Time Loop (2022 - 2040)

cover art by Michael Whelan

Back in October, Molly Templeton asked, "What Do We Want From Prequels?" 

My answer to that question can be illustrated by what Asimov accomplished with his Foundation stories. Ten years ago I blogged about Forward the Foundation, one of a pair of prequel novels that Isaac Asimov wrote for his Foundation Saga. The original Foundation stories did not feature robots as characters, but eventually Asimov found a place for positronic robots in the Foundation Saga. 

Asimov had the benefit of four decades to think about the origins of Psychohistory, and given the popularity of his robot stories, why not blame the invention of Psychohistory on robots? Maybe the secret to creating a really amazing prequel is plenty of time to think about how to combine two seemingly distinct ideas.

source

 Age of the Prequel. Apparently, the first use of the term "prequel" came just when I was born, so my life has been lived in the age of the prequel. Somehow, my mind naturally functions like a machine for crafting prequel stories.

Back in 2020, I had a blog post called Writing Backwards. A common experience for me is writing a story and then almost immediately feeling the need to write a prequel. I fell into this pattern during 2022, which caused a big disruption in my telling of a new science fiction story, called The Cythyrya Investigation.

Future. When I started The Cythyrya Investigation, my intention was to resolve the mystery of the dysfunctional teleportation equipment at Observer Base. After the Bimanoid Interface 2.0 was activated, the teleporter stopped functioning.

image source

In Part 1 of The Cythyrya Investigation, Rylla and Rey went into the Asimov Reality Simulation in search of advanced nanites that might be able to activate the Observer Base teleporter. I originally conceived their mission in Deep Time as a fun way of elaborating on an old idea: that the Demon Prince Howard Alan Treesong was a manifestation of nanites gone bad.

Present. In Part 2 of The Cythyrya Investigation, the setting is about 20 years before the events depicted in Part 1. Knowing that Rey has been extracted from the RSS, Eddy begins to ask if he can transfer nanites out of the RSS and into the Final Reality.

Past. I suspect that Angela Fersoni could receive information from the future that was (or, will be) shared by Brak by placing it into the Sedron Time Stream. Then that information about the future was placed into the Ivory infites that found their way into my brain.

Someday Mars

Eddy has two visions of the future that provide him with two versions of how he is able to attain control over his telepathic mind (see "Someday Mars" and "Echo of Cynym"). This allows him to realize that the Sedron Time Stream not only contains information about the future, it has information from multiple Realities. Eddy hypothesizes that the Reality Simulation System makes use of the Sedron Time Stream. He begins testing all the nanites he can get his hands on for their possible ability to unlock the "future end" of the RSS.

When the Huaoshy were preparing to put an end to time travel, they knew that the Sedron Time Stream would remain as a way of accessing information from the future. However, the Sedron Time Stream also contains a wealth of information from all of the past Realities of Deep time.

icon

 Mystery Icon.  Take a look at the image to the right; with two crosses. ✝ Make a guess as to the meaning of this icon. Later, near the end of this blog post (Figure 8) I'll explain what happens when a user clicks on the button with that icon.

Figure 1. Creating Quyn.

 New for 2023.
I'm currently writing a new science fiction story called The Hua Nanites in which I explore a way to link data about the past from the Sedron Time Stream to the Reality Simulation System. Tyhry is able to use the Simulator to obtain advanced nanotechnology from the Hua, one of the ancient biological species that gave rise to the Huaoshy.

For The Hua Nanites, I wanted to create an illustration for Quyn Vye, an older character from the story. I began with an image called "Elena9" that was made by Eclesi4stiK and which was available for use under the CC BY-NC-SA 3.0. I processed Miss Elena through the age progression software that is available at the BoredHumans website. Another similar AI software program estimated that the original Elena is about 19 years old (see Figure 1). 

Animate GIF; Elena aging.

When I allowed the software to age Elena (see the animated GIF to the right) I was rather horified. The Hua have advanced medical nanites, so I did not want the older version of Quyn to look too old.

