FTTC available in my area!

Ok, just did a BT line check today and found that Fibre Broadband has been enabled at my exchange. I can get up to 36Mbs FTTC (Fibre to the Cabinet). I check Plusnet's site (my current ISP) and sure enough the upgrade to Fibre is now available on the "Change Product" section.

I've looked into this procedure a lot, and there don't appear to be any terrible pitfalls. There is the fact that my current modem/router is a long way away from my PCs, so I have to use HomePlugs to bridge the gap through the electrical mains. This could cause a bottleneck if it is less than the speed to the internet. I check, and most of my Homeplugs are running at 50-60Mbs. So they're faster than the internet. Good.

The connection to Andrew's room is slightly slower (30Mbs) but he only plays his Xbox and we're currently getting 2Mbs on ADSL so he'll notice the speed jump.

I drop into the Plusnet forum and ask whether I can keep my current static IP. The answer is yes. Fibre is go!

Out There? Nope, they're Here!

Andrew and I once wrote a short piece of experimental fiction using simple principles to build an alien ecosystem. This evening I idly wondered whether I could create an example of non-terrestrial intelligent life.

The trouble with doing this sort of thing (as authors and film/TV writers have discovered) is that you just end up with something based on life on Earth. The aliens always act just like humans, with the same selfish drives and attitudes. I didn't want to do that, so I started wondering about going back to first principles.

OK. So what things are there that intelligent life on Earth (for "intelligent" read anything from cats up to humans) tends to do that define it's intelligence and make it successful? I started jotting down some ideas:

Anticipate what's round the corner (both metaphysical and physical)

Bond/Fight with others. Basically make alliances and relationships

Differentiate between things

Assign Territory

Hunt Food

Estimate & Generalise

I quickly realised that most of these are actually caused by the same drive.

Anticipating is a part of Internal Modelling, in which the organism imagines itself in alternate situations and observes the results.

Hunting Food mainly involves skills learned from Anticipation. So see above.

Ditto for Estimating & Generalising.

Assigning Territory and working out relationships? Hmmm...they're part of Anticipation as well.

What about Differentiation? No, that's not the same. That's merely figuring out how one thing is different from another. It doesn't involve any subjectivism.

Aha! Subjectivism! Most of the traits we ascribe to intelligent life are selfish ones, that the organism uses to further its own existence. A kind of Selfish Individual strategy. Hold that thought. I decided to look at Modelling.

Modelling has been postulated to be the basis for Self-Awareness, and hence the basis for Mind. I know that humans are self-aware, as are the greater primates, and even cats and dogs appear to demonstrate this, mainly by dreaming and displaying forms of simple and selfish emotional states.

So to imagine non-terrestrial intelligent life, I might have to imagine life without Modelling. But since Modelling is primarily used for selfish ends, would this mean Non-Selfish life? What would non-selfish life be like? Well, I guess it would be life without an instinct for self-preservation. But would that work?

At first glance Self-Preservation appears to be a strategy that prioritises the organism over the species. but since practically every higher organism on this planet exhibits self-preservation - and most extant species are obviously successful - therefore a selfish strategy is a successful strategy.

A Selfish-Individual strategy. Successful because it works. Regardless of the fact that every individual is out to protect it's own skin, the species as a whole thrives.

So what did I have then? Intelligent (or sentient) life on Earth can be defined by a strategy of selfishness and individuality, the tool for this strategy is Internal Modelling, and the by-product is Mind.

So a good starting point for imagining Intelligent Alien Life might be to turn Selfishness and Individuality on its head and postulate a non-selfish individual that prioritises the survival of the species above it's own survival. Remove Internal Modelling and you effectively have an individual without a Mind. Could such a thing work?

Then I realised it already does, and we've got it here. Social Insects. Creatures that will attack something that attacks them, but solely for the defence of the species. Ants swarm over powerful attackers, losing individuals every second, but relying on sheer weight of numbers to win the battle. Bees die after using their stings.

So this proves that a Selfless Non-Individual strategy does work and works very well. But could it evolve intelligence? Yes it could, and does, although not within an individual. Instead the sum total of the Intelligence is made up from the behaviour of each individual. The larger the colony, the more potential for higher collective intelligence, and thus the familiar Sci-Fi concept of the Alien Hive Mind.

