Why do beavers build dams?

The ulimate reason is that a dam creates a body of water that makes a relatively safe neighborhood for a beaver family. But it is very likely that the beaver is unaware of this. The proximate reason, i.e. the real reason as far as the beaver is concern, is that he hates the sound of running water!
Researchers have shown that if you place headspeakers playing the sound of running water at proximity to beavers, the beavers will do all what they can to stop it! In one experiment, the beavers covered the headspeaker with mud until the sound stopped...

Raël and the Raël girls...or how to fulfill your fantasies by creating a sect.

You know Rael, right? This French Guru who pretends that we were made by Aliens and who pretended that his sect cloned a baby girl some years ago. Ever wondered how it was to go to one of his seminar? So read the following exellent blog post! Very interesting!

http://www.jamesgunn.com/2010/09/02/undercover-raelians-i-infiltrate-the-sex-and-ufo-cult/

How to devise the most efficient workout for gaining endurance, power, mass or force?

The following information is derived from the most recent scientific data.

0)Vocabulary:

Each exercise of a workout is typically performed in a number of sets of repetitions of this movement with or without a load (e.g. additional weight in the form of a barbell or dumbells).

Repetitions are performed without interuptions or with a short interuption.

A set is composed of 1 or more repetitions of a same exercise. A pause of at least 30 seconds is marked between two sets.

1RM is your record load for one repetition of one exercise. 5RM is the highest load with which you succeed to make 5 repetitions of one exercise.

The following parameters are important and will be discussed:

1)Which exercises?
2)How to perform each exercise?
3)With which load?
4)How many sets of repetitions and how many repetitions in a set?
5)How much rest between two sets?
6)How many days of rest between two workout?
7)What to do during rest days?
8)What to eat?
9)How much sleep?

1)Which exercises?

The Best exercise is the squat. It is the most complete workout for the lower body and it is a full body workout. It is the exercise that triggers the biggest release of anabolic hormones in the blood. As a result, this exercise has a synergetic effect on all other exercises.
The squat can typically be performed without weights, with a barebell or with dumbells. The barebell permits to lift more weight but requires a spotter (somebody ready to help you if you get stuck under the bar) or a security cage. The dumbells do not permit do lift as much weight due to the limited force you have in your hands to sustain the dumbells. However, the dumbells are safer since it is easy to release them in case of problems.

A close second is the deadlift which is an excellent full body workout

The best exercise for the upper body is the military press

2) How to perform each exercise?

Good form is important to avoid injuries. Injuries can be dramatic so it is of the uttermost importance to have a trainer explain to you the right form for each exercise or that at least you watch several tutorial on the internet.

The concentric move (e.g. for the squat, when the legs are extended to lift the weight) must be perfomed as fast as possible. The excentric move must be slower.

It is benefical to take a 4 seconds pause between the excentric and the concentric part of a movement.


3) Which load?

For endurance: 45 to 60% of 1RM

For preparation to hypertrophy or force (one month of preparation is advised to prepare your joints and ligaments if you are a beginner): 60% of 1RM

For hypertrophy: 70-82.5% of 1RM

For force: 85%+ of 1RM

4)How many sets of repetitions and how many repetitions in a set?

For hypertrophy or force, always do c.a. 25 repetitions divided in a certain number of sets. Said otherwise, the number of sets time the number of repetitions in a set must be c.a. 25.

rep * set = 25

For instance 5 sets of 5 repetitions or 2 sets of 12 repetitions or 8 sets of 3 repetitions.

The load should be chosen so that performing the last repetition of the last set is very hard but doable.

Suggestions:

For hypertrophy:

2 sets * 12 reps @70% of 1RM, or
3 sets * 8 reps @75% of 1RM, or
4 sets * 6 reps @80% of 1RM

For force (@85-100% of 1RM):

6 sets of 4 reps, or
8 sets of 3 reps, or
12 sets of 2 reps, or
25 sets of 1 rep.

5 sets of 5 reps @ 82.5% of 1RM is an excellent compromise between force and hypertrophy

5)How much rest between two sets?

For hypertrophy: short pauses (30 s to 2 min)

For force: longer pauses (2 min to 4 min)

6)How many days of rest between two workout?

1 or 2

7)What to do during rest days?

nothing or stretching or light exercises (e.g. working out the forearms) or light cardio.

8)What to eat?

Eat plenty. Make sure to eat enough proteins. Whey protein isolate powders can help. Avoid fast sugar such as sucrose. Don't avoid fat (except trans fat).

9)How much sleep?

7.5 hours is a minimum for most people.

Ayaan Hirsi Ali is pregnant!

Excellent news! Seeing such bright persons reproduce always cheers me up! By the way, I just finished listening to the audio version of "Nomad" and the book is worth it if only for her views and advices on how to preserve our secular societies from the rise of radical islam. However, to really appreciate this book, I think it is better to start by her first book: "infidel" which is her autobiography.

Our likely fate...

I think it is probable that we will screw up our environment enough to drastically decrease the number of humans on earth...but I also think we will survive in small number for quite a while thereafter.

Spinosa and understanding

Spinosa had it right before almost everybody. And yes, understanding is the way. Saying to a child that sugar is bad for its teeth is not the way. We need to explain them how sugar feed the bacteria that produce the acid that dissolve the enamel of the teeth...

The following video (in German) is particularly good.

The following is a link to the original French version

Démocratie participative en islande

On y arrive je vous dit! Si Si on y arrive!