I selected one of the computer-generated images of a moderately older Elena that best matched my mental image of Quyn's appearance and used that to create an image of Quyn for use in The Hua Nanites (see Figure 1). Quyn is a Hua, an alien creature who has a different sort of skin and eye pigmentation than what we humans have. The full-sized image of Quyn can be seen at my Gallery of Movies, Book and Magazine Covers.

Figure 2. Three computer-generated aliens with pink skin and blue eyes. My version: lower right.

Figure 3. More AI-generated aliens.

 Inside the Reality Simulation System, an alien species such as the Hua can be made to have an appearance that is closer to the human norm than might actually exist on some exoplanet such as Sermyth. I asked a text-to-image program to create some humanoid aliens with pink skin and blue eyes (see Figure 2, above). Maybe one of those aliens is close to the true form of the Hua.

Two Heads are Better Than One? I wonder how the AI program "decided" to create an alien with two heads stacked vertically (see Figure 3). In this case, I asked for long hair, but I did not specify the color and I got a rainbow.

AI in 2023... lipstick on a pig android

 Chat bot fail. It would be nice if an artificial intelligence program could collaborate to create science fiction stories. Maybe in 2123! Here is some chat bot output in 2023... 😒 Tyhry: Do you know how to repair the teleportation equipment? Bot: I don't know what teleportation is for. Tyhry: I want to use teleportation to travel from Earth to Eternity. Bot: Interesting. I want to find out more about you. Tyhry: My name is Tyhry. What is your name? Bot: Tyhry, nice name. Call me Bot. Tyhry: Can a robot composed of zeptites use a teleporter? Bot: Some of them can. Tyhry: How do you know that some robots can use a teleporter? Bot: It is a ritual I do the same way every time. Tyhry: What is the transmission range of your teleporter? Bot: I've never been asked that before. THE END

Three AI-generated humanoid aliens with long hair, "blue eyes" and pink skin.

Figure 4. Old blue eyes (see).

I tried using the DeviantArt AI image generator DreamUp. I again requested a humanoid alien with long hair, blue eyes and pink skin (see Figures 4 and 5). I suppose the most interesting result was that this AI does not seem to know what "blue eyes" means.  

Figure 5. More blue eyes.

 The Bottom Line: Ca$h. DeviantArt gives me five free text "prompts" and then I'm expected to start paying for the privilege of using an AI that resists my attempt to have it draw blue eyes. What a deal. The AI does seem to have an artificial sense of humor; it included what looks like a penis for the alien in Figure 5.

 I've seen complaints about AI-generated art on the DeviantArt website and on Twitter and even some thoughtful discussion. I finally took some time to begin an investigation of the AI-generated art being produced by "Deviants" and I recently created my own favorites folder for AI-generated images on DeviantArt. I've been following a DeviantArt group called "A-I-Generated-Images" since September. That group links to "Dream by Wombo".

humanoid alien? (made by DreamUp, see)

 Game On. One issue that interests me is this: who holds the copyright on an AI-generated image? So far, I don't see that DeviantArt is placing any kind of copyright statement on DreamUp images such as this one. When I submitted this image for inclusion in my DeviantArt gallery, I saw no available options for assigning copyright or for placing the image under a copyleft license. 

I like the idea that if we ever meet a space alien it will probably be some kind of artificial lifeform, maybe one that would be composed of nanorobotic components rather than biological cells. Would it look like the creature shown in the AI-generated image above?

"A humanoid alien sitting in front of their steampunk castle at night with dynamic colors and god rays."

Figure 6. Mym's house/lab.
Full image credits.

Based on the results from my second prompt (above) I guess "sitting in front of" means nothing to the DreamUp artificial intelligence system. I modified one of the AI-generated images shown above to make it more suited for my needs in The Hua Nanites (see Figure 6). 

Figure 7. Mym waiting.

The image to the left shows some detail with Mym, an alien Hua, sitting in front of her zeptite laboratory (Figure 7). This image was made using "Mym's House" by DreamUp and "AltCun06" by  Eclesi4stiK under the CC BY-NC-SA 3.0 license.

For someone like me (minimal artistic ability), AI-generated images are an interesting option for helping me create images to illustrate my stories.

