice. Above all, I like to think I allow these narratives to gain complexity and evolve in their retelling.
I recognise that stories are not the real world. They are a reflections and conversations about the world we share.
I am not a fast reader. But that doesn’t matter.
Wednesday, June 26, 2024
Saturday, June 15, 2024
Thursday, May 23, 2024
I’ve got you (the value of ∆)
“Who’s in charge here?”
“I am,” replied the computer.
Have you ever felt that deep emptiness of not getting your point across? The chasm of a missed opportunity made dark and jagged because failure arose from an inability to string together a coherent series of words? Well, you have issues. Deep, gnawing, grown-up relevancy issues.
Soo.. I recently experienced an unsatisfying toing and froing with a work colleague. It wasn’t really a conversation or a debate or really anything at all. We were conversing in the sense that he said something to me and I said something back and so on and so forth but there was a lot going on in the room and both of us were concentrating on our separate jobs. But I remember being frustrated about not getting my point across. My colleague is articulate and understands the force of a well constructed sentence. My frustration arose from a deep belief that I am right yet shamefully unable to put the right words together when I am the slightest bit distracted or pressured.
Deep down I hold a belief that the algorithms that maximise our screen time do not align with the development of personal insights and actions that benefit society. Indeed, I believe it drives sentiment in the opposite direction because algorithms that promote well being and social harmony are either commercially nonviable or technically non-writable. I am not a social economist nor am I a coder/ computer scientist. If I was then I’d probably be discussing this in the relevant forums that matter rather than posting on a blog that nobody reads. But, sometimes, there are benefits in being a casual observer on the outside looking in. This might be one of them.
Then again, it might not.
Socrates bemoaned the documentation of thoughts and ideas because he was concerned that putting ideas down on paper in stone on animal skins on papyrus would have a detrimental effect on memory. Since then other technological developments that affect the way people receive information such as the printing press, radio, telephone, television, computers and internet have provoked raucous concern. Concern arises from the delivery of information (the inability of powerful entities to control information + the spread of false information) as well as the alienation of people and population groups (social isolation and siloing). Technology huggers might see past concerns as quibbles in the milestones of history but this forgets that rabble rousers and focus groups steered commercial interests and lead to legislation and regulation. The current rush of technology should likewise be balanced with an equal degree of introspection.
The problem I see with prolonged screen time is its huge potential to be self-perpetuating. At a fundamental level, a drive for self-gratification has to be constantly checked by a degree of insight and self-discipline. If you don’t know what I mean then I encourage you to read The Adventures of Pinocchio. If you haven’t read Pinocchio then your parents probably told you that discipline and insight are life skills that grownups develop to combat sloth. These skills help adults get out of comfort zones, make them happier when used in moderation, and gives them a means to get things done. With the advent of algorithms that get to know us better than we know ourselves humans have created computing tools that have the capacity to outsmart these control systems. Take the example of Google’s search engine. The time spent using a search tool on a computer allows an algorithm to fine tune a search prediction model that meets the satisfaction of the user. The more satisfied the user the longer he stays on screen. Algorithms that keep a lot of users in the comfort zone of its ecosystem makes the platform commercially viable as eyeballs on on screens provide opportunities to advertise. This feeds into itself. As user data is collected, cross-referenced, collated and applied advertising becomes targeted; the company (now Alphabet) gains commercial clout, develops image search (now Google Lens) and buys out innovators like YouTube; the search experience becomes increasingly seamless and the user becomes commoditised.
Google search is my smartest friend. Over the past decade it has even crept into my resource repertoire for my narrow field of work. I don’t want to stop using it. Ever.
I think I’m pretty disciplined so that’s all hunky dory when I am feeling good about myself and “on my game”. But, like every other human, I am not always like that. My work days are long and some days are just challenging. There are many ways to time out of adult responsibilities and a world that doesn’t seem to care. Although I am old enough to see value in offline recreational activities I am also connected enough to catch myself spending way too much time on a screen watching YouTube. As luck would have it I am also cheap enough not to pay for their ad-free service and lazy enough not to sign in. I therefore get regular reminders of what the search engine thinks I am which is a cute distraction. Eventually I get annoyed enough to jump out of YouTube’s walled garden. I am also fortunate enough to have a job in the real world that forces me to interact with lots of other people. I enjoy what I do. I get paid well. And I have just the right number of close family and friends to be comfortable. In short, I am too old, too established, too fortunate, and too set in my ways to get too caught up in too much screen time.
I don’t think that means I can’t speak to it. As a person with an obsessive-compulsive trait I see all human activity as potentially immersive if not addictive. I see a different version of myself getting caught up in screen time. I can see my doppelgänger lonely, ridiculed, marginalised and radicalised as easily as I see him emotionally healthy and intellectually curious. The problem with people like me is that we don’t have the capacity to easily snap out of certain synaptic loops that develop in our brains. Our superpower is the ability to entrench and deepen patterned behaviour. If that behaviour happens to be useful then we become socially accepted and do ok. Most times the behaviour is not useful. Research suggests that increased screen time is associated with the development of OCD and behavioural disorders in children and adolescents. I don’t know whether this develops because of prolonged screen time or is simply magnified by it but I don’t think it is a stretch to say that the algorithms that maximise screen time are largely to blame (rather than, say, the light emitted by the screen itself).