"C'est un processus politique inédit qui devrait susciter l'émoi des plus conservateurs de nos parlementaires. Depuis avril, vingt-cinq conseillers issus de la société civile — avocat, journaliste, professeur d’économie, physicien, directeur de théâtre, pasteur, étudiant — sont chargés de superviser l'écriture de la nouvelle Constitution islandaise, racontent le site Numerama et le quotidien le Guardian. Le pays, durement touché par la crise économique de 2008, a ainsi décidé de se redresser en actualisant sa loi fondamentale, en vigueur depuis 1944, date de l'indépendance avec le Danemark.
Là où l'Islande innove vraiment, c'est que le processus de révision se veut collaboratif : les projets d'article sont publiés sur le site du gouvernement afin d'être commentés, critiqués, amendés par les internautes via les réseaux sociaux. Tous peuvent ainsi visualiser l'actuelle Constitution ou consulter le dernier brouillon et directement réagir sur la page Facebook, le compte Twitter ou la chaîne YouTube du "Conseil". Chacune des réunions est par ailleurs retransmise en direct et ouverte au public."

Lire plus avant:
L'islande met le mouvement en marche!

The tree of life

I just watched "the tree of life" and its not much more than religious propaganda with some nice pictures, some moving parts and many boring parts.

If you dislike spiders, don't watch this amazing animation movie!!!!!

Loom from Polynoid on Vimeo.

Why is it easier to be afraid of snakes than to love them as pets?

It could well be due to an innate drive of ours to loathe them. Most primates raised in captivity and never put in contact with a snake will look very scared the first time they will see one. Interestingly, chimpanzees and bonobos (our two equally closest cousins) have different responses when first confronted with a snake. Chimpanzees are scared but bonobos apparently are not.
Anyway, since most primates are innately scared of snakes, I wonder how would react a man, who never heard of a snake before, in front of one… Like most other primates (scared) or like bonobos (not scared)?
I also wonder if the same kind of innate reaction exists toward spiders because I really do not like them (and writing that down I am now checking my room just in case I spot one...)

Why life was better in London the 18th century than in the 17th century

I just finished to listen to two audiobooks: The English Society in the Eighteenth Century (Roy Porter), and Restoration London: Everyday Life in the 1660s. Both books where equaly entertaining and interesting. Now I can safely say that I would have prefer to live in the 18th century London than in the 17th century london. In the 17th century, you was not really free to think and express what you wanted. In the 18th century, things started to change. There was a lot of freedom of faith and even if people still expected you to believe in god, you was not necessarily burned anymore for being an atheist. Also, trade freed many poeple from their usual role. In the 17th century, you was either a poor paysan or a landowner. In the 18th century, you was either a poor paysan, a poor businessman, a middleclass buisinessman, a rich businessman or a landowner. I would be curious to read about London in the 19th century...

Book Review: Sight Unseen (part III). Are frogs conscious?

As I indicated in part II, although she has no conscious experience of the presence of a pencil, Dee Fletcher is able to catch a pencil using the same hand orientation as would a person with unimpaired vision.

As it turns out, some people have brain damages that cause the opposite effect: They can see and describe a pencil (they are consciously aware of the presence of a pencil) but they are unable to make the necessary movements to grasp it (Balint's syndrome). What these people have is not a motor problem. Balint "...could deduce that from asking the patient to point to different parts of his own body using his right hand with his eyes closed: there was no problem."

From the analysis of Dee Fletcher's case, it seems that when we are reaching for a pencil, we think that we need to be aware of the presence of the pencil, but actually not. We do not need to be aware of its presence. Dee Fletcher is not aware of its presence, but she can catch it. Reaching for objects is an ability that has been hard wired in our brain far back in our evolutionary history and it did not require consciousness. For this kind of motor acts at least, we are not better than "zombies".

A further indication that it is indeed so comes from experiments on animals:

When frogs catch preys, they use a different brain module from the one that guides them around visual obstacles blocking their path. This has been demonstrated in the following experiment:

First of all, they are two things that you need to know about frogs:

1) frogs’ brains can regenerate new connections when damaged.

2) the right eye of a frog is connected to the left hemisphere of its brain (and vice versa).

In these experiments, the optic nerves that brought information from the right eye to the "prey catching part" of the brain were cut. A few weeks later, however, the cut nerves re-grew and connected with the "prey catching part" of the brain but on the wrong side of the brain. As a result, when these frogs were brought in presence of a pray on their right side, they tried to catch it on their left side. However, when brought in presence of an obstacle on their right side, the frog correctly avoided the obstacle (this because the "obstacle avoiding part" of their brain had not been rewired.

The "prey catching part" in these frogs was now wired up the wrong way around.

But this did not mean that their entire visual world was reversed. It was as though the frogs saw the world correctly when skirting around an obstacle, but saw the world mirror-imaged when snapping at prey. Hence, frogs do not experience a global visual world created for all purposes. Frogs have specialized parts of their brain using visual information independently to perform different tasks.

Does that mean that frogs do not experience a visual world at all? Maybe they do, but as a matter of fact, they do not need one for catching prey or avoiding obstacles. By the way, we also do not need one for catching objects or avoiding obstacles. But we do experience a global visual world. This conscious visual experience might only be present in animals needing to communicate and/or to plan ahead...

For a long time I thought that any animal with a memory was conscious. Maybe frogs are conscious to some extend but it seems that they can function without experiencing a visual world as we do. Their kind of consciousness, if it exists, might be very different from ours.

Louis CK. Very funny :)

Démocratie 2.0: Des précisions sur les outils informatiques nécessaires

Ci-dessous j'ai collé une partie d'un texte écrit par Adam richard, porte parole de Démocratie 2.0 - Québec. Le Québec a des envies d'indépendence similaires à celles de la Flandre. Certains québécois croient en l'utilisation du concept de Démocratie 2.0 pour arriver à leurs fin et pour ensuite gouverner un Québec indépendant.  

Si la démocratie auvait vu le jour aujourd'hui, c'est sous cette forme qu'elle aurait eu lieu! Plus besoin d'être représenté lorsqu'il est si facile pour chacun de donner son avis sur tout!

" La Révolution dont je parle, et qui entre maintenant dans sa phase démocratique, c'est la révolution numérique, qui est en vitesse accélérée sur la révolution industrielle, qui elle s'est échelonnée sur environ une centaine d'années.  La révolution numérique, elle n'a véritablement débuté qu'il y a 15-20 ans, et n'est toujours qu'à ses premières heures.