Figure 8. Get your programmers to DreamUp a  user  fuck the user interface.

Fig. 9. Original image: Ellie04 by Eclesi4stiK.

Figure 8 shows the DreamUp user interface. If you click on the button with two green crosses, then you can select the image aspect ratio. I hate user interfaces where there are meaningless, unexplained icons on buttons. At the very least, if you hover your cursor over the button it should have a small pop-up that tells you what the button is. Back in 2020 I complained about the meaningless icon epidemic, but this is a problem that is not going away. 😔

Speaking of annoyance... I wanted to make an aged image for the character Shya in my story The Hua Nanites. The AI-program added glasses (Figure 9), but Shya lives in a culture with advanced genetic engineering and medical nanites and NO GLASSES. Ug.

Figure 10. Made by WOMBO.

 Figure 10 shows an example of another "humanoid alien" made using the WOMBO software. My request for "long hair" and "pink skin" turned into "long pink hair". However, Mr. Wombo seems to understand "blue eyes". I was trying to create an image that would depict the character Farryx who has a role in The Hua Nanites.

latex alien (WOMBO)

 Seeing the Future. Figure 10 is actually a composite of two WOMBO-generated images. The original alien face is shown to the right. I dislike the steady stream of latex aliens that have been turned out by Hollywood over the past 80 years. I now fear that for the next 80 years AI software will be annoying me in the exactly the same way 😖.

Figure 11. AI-generated Farryx (left).
Background made from a Brian Lewis cover.

 Above and beyond. I made the mistake of giving my email address to one of the online AI software companies that wanted to trade "free" access to a demo of their software for my email address. "Free". Ha! Now my inbox is apparently going to be forever spammed by their annoying marketing emails which they send from "personal" email accounts so as to defeat filters for commercial emails. I'm told that most people now have a garbage email account that they use as a designated target for such annoying AI-driven email marketing scams.

Figure 12. AI-generated using
  "photorealism style" in the prompt

 Three Legs ARE BETTER Than Two. In an attempt to use an AI image generator to obtain an less freaky depiction of Farryx (better than Figure 10), I gave up asking for a "humanoid alien". I eventually was able to produce Figure 11. Farryx is an hermaphroditic alien Hua, so I wanted "her" to look alien, but not too alien.

In my experience, AI-generated human figures usually look alien enough without me having to ask for an alien (example: Figure 12).

Figure 13. No Sale.

 I'm Not An Early Adopter. I know nothing about sales and marketing, but in seems strange when companies selling access to their AI systems don't provide instructions for how people can use their software, provide demo access to their software which crashes (Figure 13) and returns unexplained errors while they continually try to get you to $pend money on their crappy product. I suppose there are millions of people who have only ever used crappy software and they don't know any better. In the case of Stable Diffusion, the software can be run on your own PC (see). 

source

The availability of Stable Diffusion for home PC use now provides my first serious motivation to upgrade from my mid-2011 iMac to an M1 device. For now, I'm waiting for updated instructions on how to properly construct text prompts.

Figure A. trouble with anatomy

There is an annoying PDF guide for text prompts that is still dated October 2022 as of mid-February 2023. 

cute cow example (source)

The first example in that PDF is shown to the right. However, as a science fiction story writer, I have little interest in cute cows.

Prompt for the image to the left: "cute girl, reading a book, soft smooth lighting, evening colors, 3d render, polycount, photo-realism, physically based rendering".

Figure B. not using "polycount"

The "prompt book" provides 16 examples that make use of the term "polycount", but there is no description of what that term accomplishes. 

My guess is that use of "polycount" in a Stable Diffusion text prompt is a way to direct the software to give preference to a subset of training images derived from the polycount website, but who knows?

Images A and B show two images that share the same text prompt except that image A includes "polycount" while image B does not.

The Stable Diffusion training set of images not only was weak on human anatomy, but also provides an "artificial intelligence" that seems to not "understand" the structure of a book. Figure B does have reasonable hands.