So I guess my attempt to postulate Alien Intelligence is already at an end. All I had to do was go outside and disturb an ant's nest.

Interview With A Green Girl

No, I don't eat as much as I used to. Especially when the sun's out, then I just don't feel like eating at all. It's a problem when it's really bright though, because then I have to wash a lot. It kind of comes out on my skin. Mainly skin that's not covered, but it really ruins my clothes. I've been told that it's glucose syrup. I mean, it's okay, but you can't spend all summer licking your arms, can you? If I get too much sun then it really comes out on my face, though it tends to get sort of dissolved in sweat. I have to wash my hair every day which is tiresome, but I really love sunbathing now, because it makes me feel good, sort of really alive, you know? A bit gooey, but good. I don't tan now, which is a shame, but I don't have to worry about burning. Now I just go green.

You know, since it happened, I've noticed that I breathe less too. At least during the day. At night? Well, I don't know because I'm asleep. Ha ha. My Mum says my breathing’s more normal at night...more like before, I mean. They say I'm recycling my oxygen and carbon dioxide internally, in my bloodstream, in the capillaries near my skin I think.

I'm back home now with my parents. It was good to be let out of the hospital. I mean, it wasn't as if I was ill or anything...well, they didn't know what it was really, and being in hospital was really scary. I really thought I was going to die, with all the people in like space suits around me. Like I had some kind of deadly disease. My Mum’s been really good about the whole thing, though it's been a bit of a strain for my Dad, what with the papers and the TV people outside all the while. My sister left home to live with her boyfriend though, I don't think she could cope with me around.

Things I like? Well we go to the seaside lots now, because I really enjoy swimming and they reckon it's good for me now. They said that my skin absorbs lots of food and stuff from the water. [Editor’s note - Absorption of ambient nutrients by biotic epidermal layer?] Something like that, anyway. I feel real good after a swim. And I can stay under for ages without breathing too. Scary? Not really, though it was at first. It's just that you don't feel like you need to breathe...so you don't.

Yes sometimes I do worry I guess. I think about, like what if I change into some kind of plant-thing for good! They told me that it's stable and that they don’t think it’s going to spread any further. [Editor’s note - Photosynthetic viral layer has established base equilibrium with human epidermis]
 
Do I like being different? Well, like anything, I guess there's good stuff and bad stuff, but whatever, I can’t do anything about it. I suppose I'm stuck with it for the rest of my life. What?...oh, yes, I know they've been saying that, but I don't know how long I'm going to live. I don't like to think about it, because it might be a very long time.

Can I infect anyone else? Well, you must know the answer to that, else you wouldn't be sitting here would you? Ha ha. They say they're pretty certain I can't pass it on, because the virus got changed when it infected me. It's a sym...sym something now. Symbiotic, yes, that's it. But then they don't really know, do they? I mean I suppose there's nothing wrong with being this way. It's not painful, and I feel better than I ever did before. It's not as if I'm locked up like some kind of laboratory animal. I only have to go to the Clinic once a week now, for them to check stuff.

I didn't have a choice though, that’s what I don't like. It just happened. And I wouldn't want someone else to get it the same way as I did. And it was very frightening at first, after I came out of the coma, and it was sort of...doing things to my body. But I do wish I wasn't the only one, that there was more like me. Just one other person, someone I could talk to. I mean, I know I'm talking to you, but you don't really understand it do you?

I have to get away sometimes. I go to the sea, which is only a mile from where we live, or up into the woods. Somewhere there's not many people. I can't go in the daytime though, I just get followed by everyone. I sort of sneak out, really early in the morning. Mum doesn't like it. She thinks I'll get kidnapped or something! Or catch a cold! She doesn't seem to realise that I don't feel the cold like I used to. I like to be there in the woods just before the sun comes up, and then I can stay all day and come home at night. I suppose I've got something in common with the trees now!