Et pourtant, que de travail accompli!  Et en immense partie de manière complètement bénévole et libre (développement Code Libre, ou "Open Source").

Dans cet article, http://www.vigile.net/Du-choc-des-idees-nait-le-dialogue, où je décris brièvement certains des systèmes informatiques nécessaires afin de procéder à l'implantation d'un système politique de Démocratie 2.0 (c'est-à-dire une politique citoyenne participative où la principale règle de fonctionnement est : 1 Citoyen, 1 Voix, 1 Vote, Sur Tout, Tout le Temps), j'avais prédis entre 4 et 5 ans afin de procéder au développement des systèmes et les tests nécessaires sur le plan de la sécurité avant de les mettre en opération.  Hypothétiquement, j'avais posé pour ce faire comme condition une prise du pouvoir à Québec par l'entremise d'un parti politique, et qu'une fois au pouvoir, des fonds publics seraient investis dans des équipes de développements à cette fin, un peu comme le suggère Parizeau et Lapointe, finalement.

Ça, c'était au moment de rédiger cet article, il y a quelques mois de cela.

Entre-temps, en travaillant avec le groupe de personnes qui s'est jointes à moi sur ce projet, je suis tombé sur les quelques sites suivants, qui m'ont fait sérieusement reconsidérer les échéanciers que j'avais préalablement fixés :

- http://typo3.org/about/  : Idéal pour créer des sites webs de style "portail" qui regroupe des informations provenant de sources et de formats différents sur un seul endroit. Gratuit sous licence Code-Libre, comme tout ce qui est présenté ici.

- http://lexpop.org/ : L'outil qui est derrière l'encyclopédie mondiale et citoyenne en-ligne WikiPedia. Idéal pour écrire une Constitution ou des lois de manière entièrement ouverte, collaborative et démocratique. À mon avis, grâce à cet outil de collaboration en ligne, nous n'aurons pas besoin "d'élire" une assemblée constituante afin d'aller chercher notre légitimité, puisque cette légitimité s'exprimera par la volonté propre du Peuple qui aura tout le loisir de participer activement à l'élaboration de cette Constitution et des Lois qui vont suivre. Si, par exemple, 300 000 Québécois se mettaient activement à la tâche de rédiger une telle Constitution, ce groupe serait à mon avoir au moins autant "légitime" sinon plus que n'importe quelle Assemblée Constituante ou série de Consultations Publiques à-la-Commission Bouchard-Taylor.  Imaginez si 3 000 000 s'y mettaient!  Avec cet outil, c'est possible, comme le démontre WikiPedia.  Et on prend de l'avance sur la tournée récemment annoncée par Québec Solidaire!

- http://www.editgrid.com/ : Chiffrier électronique collaboratif en-ligne. Autre gros morceau du casse-tête, cet outil nous permettra de mettre en place les systèmes budgétaires transparents et collaboratifs du nouvel État du Québec 2.0.  Avec ceci, il est possible de réaliser les Budgets de l'États tri-dimensionnels en-ligne tel que décris dans l'article que j'ai placé le lien plus haut.

- Forums PHP : À utiliser de manière structurée de manière similaire à http://forum.gouvernement.qc.ca/index.php, afin d'y concentrer les discussions plus informelles (les "débats") de manière plus efficace et organisée qu'elles ne le sont présentement sur FB. Typo3 servira de "colle" pour intégrer toutes ces technologies au sein d'un seul et même portail.

- Les systèmes d'exploitation Linux et de base-de-données MySQL ont fait leur preuves quant à leur capacité de livrer la marchandise en terme de technologies d'arrière-scène pour compléter le tableau.

J'estime que tout ceci correspond à environ 80% de l'effort de développement informatique que j'estimais nécessaire lorsque j'ai publié mes premiers articles sur cette tribune.

Ne reste plus qu'à mobiliser la population et à superviser le développement du 20% d'effort informatique manquant avant que ce projet ne devienne une réalité.  Choses sur lesquelles je me concentrerai le mois prochain une fois installé dans la métropole.

Une réalité qui nous pend donc au bout des doigts." 

Electronics for kids

For those of you having children: teach them electronics!




http://courseweb.stthomas.edu/apthomas/SquishyCircuits/index.htm

Tim Michin's Storm: The Animated Movie

Very aesthetic cartoon about the encounter between a skeptic guy and an esoteric gal.

Book Review: Sight Unseen (M.goodale, A. Milner) Part II:Doing without seeing

Now you will be surprised! You remember that Dee was unable to see the shape of things? Well, as it turns out, if you show her a pencil, she is unable to say what it is, let alone if it is held vertically or horizontally. However, ask her to grasp it and she will grasp it just like anybody else! With the same "on the fly" right orienting of her hand and with the same "on the fly" narrowing of her thumb - index distance! Just like if she could see it!


Just as surprising: She can walk around in a landscape full of obstacles without ever stumbling on any! She avoids them all like you and me!


The authors presented her a mailbox which opening was rotatable so as to enable orienting it in any chosen direction. When Dee was asked to hold an envelope and to rotate the envelope in such a way as to match with the opening of the mailbox: She failed lamentably. She seemed to orient her envelop randomly. But when asked to post the envelop through the slit: she succeeded easily, orienting correctly her hand just like you and me!


The authors asked her to grasp various objects while captors where posed at various parts of her hand so as to be able to analyze finely her moves. She grasps things in the exact same way as anybody else: adapting the orientation of her hand on the fly and adjusting the thumb-index distance to  the size of the object! Objects that she cannot "see" and which dimensions she is unable to guess!


As it turns out, Dee has the part of her vision controlling her actions intact but has the part of her vision constructing her perceptual representations damaged. She is living evidence that part of our vision driven actions are unconscious. We do not need to be aware of the orientation of a slit to be able to slide something in it. However, we do need to be aware of the orientation of said slit to be able to describe it!


We have many independent visually controlled processes in our brain. Many of them (grasping things, walking around avoid things, ...) still work even when, like Dee, we have lost the ability to consciously see these things!