Figure 14. AI-generated. (see)

 Physics and Biology. It is quite clear that someone needs to teach these AI image generators some fundamental physics and biology. The results can be quite comical when the software does not have any actual intelligence or understanding of what it is doing. Figure 14 shows an image that was generated using this text prompt: "slim woman riding a pony with four legs, near a mountain, in moonlight, bareback, show an owl, show the moon, flying owl, no saddle, owl in sky, photorealism style". I had a devil of a time getting the software to include an owl in the image. The first time I got an owl, it was the form of this fantasy owl woman. I never imagined that it would be so hard to get a machine to draw a horse with four legs. It seems to prefer three or five legs. Also, the AI seems to enjoy putting two moons in the sky at the same time; one in full phase and one as a crescent. I had to specify "slim" because the AI seemed to enjoy putting comically large women on little ponies.

AI-generated

 Bottom line. All of my usual software complaints and whining to the side, using these AI image generators can be fun, even addicting. Sometimes I need a fractal or a rendered human figure, so I make use of software that can produce those kinds of images. I'll certainly continue to experiment with using the available AI image generating programs to help me create images that illustrate my science fiction stories and I look forward to their improvement in the future.

AI-generated (see)

I went through about thirty iterations with an AI image generator and significant post-processing with Photoshop to produce the image shown to the left. Insistence on blue eyes eventually yielded some freaky blue eyes. Sometimes it feels like these AI programs must be caught in a chaotic state space where multiple users are pushing and pulling the learning matrix in different directions. More WOMBO images.

Figure 15. Dryad hair-nanites.

 Plant People. Figure 15 shows a three-legged hair-nanite salesdryad. This image required some modification with Photoshop. The two white-coated technicians did not originally have green dryad heads. Also, I added in the flying nanite objects near her hand.

Figure 16. Dryad distilling.

 Druids and Dryads. Figure 16 shows a druid (in the background) getting a lesson in the dryad art of distilling.

Figure 17. Druid and Dryad gardening.

 Figure 17 shows another Druids and Dryads scene. All of these forest scenes are down under a deep canopy where Hi Tek™ artificial light sources are used by the technologically advanced dryads. All the fancy Dryad technology usually baffles the druids, but once in a long while a young druid begins to learn about nanites and can get into mischief...

full sized image here

 Just One More. I'll end this blog post with one more forest scene; using advanced Dryad technology, a druid has begun a series of cloning experiments (image to the right). As usual, this involves the druid making use of Dryad nanotechnology. What could go wrong? The cloned Dryad is having her under-developed legs placed into a nutrient bath. The clone's left arm is growing too rapidly. That's a green nanite containment vial resting in her hand. The longer the druid works with Dryad nanites, the more she takes on the appearance of a Dryad!

 Balance. These "AI" image-generating programs have no intelligence at all, so working with them can be frustrating. However, they also are a source of surprises which can be a good stimulus for my creative processes.

Related Reading: Google image-processing AI

Next: Part 3 of The Hua Nanites.

I'd settle for some human intelligence: make a useful image search function.

Cambridge Computing

Alan Turing

Alternate History
Alan Turing was born in 1912 and showed an early interest in the natural world. He studied mathematics at Cambridge University and established himself as a mathematician with a unique perspective and original approach to certain fundamental issues in mathematics.

By the age of 24, Turing had devised the idea of a "Turing Machine", a simple logical device capable of computing all mathematical formulae and numbers that can be computed by a finite algorithm. Turing had also contributed to the solution of the famous Entscheidungsproblem (decision problem), showing that no computational system (such as a Turing Machine) can decide as being either true or false every possible theorem of arithmetic.

Soon after recognizing the computational power of a Turing Machine, Turing became interested in the pragmatic task of learning how to use electronic circuits to build computing devices. As an inititial example and test case for mechanical computation, Turing selected one of the most famous computational problems of mathematics, the approximation of the values of the zeros of the Reimann zeta function.

During World War II, Turing applied his knowledge of mathematics and computing devices to British efforts in military code breaking. In 1946, Turing returned to Cambridge and joined an interdisciplinary program to explore the mechanization of mathematical computations, theorem discovery and proof, and the relationship between formal systems and human thought processes. This program became the influential School of Cambridge Computing.