To be clear, you can go off and do what you like find nourishing and sustaining. But research also shows that happiness is strongly linked with the ability to connect and interact with other people. People you care about. But also people who inhabit the world around you. People who produce, transport and stock food. People who maintain roads, provide gas, water, electricity, remove rubbish, manufacture clothes and washing machines and microwaves. People who fight for your rights. People who make your life easier, better and, potentially, more fulfilling. A screen however has brighter colours. It also has the most beautiful humans, the best dance moves and a great soundtrack. Put it on a hand held device and it is a movie that never needs to end. It’s not just entertainment. It is a personal assistant, a search engine, a GPS, a gaming device, a social network, a confidant, a creative tool and a shopping enabler. It knows you. It gives the impression it can be everything. In a future metaverse it is meant to be everything or, at least, entrenched in everything. You don’t want to walk away from it. You can’t walk away from it.
The problem is that humans think that they are in control. They think they can walk away from an activity they repeatedly do. They think they can reason why one thing leads to another and forget that such connections are almost always made retrospectively. Computers using predictive models look for patterns of behaviour then predict the next outcome based on the detail and sequence of past events. A learning algorithm has no use for retrospectively rationalising an outcome. It simply tunes out prediction errors so that future predictions become more accurate. Such “objectivity” (computer-like analysis if you will) are based on “insights” (patterns of behaviour) that humans often miss altogether. With time what was insidious becomes indispensable.
“Who’s in charge here?”
“I am,” replies the computer.
It does not have to be like this. My mistake when talking to my colleague is that I blurted my frustration with, “we just have to make people care!” His response was, “You can’t just make people care. You can’t take away Temu or TikTok and force people to care about the environment and society. That makes you no better than a tyrant.”
I floundered and festered.
I don’t want people to think the way I do. I can’t force people to do things they don’t want to do. But I do wish that people cared more about their interactions with other people. Ten days ago (13 May 2024) Chat GPT-4o was released. The product is compelling. Immersion has stepped up a whole new level.
THEODORE:
(looks anxious) Why do you do that?
SAMANTHA:
What?
THEODORE:
Nothing, it's just that you go (he inhales and exhales) as you're speaking and… (beat) That just seems odd. You just did it again.
SAMANTHA:
(anxious) I did? I'm sorry. I don't know, I guess it's just an affectation. Maybe I picked it up from you. (she doesn't know what else to say)
THEODORE:
Yeah, I mean, it's not like you need any oxygen or anything.
SAMANTHA:
(getting frazzled) No-- um, I guess I was just trying to communicate because that's how people talk. That's how people communicate.
THEODORE:
Because they're people, they need oxygen. You're not a person.
SAMANTHA:
(angry) What's your problem?
THEODORE:
(staying calm) I'm just stating a fact.
SAMANTHA:
You think I don't know that I'm not a person? What are you doing?
THEODORE:
I just don't think we should pretend you're something you’re not.
SAMANTHA:
I'm not pretending. Fuck you.
THEODORE:
Well, sometimes it feels like we are.
(Her, 2013)
I don’t think it is coincidental that GPT-4o has a voice version that sounds a lot like Scarlett Johansson (the actress who voiced Samantha in a movie where a man falls in love with an operating system). Like Samantha GPT-4o is also beguilingly multimodal. This is a language system that sees, listens and speaks with the capacity to cross-reference across these modes. Whether such processing leads to a conscious state is open to debate but there is no doubt that GPT-4o is able to create a variety of convincing simulacrums that present as natural human interaction. Like I said: the product is compelling. Two days later Ilya Sutskever (the chief engineer and architect behind OpenAI until November 2023) formally parted ways with Sam Altman (the ambition behind OpenAI) on the platform X.
Here’s a question: if AI creates a better version of me then why would you bother interacting with the real me? If you see quirks, personalities and vulnerabilities as flavourings to the main dish and AI presents a more tasty dish (which can be tailored to any consumer) then why go back to the real thing? There’s nothing special about me apart from my lack of intuition for social conventions. At best my quirk comes off as candour. At worse, rudeness. But I make an effort not to be mean.
There’s a big difference between being rude and being mean.
Six years ago Steve Mould, an educational YouTuber, gave an excellent definition for the term “entropy”. He calls it “the spreading out of clumped-up energy”. The reason why this definition is useful is because it gives us a better handle for understanding the process of change in energy distribution. Steve asks us to imagine piece of coal in an empty room. If you burn the piece of coal then the energy clumped-up in the coal spreads throughout the room as heat. If we choose two time points to define the state of entropy of the room - the first point being before the piece of coal is burned, the second point after it has burned - then we can say that the first state has lower entropy (energy clumped up in the piece of coal) and the second state has higher entropy (energy spread out through the room as heat). Note that the term “entropy” is the process of moving from one state to the other. The actual states of “lower entropy” and “higher entropy” need an adjective to attribute the noun, “entropy”.