Do I have a boyfriend? Looking like this? What do you think? I wish I did. But, well, I'm seen as a sort of freak-thing aren't I? "The Green Girl", "The Plant Girl", that's what they call me, isn't it? My Mum tried covering my skin up with makeup once, so I looked more like flesh, but it just made me feel really sick so I had to wash it off. Somebody shouted "Greenie" at me when I was leaving the Clinic the other day. It hurt, because it was like being called "wog" or “Paki” or something. Why are people like that? Sometimes I tell myself it's because they're jealous. Because I can do things they can't, like live underwater, and go for ages without eating, and because I don’t get hurt so easily anymore, or because I’ll stay young for longer. But I'm still a person. I've got the same memories. I do the same things I used to. Live the same way...sort of. I'm still me.

No...it’s okay...I’m alright. I just start crying like that sometimes. I get a bit upset because, well, I guess that deep down, I do feel really alone. I'm not a freak or a monster, or an alien, but that’s how people see me. But I am still human aren't I? I mean, what do you think? You're the one sitting there asking me all the questions. How about if I ask you one? Am I still human? [Editor’s note - debatable; subject was infected by symbiotic virus, forming integral chloroplasts in the upper skin layer. Subject could be classified as hybrid being]. I mean, all these notes on your question sheet there. Did you write those, or did you get that from the doctors? You people, you make me sound like some...some kind of experiment gone wrong! That's it, isn't it? An experiment didn’t work properly, and I ended up like this. I got infected by something somebody grew in a laboratory, and what was it? It was a virus somebody made - a weed-killer virus, to get rid of ivy on walls! And they tested it up in the woods and didn't tell anyone. And now look at me! I'm eighteen years old, and I'm not even human anymore! You tell me. What am I now?

I'm scared, that's what I am. I’m lonely and I'm scared and I wish it hadn’t happened to me, and I want to go home. I’m sorry...I don't want to talk to you anymore. Please get my Mum. I want to go home now.

OK, so if you really take Quantum Theory to its extreme, there should be a multitude of universes where the laws of physics are different to ours. But since the laws of physics conform strictly to mathematical rules, this means that at least one of these universes would have different mathematical laws to us.

But how can the laws of mathematics be different? For example, surely 2+2=4 everywhere? How can we conceive of a universe where 2+2 didn’t equal 4 but equalled, for example, 5?

Well we could. Look at that equation above. 2+2=5. How can we prove that isn’t correct? OK, well don’t we look at the sum of the whole and compare it with the result? In other words, we count how many there are before, then how many there are after. But we have based those sums on what we observe. We could see that when 2 and 2 were brought together, the result was 4. So we created a rule to predict the result, to confirm the result, but not to ultimately know why that was the result.

If we lived in a world where 2+2 did equal 5, how would we know the reason why this was happening? We would add together two 2’s, count the result, and the answer would be 5. The only way you can determine changes like this in amounts, is by comparing before and after. Even describing an addition of this kind as units moving over one at a time, so we can see the increase in numbers, doesn’t work. We can’t see a flaw, because a) we have to use the same mathematical laws to count, and the result is always the same and b) why would there be a flaw? The maths works.

You see that’s the point of the laws of mathematics being different. They still work. Adding 2 and 2 always produces 5, but nothing goes wrong as the computations get bigger and wider, because everything works. You put 200 and 200 together, you add up the result, and it’s 500. But if you add 100 and 100 together, you get 250. It all works. It looks completely illogical from “our” side, but to “them”, our mathematics would look incomprehensible. To them, 2+2=4 would seem absurd, impossible, because in their universe it doesn’t work...because their laws of maths are different.

Of course, what’s to say that our universe of 2+2=4 is the “correct” one? Of course it isn’t. Quantum physics in our universe conforms to this equation, and Quantum physics is surely the same through all of creation, regardless of what “universe”? Well no, because any change in the laws of mathematics will directly affect Quantum physics, and make it slightly different. So our Quantum physics only applies to (and therefore describes...or is it the other way round?) our universe. Our physics cannot therefore predict what will happen in a universe with different mathematical laws.

Let’s take an extreme example.

A different universe exists where a particle took a quantum decision, say 60% probable. In our universe our Quantum Physics says this particle would be only 48% likely to take the same decision. That’s because that different universe says that 2+2=5. It is determined by, proven by, and conforms to the actual result observed each time.