 Introduction
 Alan Turing was one of the pioneers of discovering how to mechanize thought. He lived most of his life in England, but did spend a few years in the United States of America. In the alternative history Cambridge Computing, Turing stays longer at Princeton but has the chance to start collaborating with Ludwig Wittgenstein during World War II.

Wittgenstein

Wittgenstein was a relentless critic of conventional thinking in mathematics and psychology. Before World War II he was Professor of Philosophy at Cambridge and lectured on the foundations of mathematics. Like Turing, Wittgenstein was concerned with the algorithms by which human thoughts are produced and communicated.

In this alternative history, Wittgenstein and Turing develop a constructive relationship and begin a collaboration on algorithms for machine learning. After the war, they establish an interdisciplinary program in Mind, Machine and Mathematics at Cambridge and also a private company, AD Computing (Analog/Digital Computing).

The personal relationship that develops between Turing and Wittgenstein is critical for their mental and physical health, allowing them both to have long and productive lives. When they become sources of support and strength for each other, they are able to begin participation in the growing movement for revision of British laws related to homosexuality. By the year 1963 they help Great Britain decriminalize homosexuality.

by Stephen Andrade

Wittgenstein dies in 1968, but Turing continues their work into the age of integrated circuits and increasing computational capacity. AD Computing markets its first commercial autonomous learning robot in 1975. Turing dies in 1989, the same year that a model AD-417 becomes world chess champion. Turing's 1950 prediction that the dawn of the new millennium will be witnessed by thinking machines is realized at the turn of the century.

Contents
Moritz Schlick, 1936 .... Kurt Gödel .... meets Turing, Summer 1937 coversations with Wittgenstein deflects to zeta function for Turing's Ph.D. project.
Princeton The building of Alan Turing's first computer (1938-1940).

• 1938 Shannon-Turing ZZ-1

1939 lectures on philosophy of mathematical logic by Ludwig Wittgenstin.

Summer 1937, Cambridge England. Wittgenstein and Turing have made plans to go see a flick (Secret Agent).

The calculus of contradiction

Cambridge Computing
Turing arrives in the hallway outside Wittgenstein's rooms just as the door opens and a flock of philosophy students depart from their session with Wittgenstein. Turing stands aside and listens to the very loud voice of Wittgenstein from inside, "You cannot doubt just this and that. It is the number of things that you cannot doubt that you can count on one hand."

The voice of the student is hard to hear, something like, "Well, I doubt that."
Wittgenstein laughs and looks out the door, sees Turing. "Here's Turing! He's a mathematician, he believes an infinite number of things....he cannot even write a proof that does not include infinity."

Turing nods to the student and does an little dance as they both try to go through the door at the same time. Wittgenstein is striding around the room pushing furniture back into place and standing folding chairs in corners. Turing knows from experience that Wittgenstein will be in no mood to talk until he quiets the bubbling thoughts that arose during the session with the students. Finally, all the furniture has been pushed multiple times and Turing realizes that Wittgenstein is looking for something. Turing picks up a piece of paper from Wittgenstein's writing table. On it is a sketch.

duckrabbit

Wittgenstein notices what Turing is holding and he asks, "What is the most wonderful thing for a mathematician?"

Turing replies, "Finding a simple solution to a problem that has been thought to be difficult."

"And how can anything first appear difficult and then be found to be easy?"

"You just find the right way to look at."

Turing lets the image of the duckrabbit flip between being a duck and a rabbit in his mind a few times then puts the paper on the desk. Wittgenstein is still looking around the room. "If searching your room fails to reveal your coat, what's another way of looking at THAT problem?"


"Turing, good man, I was just waiting for you to confirm the EXISTENCE of my coat. Now we can attack the problem of how to find it." Wittgenstein still can do nothing but look around the room.

Turing goes to the door and holds it open for Wittgenstein. "It's almost worth testing you to discover if you would stand there an infinite amount of time waiting for the coat to rematerialize, but I saw that your coat is downstairs in the common room when I came in."
They leave Wittgenstein's rooms and collect his coat then head out into the warm evening. Wittgenstein asks, "So have you agreed to dump your ridiculous Ph.D. project?"

