The purpose of my life: OBO Fred, the neuron

“What is the purpose of my life?” said a neuron.

It was a cerebral neuron located in a tangle of neurons in the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex, an area that human scientists say is important for executive functions, including decision making, social cognition, and writing blog posts.

Let’s call that neuron “Fred.”

I’m here to tell his story.

Or perhaps I’m here to tell her story: Fred has not gender-identified yet.

“Please use feminine pronouns,” offered Fred, or someone or something on Fred’s behalf, with nuance uncommon for a neuron. Or perhaps common. Do I really know?

But I digress.

Let me continue Fred’s story.

Fred’s life was unexceptional—for a neuron in the prefrontal cortex. Everything happened the same, day after day. Fred was part of a large group of neurons, and all followed the same routine. You might call it “listening and talking.”

Fred listened to nearly 10,000 other neurons. She processed the information they provided. From time to time, she’d share information that might be said to summarize what Fred had learned. Thousands of neurons listened to what Fred shared and did likewise.

Fred had no concept of time, but if she had, she’d have known she’d been doing this for years.

And, God who created the concept of time, has revealed to me that Fred had been at it for a bit over 77 years.

Thank you, God!

So perhaps Fred, the subject of this story, was not a random neuron. Probably Fred was a neuron in my brain.

This makes total sense to me.

I hope it makes sense to you.

But once again, I digress.

Which brain Fred is a part of is interesting, but not essential to Fred’s story. Fred’s existential question and its implications are what matters here.

And Fred’s existential question, if you want to call it that (“and I do,” Fred has volunteered,) is similar to questions asked by billions, trillions and even more neurons during the period since the evolution of the universe first produced neurons.

And let’s not forget the existential questions asked by glial cells: the oligodendrocytes, the astrocytes, the ependyma, and the microglia.

Nor forget the somatic cells, bacterial cells, virii, atoms, and even quarks that long preceded neurons.

“What’s the purpose of my life?”

“What’s the purpose of my existence?”

“What’s the purpose of existence?”

“And while you’re at it, what’s the purpose of non-existence,” offered something that did not exist.

“What isn’t is far more prevalent than what is. For everything that is, there is an infinite number of things that don’t exist!”

Indeed.

But, yet again, I digress.

Like many of us, Fred had been doing the same things, mindlessly, for years before asking her existential question.

And as sometimes happens, Fred’s desire for existential understanding was transformative.

Neurons around her took up her question: “What is the purpose of my life?” and its variants.

“What is the purpose of my existence?” Some asked.

“What is the purpose of existence?” Others asked.

And even more fundamentally: “What is purpose?”

And finally, in a silent crescendo: “What is?”

“What is?”

The question hung in the metaphorical air and appeared on the literal page as a hand holding a pen scribbled it in a notebook.

Then the question was repeated.

“What is?”

It moved from the page to you (are you still with me?) through a series of transformations.

From page to voice. From voice to mobile phone. Through more transformations to a server somewhere in the world—who knows—in service of something called Otter.ai, that transcribed an early version of this—barely recognizable now—into digital form.

Then more transformations, where it appeared in a text file, to multiple literal configurations of electrons and quantum domains replicated across servers and storage farms and eventually (and what does eventually matter, since information is timeless?) downloaded to computers and smartphones and turned into photons that are or will be or have been processed by neurons in other brains.

Fred’s “What is?” reverberates through a tiny portion of the cosmos.

And then what?

And then, the world that had disappeared as Consciousness created this bit of nonsense, appeared again in Consciousness.

Or disappeared as Consciousness read this, or hear it, appeared again in consciousness.

Welcome back.

My purpose, my reason for existence, was to write this. Yours was to read this or hear this.

And now it’s time to go our separate ways, move on to our greater purposes.

Thank you Fred, for the inspiration.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai

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Humanity has the knowledge needed to stop COVID-19. Just not in a usable form

All problems can be solved, given enough knowledge. So says David Deutsch. So say I.

Stopping COVID-19 requires getting enough knowledge. But it’s more than that. Humanity has that knowledge. It’s just not in a useable form.

Every person who has recovered from a COVID-19 infection enough knowledge to stop it within their own body. It’s just not in a form that we can use to stop it anywhere else.

But that’s just another problem to be solved.

And with enough knowledge, we could solve it.

Information

DNA encodes information. RNA encodes information. Proteins encode information.

A virus is a collection of information encoded in a form that determines its chemical and mechanical properties.