Therefore there are an infinite number of these universes according to our Quantum physics. But in the 2+2=5 universe, their Quantum Physics gives a different answer, one that our Quantum physics can’t even understand. Their answer may that there are a different infinite number of universes...but unfortunately that number does not include us.

However our Quantum Physics will tell us that their universe can’t exist, because it doesn’t conform to our laws. Since there is no overall multi-universe yardstick for determining which law of mathematics is “correct”, therefore none of them are any more or less correct than any other. Because each universe can only use it’s own laws to investigate anything, and because the 2+2=5 universe can’t be described by our maths, how could we ever observe it, or even determine where it is and how to get to it?

To find their universe we would have to live in a universe where their laws already applied. In which case we would already be living in that universe, so we couldn’t find it or observe it elsewhere. Because how would we determine if another universe we could see that was identical...actually was another universe, and not our own? We couldn’t, since only by it being different could we determine it was not us, but if it was not identical then we couldn’t observe it anyway.

Oh I know what you’re thinking. Surely we could observe universes where things were slightly different, but the physical and mathematical laws were identical to our own? Yes, but those are changes in the world through the mathematics of our Quantum Physics, and since our Quantum Physics is the same as theirs, what happens is from the same set of laws. So they live in a universe where an electron went that way, and we live where it went this way? No I don’t mean that. I mean that another universe can’t have different mathematical laws than we have, and be observable by us. Our physical and mathematical laws predict that kind of universe can’t exist. But their universe’s physical and mathematical laws might predict that they can exist, and that our universe can’t!

So is there no way we can ever reach, or communicate with, these universes? No. We could reach a universe where President Kennedy was never assassinated, or the Gulf War never happened, or even where the US never landed on the moon...because although certain events would be different, they conform to the same physical laws as in our universe.

But the others? We can never get to them, for in order to exist, they have to be completely unreachable by us, because the laws of our universe will not provide us with a way to reach them.

The Theory

A long long time ago, humans evolved the ability to form generalisations from small amounts of information. This probably started as a survival trait – tube-like thing that hisses equals “snake”, avoid it! The individuals that were most successful at avoiding hissing things in the grass stayed alive the longest, and now the world is populated with their descendants.

As time went on, this trait has become better and better refined, slowly but surely evolving into the ability to deduce meaningful patterns in the world around us, from very little raw information. I believe that this is the single-most defining facet of our intelligence.

Why? Because from this ability stems almost everything that makes humans human. For example, we see shapes in the clouds (in fact it’s almost impossible for us not to); or show us a curly line, we either see the letter S, or the number 2, or maybe even a swan.

However, just to have evolved this ability isn't the whole story. The animal brain appears to work on a very efficient "reward" mechanism, and humans (being animals) are no exception. The human brain (for all its supposed sophistication) is at heart nothing more than a very complex conglomeration of simple processes. In order for this simple brain to do what is best for it, animals have evolved a very complicated system of chemical reward. That's what dopamine is. You do something good, the brain rewards itself with a burst of dopamine. You get a buzz.

This is a very handy way of ensuring an individual actively seeks out things that do it good (eating food is pleasurable) whilst avoiding things that don't (pain is bad). Of course, now that the human mind is such a complicated beast it deals with far more esoteric and abstract things than mere food & water. Socialization for a start has been a major development in the human species, so much so that our entire mode of communication (including our body language) is geared almost exclusively to social interaction.

However, let's not forget that for all our sophistication, we are still creatures driven by simple animal processes, and as such we need simple animal drives to make us do anything. Learning to be a social animal may well be the best way to ensure our personal survival in human society, but we still need simple rewards to make it work. For example, competitive instinct is very prevalent in human society, and our athletes often describe how much they enjoy the act of winning.

But hang on, isn't that because winning gives you a buzz? Yup, it's our old friend dopamine again. Surely this is the underlying mechanism behind almost every human endeavour, from climbing Mount Everest to reaching down the back of the sofa to retrieve a lost remote. Try it yourself. You're looking for something you’ve mislaid. You don't know where it is, but you have a general idea (gained from using your highly-developed pattern-recognition ability). And you're right! You find what you're looking for. Now didn't that make you feel good?