In my next post, you will see how some people have the exact opposite problem than Dee.

Book Review: Sight Unseen (M.A. Goodale, A. D. Milner) Part I : A tragic accident

The undertitle of this book is "An exploration of concious and unconscious vision". This book relates some truly amazing facts about consciousness and vision.

The first chapter relates to a patient of the authors: Dee Fletcher. This woman had an accident. She got poisoned by carbon monoxide while taking a shower. As a result, she suffered some brain damage and lost part of her vision. Dee can still see colours but she cannot recognize her mother. She can see the texture of things but not their overal shape. She can see the hairs on a hand's skin but she cannot recognize a hand. She has vision...without shape. she can tell that something is made of red plastic or shiny metal but she has no idea of the shape of the object. Dee has difficulty to separate an object from its background;

The authors tested Dee scientifically, asking her to perform various controled tasks.

When presented with a line pattern, she could say that they were lines but could not say if they were horizontal or vertical.

When presented with a drawing of an apple, she could not recopy it; but when asked to draw an apple from memory, she did very well.

The rest of her mental live seems to be perfectly normal.

All this seems weird but the result of further tests is even much weirder! (To be continued)

Genetically modified cows produce humanized milk!

GM cows produce 'human' milk

By RICHARD GRAY - TELEGRAPH
Added: Sunday, 03 April 2011 at 2:15 PM

The scientists have successfully introduced human genes into 300 dairy cows to produce milk with the same properties as human breast milk.
Human milk contains high quantities of key nutrients that can help to boost the immune system of babies and reduce the risk of infections.
The scientists behind the research believe milk from herds of genetically modified cows could provide an alternative to human breast milk and formula milk for babies, which is often criticised as being an inferior substitute.
They hope genetically modified dairy products from herds of similar cows could be sold in supermarkets. The research has the backing of a major biotechnology company.

Read on

My opinion on this research: It good that such research is performed. It could be a good way in the future to provide babies with better substitute milk. However, I think that the mother's milk, preferably drank from her breast, is the safest choice.

Programme spatial congolais

La science, je vous le dis, il n'y a que ça de vrai!

Démocratie 2.0: L'idée suit son chemin au Québec...

Au moin un de mes  lecteurs partage mon intéret pour un mode de gouvernance sans intermédiaires...

"Si, au lieu de voter tout les 4-5 ans pour un représentant en qui on lègue en toute bonne foi le pouvoir d’exercer notre pouvoir politique, on avait un système politique où chaque citoyen avait une opportunité égale de soumettre des idées ou de proposer des projets, une opportunité égale d’accéder au débat public d’une manière constructive et ordonnée, et une opportunité égale de se prononcer sur chaque projet ou idée par l’entremise d’un vote, on règle à la fois le problème de la corruption et le problème de l’accès du citoyen à la participation de la vie politique. Ainsi, le débat public pourrait retrouver toute sa vivacité en sortant des carcans imposés par les lignes de partis traditionnels, puisque ceux-ci n’auront alors plus de raison d’exister...[...]...Une fois un tel système en place, impossible de le "remplacer" comme dans le cas d’un gouvernement traditionnel, car il n’y a plus de tête dirigeante effective. Au pire, des délégués seront élus à certains postes pour fins de représentation, surtout au niveau international, ou pour des raisons de gestion interne de l’appareil d’état, mais le vrai pouvoir politique décisionnel demeurera entre les mains de toute la population dans son ensemble. Une telle distribution du pouvoir n’est pas sans rappeler la nature distribuée de l’Internet, qui fut conçu au départ justement pour résister à un attaque nucléaire, rien de moins ! L’armée à finalement réalisé qu’un tel système était impossible à réaliser, car pour détruire Internet lui-même par attaque nucléaire, il suffit de bombarder l’ensemble du territoire américain. Et c’est ainsi que cette technologie militaire top secret s’est retrouvée dans le domaine de la recherche publique pour devenir ce qu’il est aujourd’hui. De même, pour détruire ce système politique, il faudra procéder du génocide." (Adam Richard)

Shit happens

Book Review: Consciousness Explained, (Danniel Dennett) (IX): Autostimulation

This part of Dennett's book attempts to explain the origin of "thinking". The hypothesis proposed is very interesting, very simple and convincing.


Consider a time when language just started to develop: hominids would have been grunting various sounds and start to attach meaning to them. Modern apes do that all the time. For a striking and well documented example, see vervet monkies's alarm calls for snakes, eagles and leopards.
We can speculate that at time, our early hominid would ask a question to his comrades by uttering something and could expect an answer (in a social group, "I scratch your back, you scratch my back" behaviours may be beneficial to the individual if  the group members have the necessary memory to keep track of other members behaviours). Our hominid ancestor could have developed the habit to ask questions and to answer other's questions (e.g. "are there crocodiles in this river?"). One day, one of our hominid ancestor might have asked a question while nobody was there to respond, but since he himself heard his own question, it triggers in himself the urge to reply to it! And to its delight, he found out that he just answered his own question! Asking oneself question could arise a side effect of asking other questions. Speaking to oneself could have an evolutionary advantage if the connection between the different parts of the brain was not optimal. E.g. a first part of the brain might need a piece of information present in another part of the brain, not efficiently connected (yet) to said first part. By broadcasting its request in the environment and by relying on a pair of ears to pick it up, said first part could establish a virtual link between both badly connected parts of the brain.

Talking out loud is one possibility, drawing pictures to oneself is another. One can also see how making such "communication with oneself" more private would be advantageous.


This scenario strikes me as a good candidate for how "thinking" evolved!