The viral body attaches itself to a cell, then injects an essential part of the information encoded within it into the cell.

That information combines itself with the cell’s reproductive machinery—itself rich in information. The viral information forces the cell to make many copies of the virus, then bursts the cell, releasing the virus.

One copy of the information becomes many copies, with collateral damage in the process.

Knowledge and information

Knowledge, according to the definition I’ve adopted—again courtesy of David Deutsch—is a kind of information.

Specifically, knowledge is information that an environment tends to preserve.

Humans generate and encounter enormous amounts of information, but we tend to preserve the most useful information. And we call it knowledge.

The environment in which a kind of virus survives preserves the information encoded in that kind of virus.

That means that the information encoded in a virus meets the definition of knowledge. Specifically, it’s the knowledge needed to cause the environment to make copies of the virus.

It’s knowledge, without a knower. Still, it’s knowledge.

Protein knowledge

Proteins encode information.

The information encoded in any protein causes the protein to fold in a particular way.

The folded virus protein lets it attach itself to the cell and inject its payload.

An antibody encodes information that disrupts the mechanism of viral reproduction.

The folded antibody-protein interferes with the folded viral protein so that it can’t attach, or so that it can’t inject.

A successful virus contains knowledge. A successful antibody also contains knowledge.

The creation of antibody knowledge

All knowledge is created by trial and error.

The immune system creates the knowledge in an antibody by trial and error

The immune system produces a protein after protein—according to metaknowledge embedded in the immune system. If a protein succeeds in disrupting the viral reproductive process, the immune system detects this and produces more of that kind of antibody,

Thus, the information needed to disrupt a viral infection is preserved as knowledge.

The knowledge that stops COVID-19

In China, at least 83,000 people (the recovered COVID-19 cases) have acquired the knowledge needed to defeat COVID-19.

Some people died trying. Thank you for your service.

Probably many more people have acquired the necessary knowledge. Those who were asymptomatic and stopped the infection acquired the knowledge. So did those whose symptoms were mild enough to let them discover sufficient knowledge before symptoms appeared.

There may be many ways to stop COVID-19, but we know that some ways exist.

And we know that humanity has acquired the necessary knowledge.

Knowledge without a knower

If an author writes a book, the knowledge in the book does not stop being knowledge if the author and everyone who has ever read the book dies.

Knowledge does not require a knower to be knowledge.

If someone builds a useful machine that embodies their knowledge, the usefulness of that knowledge continues even if the inventor and everyone who ever understood the machine dies.

Knowledge does not require a knower to be useful.

People have the knowledge needed to stop COVID0-19, but they don’t know what it is.

They don’t know how to communicate the knowledge to others.

And they don’t know how to use it.

Nonetheless, the knowledge is useful, if only within their own bodies. ## Part of the problem solved We have the knowledge.

We have to figure out how to get the knowledge into a more useful form.

Humanity has the answer! It’s just not in a form that we can use—yet.

A vaccine is a hint. It helps a person discover the knowledge that they need to neutralize the knowledge embodied in a virus or other parasite.

Maybe there are other ways to get the knowledge.

Maybe there are other ways to get a useful hint.

Maybe quantum entanglement?

I’m open to anything.

It’s just an information problem.

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Dunning-Kruger Disease and the Impostor Syndrome

Good news, impostor syndrome sufferers.

You may be free of Dunning-Kruger disease.

The Dunning-Kruger effect

Wikipedia says the Dunning–Kruger effect is:

a cognitive bias in which people assess their cognitive ability as greater than it is.

It continues:

It is related to the cognitive bias of illusory superiority and comes from the inability of people to recognize their lack of ability.

In plain language: people who don’t know how much they don’t know, think they know a lot more than they know.

Dunning and Kruger also found that competent people often are unaware of how competent they are relative to others. That’s because they are aware of a lot that they don’t know, they are aware of how competent their peers are, and because they don’t hang around incompetent people.

As a result, they tend to think they’re average, at best.

Dunning described the Dunning–Kruger effect as “the anosognosia of everyday life,” which is the coolest thing I’ve read today.

Dunning-Kruger disease

Dunning-Kruger disease, a term that I just made up, is the pathological condition incompetents believe they are competent.

DKD is the acronym for Dunning-Kruger disease. I also just made that up.

People with DKD are dangerous and should be quarantined for their own good and the good of society.