Let's take it a step further and really see this mechanism in action. Listen to some music. Something popular and repetitive. You're tapping your foot. Why? Because music exercises your pattern-recognition system wonderfully. In the space of 2 or 3 seconds you listen to the beat, extrapolate what's coming next...BLAM! you're right! Buzz! Listen, tap foot, Buzz!

Welcome to music - the ultimate quick dopamine fix!

As an aside, this would probably explain why Relax by Frankie Goes to Hollywood (he says, showing his age) is much more popular with the general Public than anything by Chopin or Mozart. You can listen to Relax and start mainlining dopamine within a few seconds. But Mozart? Well you have to listen to it a few times before you can start anticipating what comes next. This is possibly why it takes a while for most people to “get into” classical music.

Now then. Here's where it gets amusing. This wonderful brain reward system probably works for everything we do. Hand in hand with Pattern Recognition, we have a very powerful tool for manipulating our personal world, and it can even be used for more abstract endeavours, like thought, or scientific theory. In fact, let's have a look at scientific theory...or even just Theory (notice I’m capitalizing here)..

What is a Theory? At its simplest it is an invented explanation that fits all the observable facts in a particular situation. It may not be right, but that's not what our brains are interested in. All our brains care about is whether it fits the facts, and that there are no loopholes. Because if our Theory works...Buzz!!

Put your hands together once more for dopamine, rewarding us yet again for successfully extrapolating a scenario from a jumble of evidence.

So we've got our Theory, and it makes us buzz every time we think about it. So we tell other people our Theory. They listen, but they don't get the same kick as we do, because they didn't come up with the theory themselves (we don’t care. Just the fact of telling them is enough).

However they want that buzz too, so what do they do? They take the facts and concoct a different theory, giving them their own dopamine hit.

Now there's a downside to this as well. Ever been unable to reach that lost pencil down the sofa? Came second in the race? Had your theory blown away? Not a nice feeling is it? Nope, it's not. It's an anti-buzz. It makes us feel bad, and takes away our dopamine flush. This drives us to a) look for the pencil harder b) run faster next time c) defend our Theory.

Maybe it even results in us distorting the facts to fit our Theory. Who can honestly say they haven't lied to protect themselves? The News is full of scientists and politicians who have been caught-out hiding the facts, or distorting (even fabricating) the evidence.

I believe the human brain's reward system is that powerful that it drives more than the will to succeed. It can drive the will to succeed at all costs.

The bottom line is that because of my brain's chemistry I will fight to the death to defend my Theory from all who seek to disprove, deride, or undermine it. Not only that, but I will also endeavour to persuade others of the validity of my Theory, including searching for further evidence to back it up...even discarding or altering evidence that contradicts my Theory.

And you know the beauty of this Theory? It perfectly explains the reasons behind the Theory itself. This little piece of puff that you are reading now is a Self-Validating Theory. The fact that I am working so hard to explain and defend this Theory...proves the Theory itself!

And nothing you can say will ever disprove this.

The Christian God isn’t Vengeful Enough

Humans are designed to seek out answers. We need to know what caused what and why. Faced with an incomprehensible and complicated natural World, Prehistoric Man created stories to explain what he saw about him, and this quickly metamorphosed into Religion, which is still with us today, partly because it provides a ready-made and simple explanation for the world as we see it.

 

Most religions are founded on the concept of Gods who exhibit much the same traits as ourselves. They can be kind or petty, generous or spiteful, merciful or mean, only to a much greater degree than ourselves. When Gods get angry they can kill on a vast scale, making them the ideal scapegoat for natural disasters of almost any kind. This neatly fills the human need in society today for Placing the Blame, and the God of the Hebrew Bible was perfect for this role – a vengeful and capricious God whose motives were unknowable and who could be blamed for anything. 