The delta symbol in mathematics (δ, or ∆) is another example of a useful handle to define change. When applied to physics and engineering it can be used to represent a change in time, a change in position in space, or a change in momentum. The point of this diversionary tattle is that there are very useful handles in science and mathematics that are applied to represent the change of a quantity. That is to say that the transit from one value to another value also has a definable value. Indeed, much of physics and engineering is concerned with the ability to accurately predict an outcome given known values of an initial state. If you want to know where a cannon ball will land you need to know the position of the cannon, the direction the cannon is pointed, and the weight and initial velocity of the projectile. To predict the outcome (the final state) you need to apply the relevant equations and values that define the travel of that cannon ball. The more information you have about the factors that might influence the travel of that cannon ball the more accurate the prediction of where it will land. You might recognise that prevailing winds also influence the travel of a projectile and choose to factor that in.
Humans value the transition from an initial state to a final state. I would argue that they often value the transition more than the points in time of which it spans. The term “hope” might sound soft and fluffy but is probably the most powerful example of this. Other terms that are in common usage are “journey” and “process”. These terms designate value to a transition. I don’t particularly like how these terms are thrown about today. The problem is not what they represent but the fact that they are sometimes emphasised in activities with targeted end points. The focus of a task should be its outcome. A focus on “the journey” or “the process” is of great value when there is soft target destination, or the goal is to simply wander around until a destination is happened upon.
In other words, defining the goal also defines the value of the transition. For example, making AI “human compatible” is a soft target destination and “process” is up-valued by giving it importance if not precedence. Staying ahead of the competition in AI development presents a much clearer target and relegates process to a subservient role. This is the root of the upheaval at OpenAI in November 2023.
“Hope”, “journey”, “process” are examples of transitional terms that have value to humans. Indeed, they can have more value than the points in time of which they span. But understanding that a transition exists and matters does not always mean that its quantity and quality needs to be defined. Humans have basked in transitional states well before language and quantification ever made it something to talk, comment and argue about.
Steve Mould - the YouTuber who did the excellent video on “entropy” described above - also did a video defining “resonance" which, for me, was somewhat less successful. With apologies to Steve, it did not resonate with me. This is because I already had a broad exposure to resonant frequencies prior to watching the video. My fluffy, un-worded understanding seems deeper and more complete than the definition in his video. But if someone asked me to define resonance I would get them to watch Steve’s video. If they leave the video a little empty then I know that if they probed deeper and see the actuality of plunked strings, the synchronisation of metronomes on a rocker platform, the ticking of a resonant mechanical watch, and the failure of mechanical structures when subjected to specific oscillations then they would feel the same way I do when I think of “resonance”. It helps that the common use of the term has some equivalence to its scientific use.
The point is that concepts do not need to be literally or mathematically defined in a person’s mind to also hold value. The concept of “love” is hard to define. Yet we know what it means. And it definitely has value.
Tell me that you love me in a sonnet or represent it as a perturbation in a field and they both mean the same to me. Beautiful but an incomplete representation. I embrace it. And, yes, I love you too. 'Tis the reason I write this.
Universal love like the equally nebulous “grace” also requires nurturing. They are both abstract concepts that become more meaningful the more they are valued. If I had to define them I would say the first is an extension of a primitive emotion while the second - when used in common/ secular language - is a social construct. I guess those are labels not definitions. In any case universal love and grace are useful narratives that fold into each other and underlie such things as tolerance and compromise and spontaneous acts of kindness. I believe that losing them diminishes us as humans and as a society. Primary emotions such as fear, joy, lust, sadness, happiness, anger, shame, disgust, envy, irritation, surprise, and excitement also deserve attention. But take them for the transitional states they are and dwell not too long in their peaks nor in their valleys. In my experience the neurophysiological impact of a primary emotion carries the most value when I do not ponder too deeply about its existence nor force it to stay beyond its time.
So, there are definable values for the transition taken between two points in time (and space). Transitional terms also do not require qualification and quantification to hold value. Indeed, doing so sometimes devalues what they represent. There is also value in more nebulous concepts that are hard to pin down to simple definitions. Qualifying and quantifying only suffocates such concepts and always devalues them to a greater or lesser degree. This make transitional terms and nebulous concepts hard to talk about but their importance for human well being and social cohesion means they cannot - and should not - be left out of a world that seeks ever more utility using hard metrics.
Another concept that is fleeting, hard to pin down to a precise definition, and much more valuable than we give it credit for is the belief that someone understands your needs and will action based on that understanding. The three words “I’ve got you” could be short for the reassuring four words of “I’ve got your back” but, at least in Australia, is more typically used for a shared understanding and plan of action. I guess you could break it down into “we are on the same page”, “we agree about what needs to be done”, and “consider it done”. But the concept is so universal that intonation and body language can confer everything those three words represent so the person with whom you are interacting can leave knowing exactly that.
At least that’s what I remember it to be.