Impostor Syndrome

Wikipedia says Impostor syndrome is

a psychological pattern in which one doubts one’s accomplishments and has a persistent internalized fear of being exposed as a “fraud.” Despite external evidence of their competence, those experiencing this phenomenon remain convinced that they are frauds and do not deserve all they have achieved. Individuals with impostorism incorrectly attribute their success to luck or interpret it as a result of deceiving others into thinking they are more intelligent than they perceive themselves to be.

People with DKD never suffer from impostor syndrome.

Never.

If you have even a mild case of impostor syndrome, it means you’re not suffering from Dunning-Kreuger Disease.

That’s a good thing.

Having impostor syndrome doesn’t mean you are competent, but it raises the probability that you are.

DKD may help explain why you don’t feel as competent as the people around you.

You can be aware of what the competent people around you know—and you can’t be as aware of what they don’t know. You, on the other hand, know both what you know and what you don’t know.

And the people around you with DKD?

They are entirely certain of their competence. Unless you look into their actual accomplishments, you may be taken in.

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Practical implications of consciousness and knowledge

-In yesterday’s post I wrote:

That’s all very interesting, but I can already hear someone asking me, “Are there practical consequences?”

The answer is in the next blog post. Or will be.

And the answer is: “Yes.”

You mostly don’t need to know how things work

We use lots of products and tools and systems without knowing much about how they work.

Take cars.

Most of the time, all you need to know is how to get into one, how to start the engine, how to release the brake, how to speed it up and slow it down, and how to steer it. And the rules of the road.

You also need to know that when that little doohickey looks that way that you better find a gas station (or a charging station) so you can increase the supply of energy available to the car.

There are other things you need to know, too.

But there’s a lot you don’t need to know.

You don’t need to know, most of the time, how the energy that you stored in the car makes the car move.

You don’t need to know how car batteries work. For a gas-powered car, you mostly don’t need to understand how turning that switch or pressing that button, causes the engine to crank. How cranking the engine makes it catch. How pressing the accelerator makes the engine go faster.

Most of the time there are only two situations in which knowing things like this–and other, more detailed–car-related stuff has practical consequences:

• When your car is not operating correctly, and you want to fix it

• When your car is operating correctly, but you want to make it perform better

Here’s where I’m going to get to in a few hundred words:

Knowing the details of how your mind works mostly doesn’t matter. You just use it. But knowing the details matters in two similar situations:

• When your mind is not operating correctly, and you want to fix it

• When your mind is operating correctly, but you want to make it perform better

Alternatives to fixing and improving

Note the conditions attached to both those situations: “you want to fix it” and “you want to make it perform better.”

If your car isn’t operating correctly, you don’t have to fix it. Depending on how poorly it’s working, you have these choices:

• Live with the problem

• Find an alternative means of transportation

• Fix the problem

If your car is operating correctly, there’s no need to make it perform better. You have the same two alternatives.

If your mind is not operating correctly, your choices are:

• Live with the problem

• Fix the problem

• Find an alternative to the broken mental function

If there are no alternatives, you’re down to live with it or fix it.

Likewise for mental improvements

Knowing the details gives you options

I know lots of stuff about how cars work. Bobbi knows far less. When a car doesn’t work, I have options she doesn’t have.

I can try to apply my car-knowledge and find the source of the problem and fix it myself, or I can call on an expert.

Sometimes I know enough to know which of several experts is more likely to help. Occasionally I can use my knowledge to decide whether the expert I have picked knows how to fix the problem.

Bobbi has one choice: she calls the expert. Luckily she’s got an expert on call 24x7. Me.

If I want to improve my car, I know enough to do the research needed to find out how to improve it and what might work with my kind of car, and so on.

Or I can ask an expert.

Bobbi has one choice: she calls the expert. Again, it’s me.

Your mind is broken

A car that’s in good working order will probably continue to work well for years if you take it in for regular service and doing whatever the service person says needs doing. (This is one of the other things you need to know.)

At some point, the service person will tell you that you probably need a new car, and then you buy one.

Not so with your mind.

You probably know that your mind–like almost all minds–works better when you’ve slept, that it works very badly when you’re drunk or on drugs.

You may have learned that your particular mind: works best in the morning, or the middle of the day; that it does this kind of task best in quiet surroundings, this other kind best in a coffee shop, and this different type out in nature.

You might have learned some things about your mind that are quirky: like it shuts down completely when you see a clown.

You might have learned some things that help you acquire new information and new skills more effectively.