 

However, the God of the Christian New Testament is a loving God, a kind and merciful God, a God who is willing to forgive any transgression providing the transgressor repents. Unfortunately such a God is pretty useless at taking the blame for unexpected tragedies. This leaves Christians in a bit of quandary. They have a perfect repository for any blame they would like to apportion. Earthquakes, sudden death of a loved one, incomprehensible bad luck, all could be happily laid at the door of a vengeful God – except the Christian God isn’t vengeful anymore. 

 

Although there is plenty of precedent in the Old Testament for a destructive God laying waste to whole regions – the Flood, Sodom & Gomorrah – the New Testament gives us no such examples. Christianity therefore offers us someone who can be blamed for anything we like…except we’re not allowed to. The closest Christians can come is the phrase “God’s Will”. Yet we find this difficult to reconcile with the image of God as presented in the New Testament, where Jesus continually reinforces the idea of His Father as a kind and loving entity. Who do we therefore blame for the sudden and inexplicable death of a child, a loving parent, or a Good Man? Although God is the only person with the power to have caused any disaster we can name, He’s unfortunately far too nice.

They just moved the search box on wikipedia

It’s now on the top right, bringing it in line with the accepted internet norm of where to find a search box. It will probably make first-time viewers of the site more familiar with the interface, so more likely to stay. It’s therefore logical where they’ve put it, up on the right where everyone knows they always find a search bar.

But I don’t like it. I can see the logic behind the move, but I prefer it where it was. It wasn’t because it was a better place to put it, or it made searching easier, but because I liked it there. It was aesthetically right.

But we’re also talking about a big shift of something important from the left to the right of the visual field. Any kind of left/right change has a major effect on the human brain. The left side of the brain controls the right side of the body and vice versa. The left side is (simplistically speaking) more logical, and contains the language centres. The right side is more emotional, artistic, creative.

Perhaps the right side of my brain did like the search bar on the left-hand side. Because it felt good? Or just because it was on the left-hand side, so my emotional side could control what went in?

Whereas the left side prefers the upper right because it satisfies it’s own logical reasoning. That’s the best place for it. Liking it where it is isn’t an issue that the left side engages in.

Which all makes me realise that each half of the brain is indeed like a separate individual, with wants and drives and a certain way of thinking. You would first think that sounds plausible, since we know that the opposite sides behave differently, and in a very human way (although one side can’t talk, nor can it write). However they appear to be more like ordinary human brains with a few bits missing. And of course like humans they are very good at cheating and lying to get there own way.

The thing is, when wikipedia (probably) asked their beta testers whether the search bar was better on the right, they would have been replied to by the logical left side individual (the one who can speak and write) and they would have got a predominantly logical response. If they’d simply asked “Shall we move it to the top right, yes or no?” they might have got a different response. We’re in a weird situation here, where whichever side of the brain answers a particular question, it may give a radically difference response to the question...if it could answer it! The right side can therefore never answer the question, even though it may feel strongly about it. This may be the root of situations where an individual moves to another part of the country, for sound economic reasons, but then finds themselves quite simply not liking where they are, wanting to go back, but being unable to (for sound, logical reasons).

Sounds like the war between Right and Left brain isn’t a war at all, it’s a situation of Dominance of Left over Right, Mind over Heart, and perhaps it’s why we are often miserable. Right Brain can’t tell you why it feels so unhappy, so it does the next best thing, it lets you feel it for yourself. It’s like the soldiers of the right bunging a smoke or stun grenade over to the left side of the brain and incapacitating all of it, and allowing the right side to take over for a while. A wash of emotion like that is obviously a threat to the left side. Well logically a threat, which is why the left side often decides in favour of the emotion.

People use the phrase “Body Politic” and that description fits with the way the two sides of the brain deal with each other. The left side will continue to convey (through language and communication) it’s own viewpoint of any situation to the outside world. The right side can’t communicate that way. It doesn’t say or do, it feels, it knows, and it is. So basically the left side can control and dominate the right side’s ability to convey it’s own hopes and wishes to the outside.

So no, I don’t like the Search Bar up there. I don’t have the same sense of enjoyment I used to get when I was following a Search trail for hours. I’m reading away, and it’s all very interesting, and then I want to search for something related, something still interesting, and I’m stumped by that need to move my mouse, my arm, my focus, up on the right. It just doesn’t feel as much fun anymore.