Yet another musical break

Book Review: When Money Dies (A. Fergusson)

I "read" this book as an audiobook. I found it interesting but not particularly exciting. It mostly relates to the economic life in Germany between the end of the First World War and c.a. 1925. During this period the Mark devaluated more than 1.000.000 times with may dramatic (and interesting consequences). What I will remember from this book is the following:

• Inflation (i.e. when your money looses purchasing power) pushes people to buy more things. Since their money looses value day by day, they try to convert it into goods as soon as possible. This is I think the reason behind the small controlled inflation that our government seems to tolerate and even promote. Inflation triggers increased money spending.
  Inflation decreases unemployment. Indeed, since people buy more stuffs, the industries produce more stuffs and we need more people to produce them.
  During inflation, it is a good idea to buy company shares. Companies are real stuffs and they do not lose value. Your money however does lose value. Stock shares increased in value a lot during this high inflation period.
  During inflation, almost everybody suffered a lot. The middle/upper class suffered a lot. People were not using doctors, lawyers, accountant and so on anymore. They were busier trying to find food.  The civil servants suffered a lot. They were not protected by syndicates and their wages did not increase or not much while everything was getting much more expensive. The renters suffered the most. Their rent was a fixed amount... The workers suffered relatively less because they were better organised to defend themselves. They could make strikes and ask for raises in their salaries. They also lost purchasing power during this period but less than the people above. The Farmers were the lucky one. Their product got more expensive and people still had to buy them. Also, they always had enough to eat due to their own production. Furthermore, they had to repay the big investments they did but their debt appeared tinier and tinier in relative terms. At the end however, the city people came to steal the food present in the farms...
• Deflation (when stuffs get cheaper every day) pushes people to keep their money because this money will permit to buy more tomorrow than today. This is something bad for "the economy" because people stop to buy stuffs. It also increases unemployment because since nobody buys anything anymore, industries do not need to produce so much either.

This inflation was apparently the result of the "high reparation" demands from France and England and from the fact that the German authorities never hesitated to print more and more money to cover their expenses, thereby devaluating it... 

Nuclear Fission Chain Reaction.mov

Consciousness Explained (D. Dennett): Part VIII; The Baldwin effect

We are the result of natural selection. Natural selction works by 1) allowing mistakes in the genome of an animal's offspring and 2) selecting the offsprings whose genome makes them better at survival/reproducing. If you are not familiar with this concept, go to buy "the selfish gene" from R. Dawkins (a live changing book).

The Baldwin effect is a mechanism that speeds up natural selection in a very peculiar way. It require you to have a plastic nervous system, in short: an ability to learn. If there is a "good trick" out there for an animal to learn, e.g. a behaviour that would greatly enhance an animal success at reproducing, any animal having this good trick hard-wired in its genome would be at an advantage. However, since having this "good trick" within it would be an all or nothing story, there maybe lacking a sufficiently progressive slope for natural selection to opearte swiftly. Hence, the time for this trick to be hard-wired in every animal within its species might be very long indeed. See left side of the figure below:

However, species not having this good trick hard-wired in their genome but having a plastic brain wired in such a way that they are capable to learn that trick during their livetime, are able to evolve the hard-wirering of this trick much faster. Here is how it works: Animal A has a brain slightly more able to learn the good trick than animal B. Animal A has therefore an advantage over animal B and will therefore probably leave more offsprings. Amongst said offsprings, animal A', due to a fortunate mutation, is still beter at learning the trick than its parent was, A' acquires it faster in his livetime than his siblings and therefore outcompete them and makes more offsprings. Amongst the kids of animal A', animal A'' is gifted with a further fortunate mutation that makes him particularly able to learn the good trick...and so on and so forth until the good trick (or at least the ability to learn the trick damned-easy) is practically hard-wired in the genome. What the Baldwin effect provides is a gentle slope for natural selection to operate on (see right side of the figure above). Any small improvement in the learning ability of the individual gives him a higher chance to hit on the good trick(s).

This makes clear the big advantage that a plastic brain provides to a species.

Book Review: Consciousness explained.Part VII. The evolution of consciousness

Daniel Dennett proposes the following evolutionary scenario for consciousness:

1) In the environment on earth before the appearence of life, some molecules acquired the ability to replicate (Richard Dawkins would call them replicators). This creates a point of view from which the world's events can be roughly partitioned between the favorable to this replication, unfavorable to it or the neutral".

2) "As soon as something gets  into the business of self-preservation, boundaries become important, for if you are setting out to preseerve yourself, you don't want to squander effort trying to preserve the whole world: you draw the line."

3)Next in line comes a certain ability to react to direct stimuli upon contact. E.g. engulfing food you touch or coiling away from harmful things you touch. This is the most rudimentary type of nervous response. It is a very crude way to predict the future. If I don't recoil, I will get eaten/destroyed/damaged.

4)Next, comes short range anticipations like the ducking reflex that permits to avoid being hurt be a projectile. Such reflexes are hard wired, including in humans (newborn infants have it). An interesting fact Dennett points out is the ability of many animals (from fish to humans) to be particularly sensible to the presence of a vertical axis of symmetry in its visual field. This is presumably caused by the fact that in our evolutionary past the most likely item in our environment having such an axis would have been a predator, a prey or a mate facing you. He argues that the fact that such alarm mechanisms are so crude, has the advantage of being fast and economical at the cost of many false alarms (the vision of a quasi symetrical tree for instance). For such a trick to be selected by evolution, it only has to give to its owner a slightly higher than otherwise chance to survive or to mate.

5) Once such a signal is detected, a further evolutionary advantage is achieved by a discrimination process capable to determine (at least in a crude way) if the first crude signal was a predator, a prey or a mate. In some fish, the vertical symmetry signal triggers an "orienting response", i.e. a swift interuption of ongoing activity. Dennett says that we have many such subsystems running unconsciously and performing specialized tasks.
When an alarm signal is recieved, e.g. due to the perceiving of symetry, our system stops and all our senses are open to maximize the input of information. If the alarm is confirmed, we get a rush of adrenaline and we react by e.g. fleeing. He says monst animals have such a system and he sees such "orienting responses" as a precursor to what we call our state of conscious awareness.

6) The animal acquired the ability to trigger such an "orienting reponse" also as a consequence of internal stimulis (not only external inputs such as symetric objects).