But most people don’t confront the sad truth: how many errors their minds make. They fail to operate correctly–in small ways–all the time, and in more significant ways, many times a day.

As I’m writing this, my mind conducts my thoughts to the fingers pressing my computer’s keys. Sometimes I press the wrong key. That’s a mental error. Sometimes I pick the wrong word — another, bigger error.

Because I’m paying attention right now, I’m noticing some of the errors that my mind is making. But most of the time, this kind of error goes unnoticed by most people most of the time. Noticing mental errors requires an intention that’s not usually present, and it often requires a skill that takes practice.

Most people have enough skill to notice big stupid errors with consequences too significant to ignore. But when the effects of an error are smaller, most people follow one of two simple, lazy strategies. One: they just move on. Two: they correct the error, but pay no attention to finding and correcting the underlying cause of the error.

In both cases, the mind that makes that kind of error will keep making that kind of mistake.

But what if you decided you wanted to repair your mind, so it didn’t make the same kinds of errors repeatedly? What if you decided that you wanted to improve your mind so that it could do the things that it does well, only more efficiently?

Just as with your car: to fix it when it’s broken or to make it better when it’s working, you have to know more about how your mind works.

Or, just as with your car: you need to call an expert.

Mind experts

Getting an expert to repair or improve your mind is similar to and different than getting one to repair or improve your car.

The similarities: you have to know enough to find an appropriate expert. You have to know enough to decide whether what the expert is recommending is likely to work–or likely to be worth trying.

The difference–and it is a big one: you can drop your car off at the expert’s shop and pick it up next Tuesday. You can’t do that with your mind.

You’re the only one who can do the work required to fix or improve your mind.

An expert can give you guidance–delivered through media or in real life. But you have to do the work.

And since you have to do the work, you have to have some idea of what you are doing.

Folk remedies and illusions

There are lots of folk remedies for fixing common mental problems.

You might be able to undertake some simple repairs yourself.

But many of those folk remedies are wrong because the mind works through a series of illusions, and most folk remedies don’t take that into account.

To remedy deeper mental problems or remedy or improve rapidly, you need to know how the mind actually works rather than how it seems to work.

You need to know the reality of mental processes, not just the illusions.

You need to be aware of the illusions and not be fooled by the illusions so you can make the repair.

The illusion of knowledge creation

Which takes us back to yesterday’s post.

Most of what our minds do is unconscious.

We have strategies for error correction, but we do them unconsciously.

What we do unconsciously is limited to what we do habitually. Our unconscious minds are lazy and won’t break out of unconscious patterns without conscious attention.

Without bringing consciousness to fixing a mental problem, very little will improve.

To fix a problem takes knowledge. The knowledge that’s needed is always already present, implicit in the mind, but it may require a lot of conscious work to bring that knowledge to consciousness.

There may be a way to become conscious of the knowledge that you need with less effort.

The previous post is a step in that direction.

It needs clarification. And will get it tomorrow.

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Consciousness and knowledge

The motivating idea: all knowledge already exists. It’s just not in a form that’s amenable to consciousness.

I have a list of 100 numbers. To make it easy, let’s make it the numbers from 1 to 100.

I also know a procedure for producing the sum of a list of numbers—an algorithm: write down the first number as the partial sum, add the next number to the partial sum, and continue adding until you’ve reached the last number.

Now I have the total: 5,050.

Is that new knowledge? In some sense, it’s not.

That knowledge was implicit in the mechanical application of the algorithm to the list.

Conscious creation

Consider this as a conscious activity.

I start being conscious of a list of numbers and of a procedure for adding them.

I am conscious that there is a number that is their sum, but I can’t be conscious of the actual number unless something happens.

That something else can be this: I can form an intention to add the numbers.

If I decided to act on that intention, I would become conscious of the first partial sum.

Then I will become conscious of each number, in turn, as I add it to the partial sum.

I repeat the process until the final sum appears, and then I am conscious of that number.

I could write a program that does the calculation.

In that case, I would need to be conscious of other things: the representation of the algorithm, the representation of the set of numbers, the procedure for running the program.

If I act on that intention by applying that knowledge, out pops the number that is the sum.

I can be conscious of that number without having been conscious of each of the individual numbers in the list.

Other ways of knowing and becoming conscious

Those are two ways of knowing the sum to be conscious of it,

Are there other ways?

As it happens, there are many.

One is the one that I used when writing this essay. The sum of the first and last numbers in the sequence—1 and 100 is 101. So is the sum of the second and next-to-last—2 and 99. And so on. There are 50 pairs of numbers, each adding to 101. So the sum of the numbers is equal to 101 * 50 or 5050.

To become conscious of 5050 that way, I did not have to be conscious of each number in the sequence. I did have to be conscious of that algorithm, that the paired totals were 101, that there were 50 such pairs, and then to do the math.

That’s a simpler way of knowing and becoming conscious of that number.

Are there other ways?

In fact, there are infinitely many ways, most of which are harder than adding up the numbers one-by-one, which in turn is more laborious than my algorithmic trick.

But are there even easier ways?

Of course, there are—once the necessary base knowledge is in place. A person sufficiently skilled at mental multiplication and knowing the short-cut algorithm could become conscious of the sum of a sequence of numbers as soon as they were told the bounds of the sequence.

Knowledge in this essay

Take this essay. I think it contains useful information that I intend to preserve as knowledge.

But where did that come from?

A physicalist would argue that everything required to produce this essay is already present in the physical systems that constitute my mind. By that, I mean: the physical structure of my brain, its current electrical and chemical state (both static and dynamic), along with any affordances outside my body, without which my mind would lose some of its operating capability. For example, things I have written on paper that I can access, and there’s stuff in the cloud I might refer to (based on what’s already in my brain.)

Whatever knowledge this essay contains must already have been present, but not in a form convenient to consciousness.

I was able to become conscious of the ideas that are in this essay by intending to write it and then sitting down and writing it.

And how did that happen?

Indeed, I sat down, and my fingers typed the words that became this essay. I reread the words and sometimes found them inadequate in some cases. Then my fingers typed other words that I express the idea more effectively.

Because I’ve written this, it’s more accessible to me. But the knowledge was there before I started writing.

Because I’ve posted it, it’s easier for you to become conscious of it. But their knowledge was there before I posted it.

You didn’t need me to write it.

The knowledge that led to this essay is not unique to me. It exists in countless other minds. My mind happens to be one that put the pieces together and produced this essay.

The knowledge in this essay existed elsewhere in the universe.

Instances of the necessary knowledge were incorporated into my systems.

Then the written form of that knowledge Shipyard.

All knowledge is everywhere

It must be true that every bit of knowledge that there will ever be expressed is already implicit in knowledge in other places in the universe.

And surprisingly, it must be true that every bit of knowledge is already present in every bit of the universe!

There’s only one wave function, after all, and that wave function is everywhere, and it must encode everything.

It’s just harder to pull specific bits of information out of some parts of the universe than others—sometimes almost impossibly harder.

But it’s always possible.

We humans are knowledge detectors and knowledge constructors. (And so are all other living things—with proclivities for detecting different kinds of knowledge. And so are other materials forms from which living things—themselves collections of information—emerge)

We experience the flood of information that surrounds us, and from it, we extract the knowledge that is most useful to us.

We assemble bits of knowledge we’ve collected, and we reorganize it and express it as “new knowledge.”

But it’s not new.

All new knowledge is implicit in already-existing knowledge.

Implicit knowledge

Suppose you have a list of 100 numbers, and you have an algorithm for adding numbers. Then knowledge of the sum of those numbers is implicit in the list and the algorithm. If you carried out the algorithm, the knowledge would become explicit and more available, but it’s not new.

Same with the universe.

All the knowledge that there ever was or ever will be was present in the instant after the Big Bang. It might have seemed chaotic, but it was not.

The Second Law of Thermodynamics tells us that entropy—which measures the disorder of the system—always rises. So it must be the case that the early universe—which might have seemed chaotic—was more orderly than it is today!

The net disorder of the universe has gone up steadily while local systems—like the planet Earth or you or me—represent islands of concentrated. The orderliness of the universe goes down even as the local orderliness of small regions goes up.

That’s entropy for you!

This essay is a case in point.

It’s a bit of order in a chaotic universe.

It contains information that I think is useful enough to preserve—thus meeting David Deutsch’s criteria for knowledge.

But where did that knowledge come from?

Like the sum of my list of numbers, it was there all the long.

The knowledge was within me, but I didn’t know that I knew it.

Like adding a hundred numbers to get the knowledge that was always there, I wrote this to find out what I knew.

And if you read it, you’ll know, too.

Practical consequences

That’s all very interesting, but I can already hear someone asking me, “Are there practical consequences?”

The answer is in the next blog post. Or will be.

The answer is “yes.”

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