7) "Regular vigilance" turned into "regular exploration" where the animal frequently acquire information for its own sake, just in case it turns out useful in the future. E.g. primates with their saccaded eye movements scan uninteruptly their environment.

That's already a nice start I think...

Will California suffer a earthquake between now and March 26th 2011?

I honestly do not know what to think about that. I will know on March 27th however.

Do you find this video relaxing?

Put the audio level low. This is an experimental video making use of our "orienting response reflex" by presenting to us new information every 2.5 seconds. During the "orienting response" which is a mental state in which most animal find themeselves when presented with something new, our heart rate is decreased and our brain blood vessels dialtes in order to increase our brain readiness to acquire information in order to react vis-à-vis this "something new". This vidéo is from ansgar1965 and is experimental (not tested, you are the cobayes. So what do you think? is it relaxing?)

Book Review: The Facebook Effect (D.Kirkpatrick)

I just finished listening to the corresponding audiobook. The book was really enjoyable and interesting. Key to the success of Facebook seems to be the very long term vision of his creator. The company was also very strategic in the way it developed. One example: Facebook decided to open at US campus already using another social network but when doing so, it also opened at all surrounding US campuses in order to create "pressure" from outside and to "gain" the campus for itself. The ambition of Facebook seems to become a kind of platform on the internet (just like windows is a platform). Another ambition of Facebook seems to provide to its member a kind of "identity card" that would become the standard identification method on the net. It also seems to ambitions establishing a currency. In a nutshell, it is a kind of worldwide government with extensive democratic control that Facebook aims for. His boss is depicted as being an idealist who does not put money as its priority at all. He is presented as being someone willing to bringing openness and transparency on the web.
Again, the book is very entertaining and I really enjoyed listening to it. It is motivating and it gives some ideas of what to expect in the future of internet.

Consciousness Explained: the contribution of a reader

I received an interesting comment from a reader (Jason Weber) that shed some more light on this book:

"I definitely suggest reading Sweet Dreams: it is very well written."

-I will order it…and read it in two or three years probably


"I took a look at your blog and enjoyed reading Part V of your book review."


-Glad to hear that.


"I have a question and a few comments if you do not mind. First off, what page did you find the quote for Dennett's alternative explanation for delay in consciousness?"

- p.164, 3rd§, line 2 : « Orwellian alternative »

"I ask because this sounds more like an "Orwellian revision" than Dennett's model for consciousness.
As I understand it, he does not support either an Orwellian or Stalinesque explanation, "...and the question Orwellian or Stalinesque? (post experiential or pre-experiential) need have no answer" (Dennett, Time and the Observer, http://ase.tufts.edu/cogstud/papers/time&obs.htm )."

-You are right that Dennett does not support either Orwellian or Stallinesque alternatives. I think I was wrong when I said that it is “his alternative explanation”. Actually he simply remarks that there is an Orwellian alternative to the Stallinesque model. Which I suppose makes his point that both explanations are possible, which is pointing to his multiple draft model.


"Thank you for bringing your blog to my attention, because I had forgotten how vehemently Dennett disagreed with Libet on the interpretation of those experiments."


-Strangely enough, I myself already read twice this part of the book and also forgot about it. Then I heard again about Libet type experiments and got quite excited about them, without realizing that I read a critique of them in Dennett. This really justifies my present effort to document what I understand from this book.


"Those experiments are very interesting to me and I had taken them at face value for a while."


-They are very interesting to me too. I am sympathetic to the idea that actions are decided before to be consciously felt as being decided…although I feel my confidence shaking a bit while reading this book.


"Your blog helped me to focus on some mistakes I had made. I do think that the unconscious parts of the brain plays a role in determining consciousness…"


-me too. I agree with Dennett that consciousness is probably distributed in the brain and that each location that get conscious, was not necessarily so the instant before. No single area for consciousness experience (I would have said otherwise six months ago. I might still change my mind ).


"…but that Libet's results and interpretations need a closer examination. Dennett provides that, so let me try to clear up exactly what Dennett does not like about Libet's experiments....

Daniel Dennett's criticisms of Benjamin Libet's famous experiment on intentionality:

In principle, I do not believe that Dennett disagrees with the notion that unconscious parts of the brain cause consciousness."-you are right


"He disagrees that attaining an absolute timing of conscious events from verbal reports is possible because consciousness does not happen in a centralized location in the brain.
That is the disagreement. Dennett notes that the representations of visual events occur, "...in various different parts of the brain, starting at the retina and moving up through the visual system...brightness...is represented in some places and times...location in others...and motion in still others" (Consciousness Explained, p.165).
Consciousness comes from many parts of the brain. For instance, he does not seem to believe that a single neuron or a single system in the brain possesses the state of consciousness all the time."


-It seems to me that it is indeed his position but I have a hard time understanding why the lack of a central location for consciousness prevents absolute timing of conscious events. Even if a conscious event appears distributed in space or at a location only temporarily made conscious, timing seems still possible.

"It follows that unconscious parts of the brain cause consciousness or change to the state of consciousness."


-indeed


"Dennett disagree with Libet because of his interpretation that the unconscious parts send there messages to a central conscious part of the brain."


-ok, I would need to re-read this part to check that it is indeed what Libet thinks and not Dennett’s interpretation of what Libet thinks. I think that even by abandoning the Cartesian theater, it is still coherent to interpret the results of the experiment by saying that the conscious “feeling” that a decision is made is felt after the decision. E.g. the decision is made due to a certain number of neurons being turned on at various locations…and 350 ms later we feel it because these locations changed “state” or maybe (my hypothesis) because this event “get burned” thereby creating a memory (at these same locations, e.g. by strengthening connections).


"Dennett states that, "...cognition and control -- and hence consciousness -- is distributed around in the brain, no moment can count as the precise moment at which each conscious event happens" (Consciousness Explained, p. 169). If measuring the absolute timing of a conscious event is possible, then we must assume that consciousness happens in one place and at one time in the brain."


-Not one place, only one time. No? Even if spatially distributed, it could be simultaneous or within a time relatively short compared to the delay observed by Libet.


"Dennett's model differs, not because unconscious agents cause consciousness but, because consciousness is not thrown together in one spot in the brain (e.g. the pineal gland). For Dennett, different systems contain different parts of the stories that make up consciousness but there is no place where representations come together to form a central conscious story of events."


-That is well understood.


"The most telling quote from Dennett in the chapter of Consciousness Explained that discusses Libet's experiment is this,

"Couldn't consciousness be a matter not of arrival at a point but rather a matter of representation exceeding some threshold of activation over the whole cortex or large parts thereof? On this model, an element of content becomes conscious at some time t, not by entering some functionally defined and anatomically located system, but by changing state right where it is: by acquiring some property or by having the intensity of one of its properties boosted above some threshold"

(p. 166)."


-I like this idea. It makes sense to me. I think consciousness intensity and memorization intensity are linked. Being conscious could be what it “feels” to memorize.


"The state change Dennett mentions is key: it is not that he believes that every part of the brain that has the capacity for consciousness is always conscious. I take it that he means that those parts change state from unconscious to conscious but do not do so until they receive enough clout to contribute to the distributed conscious experience. As different parts of the brain become conscious, the story changes; I think that is what Dennett means by multiple drafts."


-I think you are right and I think I now understand better this chapter. Thanks! I will re-read it nevertheless to be sure my new understanding fits with what he writes.


"Chapter six is difficult to understand so I hope I am properly representing Dennett's theory above. Feel free to correct me or to ask questions. Thank you,"

Time and the Observer

ase.tufts.edu

Two models of consciousness are contrasted with regard to their treatment of subjective timing. The standard Cartesian Theater model postulates a place in the brain where "it all comes together": where the discriminations in all modalities are somehow put into registration and "presented" for sub

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Here is part of a message of reply from Jason:

"...This might help to illuminate why Dennett is suspect of absolute timing of subjective experience:

In the last paragraph, I say that the "....state change Dennett mentions is key..." That is not exactly true. In fact, he warns that this view could lead us back to the Cartesian Theater, "...if it is claimed that the real...timing of such mode shifts is definitive of subjective sequence" (Dennett, Consciousness Explained, p. 166). His key point in chapter six of the book is that the, "...temporal sequence in consciousness is...purely a matter of the content represented, not the timing of the representing (Dennett & Kinsbourne, Time and the Observer, http://ase.tufts.edu/cogstud/papers/time&obs.htm ). Let's imagine an analogy to explore this point: mom is coming to visit you. Let's say that she decides Friday that she is coming to visit you on Monday. She sends you an email detailing her decision. Unfortunately, you do not check your email all weekend. Then, when Monday comes, you are utterly surprised to see your mom's smiling face when you open your front door. You then check your email and discover the news or your mother's decision to visit that day. The timing was such that you did not find out the news that your mother was visiting on Monday until she showed up on your doorstep. However, the decision was made and the message was sent earlier (i.e. Friday). This is why Dennett & Kinsbourne indicate that, "...temporal... details do not tell us directly about the contents of consciousness" (Time and the Observer, http://ase.tufts.edu/cogstud/papers/time&obs.htm ). Just because a message is sent does not mean we instantly become aware of it subjectively.


On your comment: "-ok, I would need to re-read this part to check that it is indeed what Libet thinks and not Dennett’s interpretation of what Libet thinks."
--I think you are correct that it is Dennett's interpretation of what Libet thinks.

Time and the Observer

ase.tufts.edu

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-Thank you very much for your comments, they were helpful. Thank you also for accepting me posting your message on this blog.

Christophe

Book Review: Consciousness Explained (D. Dennett): Part VI:The Precognitive Carousel

Dennett reports an experiment made by Grey Walter. It consisted in presenting a carousel projector for showing slides to patients having electrodes implanted in the motor cortex of their brain. The patients were given a controller with a button for them to push on when they wanted to switch from one slide to the next. Actually, the controller was a dummy controler and the slides where changed in function of the signal received by the electrodes. The results? The patients experienced that the slide projector was anticipating their decisions. The slides would change just before they had decided to change them. This again seems to point to consciousness arising after that the decision is made. Dennett however once again express his view that timing of conscious events is not possible. an opinion of him that I still need to study further before to accept it or to reject it.

I received an interesting message on Facebook from a reader (Jason Weber). I will probably post it as a note to chapter V.

Guns Germs and Steel

A must read and a must see! Part 1/18 below, the rest on youtube.

Book Review: Consciousness Explained (D. Dennett): part V : Delay of consciousness

In the 80's, Libet reported an experiment where subjects (wearing scalp electrodes) were asked to flex one hand at the wrist while noting the position of a moving spot at the precise time they formed the intention to flex. Afterwards, said subjects reported where the spot was at the moment they decided to flex their hand. The electrical measurements performed by the electrodes permited to determine that the subjects flexed their wrist 350 to 400 ms before the time indicated by the subject as being his time of intention to flex.


This experiment seems to indicate that we are conscious of the decisions made by our brain AFTER they have been made.


It seems to me  that Dennett does not like this conclusion (although he does not express it explicitly) which seems to contradict the intuition that our conscious acts control our bodily motions.

He considers this kind of explanation as being stalinesque (i.e. presuming that the brain delays consciousness in order to be able to presents all the facts it wants to present in the order it wants them to be presented).


He points out that there is an alternative explanation: "the subjects were conscious of their intentions at an earlier moment, but this consciousness was wiped out of memory (or just revised) before they had a chance to recall it". He calls this kind of explanation "Orwellian" because history is re-writen after the facts.

Finally, he also points out that yet another explanation which is that "an element of content becomes conscious at some time t, not by entering some functionally defined and anatomically located system, but by changing state right where it is: by acquiring some property or by having the intensity of one of its properties boosted above some threshold."

Dennett seems to doubt very much the possibility to equal the time of reporting of the subject with the time of conscious experience.


Personally, I would call on Ockham's razor with such an issue: stick to the simplest hypothesis until proven otherwise. Hence, as far as I am concerned, this experiment seems to indicate that consciousness arises after the facts. Clinical cases like the case of Mrs. Dee in "sight unseen" are also pointing toward such an explanation.


I think Dennett doubly dislikes the results of this experiment. 1) as mentioned earlier, it places consciousness after the events and 2) it looks like we are watching a movie of our live in a cartesian theater (he despises the idea of the cartesian theater).


[this page has been amended on 12/03 after a reader pointed to me some errors of interpretation. Thanks to Jason]

My own opinion on "consciousness"

Consciousness and memory

I will try to explain what is my vision of what I think consciousness might encompass. I am sure I do not understand fully what consciousness is (otherwise I would not be reading and thinking so much about it). I however partly developed and partly stole ideas that, put together, gives me a hypothesis of what consciousness could be.

It all started I think in 2007 when I was driving back from a patent law course in Antwerp. It was dark, there was nothing on the radio and I thought "you have no opinion whatsoever on what consciousness could be. Why don't you try to make yourself one by developing it from first principles?"

And so I started to think about what was necessary for experiencing consciously something? I started to reason: "if I hear something (e.g. a word) I can be conscious of it. Why?" How do I know that I heard it? Answer:"because it is in my memory and I can retrieve it. If it was not there, I would not know I heard it".

Then I thought "OK! So what happens exactly when I hear a word, e.g. the word 'abracadabra'?"
I thought that I first hear each sound of the word and that my brain "recognises" it. So I first hear the beginning of a "a", then the end of a "a" then the beginning of a "b" and so on.

But what would happen if I did not have a good memory? I might forget the beginning of the word at the time I am hearing the end of the word and this word would not make sense to me but I would nevertheless be conscious. However if you ask me 10 seconds after having telling me the word "abracadabra" whether I heard it (actually I would not even understand your question and I would not be able to answer it... but let say for the sake of this thought experiment that my memorisation capacity was brought back to normal before you asked me this question), I would answer "no" since I would have forgotten this word already.

Now let's decrease my memory even further to a time span of let say one millisecond. I would hear the beginning of a "a", then forget it, than I would here the middle of the "a", then forget it, then I would hear the end of a "a", then forget it. I would have some kind of rolling consciousness with a very short time span. This would be so far from what we experience as human conscious beings that we can hardly still call that a conscious state.

What would we experience if our short time memory had a time span infinitesimally short? Or no memory at all? I claim that this would equal to not being conscious.

From this thought experiment, I concluded that without memory, no consciousness.

Puropose or cause of consciousness

I then proceeded to think "aha! Memory is necessary for consciousness. Could it be that consciousness evolved together or after memory? Could it be that consciousness serves a purpose linked to memory or that being conscious is what it feels like to memorise?".

I then realised that we can be more or less conscious. We can be very aware of something or almost not aware at all of this thing. For instance, I was driving since half an hour but I was only barely conscious of the road. At other times I am very conscious of the road. So what could be the purpose of something varying in intensity and potentially serving memory?

I thought BINGO! Consciousness with its varying levels of intensity could serve as labels! Consciousness of something with a particular level of intensity could be a "label" informing the memorisation processes of the brain on the importance of said thing. It could also be the other way around. Maybe we just experience stronger consciousness feeling for stronger memories.

For instance, you see a free lion in front of you: you will be VERY conscious of its presence and your brain will record very deeply (and forever) this information instantaneously in your long term memory.

Another example: you see a small stone on the road. Your eyes saw it. This information entered your short term memory but you will not be very conscious of it at all. As a result, your memorisation processes having received the "low consciousness" label associated with this stone, you will quickly forget it and you will never ever be able to recall it.


Actually, we are at any given time bombarded with thousands of inputs, both internal and external. Our senses are incessantly receiving information. If we had to memorise all of them vividly and for ever, our memory would be full in no time. We therefore need to rank information by order of importance, in other words: we need a filter. This filter might or might not be consciousness.

This information is important for our survival (e.g. uncaged lion) or our reproduction (e.g. sexy lady/man)? Our brain attaches the label "very conscious" to it and it gets written deep into our memory.

Is this information unimportant (e.g. one tic of a clock amongst many)? Our brain attaches the label "barely conscious" to it and this information will quickly be forgotten.

Actually, we could very easily replace the word "consciousness" by the word "attention" in the last part of my analysis above.


Also, I could make sense of the same insights by making the alternative hypothesis that a label (or filter) (which is not "consciousness" but well "attention") is attached to each input and what we "feel", i.e. what we are "conscious" of is the process of memorisation. When something is memorised, we are conscious of it. When it is deeply memorised, we feel deeply conscious of it.


Another facet of what I think consciousness is comes from experiments in experimental psychology which all tend to indicate that our brain already knows we will move our wrist before that we are ourselves aware that we will move our wrist (Libet et al, 1983). I think this kind of experimental results fit nicely with my vision above because when your arm moves, it is best for you to keep in memory that it did! As a result, this information is engraved in your memory and you are simultaneously conscious of it.

You are conscious of many things your body experience but you are feeling it "after the facts".


This vision of consciousness is also compatible with my vision of free will (there is no free will).


We are spectators of our own lives. Just like when we go to the movie: sometimes we really think we are living it. Well, we also really think that we are in charge of ourselves...but we are not. The illusion is however almost perfect. This illusion falls apart e.g. when lesion to the primary visual cortex occurs.


Imagine that in the future we would be able to watch a movie while simultaneously feeling and thinking absolutely all what the actor feels and think. We would very easily be convinced that WE are the actor and that the actor that WE are has free will.


Later I would like to make a post on these psychological experiments I referred to. I also would like to speak about split brains, phantom limbs, rubber hands, and Mrs. Dee (a woman whose brain has been damaged and whose case is detailed in the book "sight unseen").