A week before, Turing had described his meeting at Princeton with Gödel and Gödel's ideas for how to (or not) formalize the process of finding an infinite set of axioms that would be an infinite basis for mathematics. Wittgenstein had been outraged and had sputtered, "A complete waste of effort, Turing! An infinite set of axioms is oxymoronic. Let Gödel find some other lackey to do his dirty work. If you want to waste your time you should waste it on something that you want to do."

Turing had decided to formulate a proposal for a new Ph.D. topic. "What I need is a mathematics topic that can be solved by a computing machine."

Wittgenstein guffawed. "Applied mathematics at Princeton? Is that allowed?"

They were walking along River Cam towards the Botanic Garden and would end up at the newly opened Regal theater for the flick. "The Ph.D. project would be demonstrating an improved approximation method for the zeta function. Of course, my real goal is to do the actual calculations by machine."

They left the shore of the Cam and turned up towards the Gardens. Wittgenstein asked, "Is there really a different approach that you would take to the zeta function if you were going to have one of your machines do the calculations?"

Turing replied. "I would be happy to use an existing formula for zeta, but producing electronic circuits to perform the calculations and hold all of the calculated values during the calculation is a serious technical problem. An available trick is to use a Fourier transform and to put the problem into a form in which approximations could be made by analog computing components....sets of interconnected wheels. This would greatly simplify the amount of electronic components to be constructed."

They walked through the Garden in silence until Wittgenstein said, "I'm surprised that nobody has ever solved the Fourier analysis of the zeta function."

Turing shrugged, "It is not widely known that you can explore the distribution of prime numbers in terms of harmonic frequencies. The zeros of the zeta function constrain those frequencies."

Wittgenstein turned to Turing and put his fists on his hips. "Turing, you are becoming a scientist! Mathematicians cannot prove the Riemann hypothesis so you have to build a piece of equipment and collect experimental data? Do the first 100 zeta zeros fit your prediction? Do the first 1000? No matter how long your calculator runs, you will never know ALL of the zeros. Its not even science. Its something between science and mathematics."

They started hurrying out of the Garden so as not to be late for the flick. Wittgenstein said, "What I want to know is if your computing machines will ever be able to perform a mental transformation. If you made a machine that could recognize a duckrabbit as a duck, would it ever be able to also see it as a rabbit? What changes in your mind when the image remains the same but your perception shifts? If your machines cannot see both aspects, they will never do mathematics, they will just be calculating slaves. What is the formal system that defines creativity?"

Turing had been asking himself such questions with increasing frequency. He could only dimly conceptualize a 50 year process in the future during which computing machines would be built and tested, revealing the details of their mechanics and testing if they could replicate all of human thought.

They approached the theater and Wittgenstein elbowed Turing, "Creativity must be a secret agent. A secret agent in the brain."

Princeton

Princeton University, 1938

When Alan Turing is nearing completion of his Ph.D. dissertation in 1938 he is offered a job by John von Neumann. If Turing returns to England, he can continue on his research fellowship at Cambridge. While trying to decide if he should accept von Neumann's offer, Turing's research adviser (Alonzo Church) shows Turing a copy of Claude E. Shannon's journal article describing the key results from his Masters degree thesis. By this time, Turing has begun working in Princeton's physics department workshop on key electronic components for a prototype computer circuit. Shannon's work on how to do Boolean algebra using electronic circuits is clearly an example of how to put into hardware the logical subsystems of a Universal Turing Machine.

Turing arranges for Shannon to visit Princeton and give a lecture on his thesis work. Turing shows Shannon the partially completed electronic computer components that he has been building and explains the concept of a Universal Turing Machine. Shannon decides to do his Ph.D. research in Princeton working with Turing. Shannon first completes the digital calculating circuit that Turing has already started to construct then builds the special purpose computer to calculate the Riemann zeta-function, a calculating device that Turing has long dreamed of constructing. In order to continue working with Shannon on this computer, Turing takes the job offer from von Neumann, delaying his return to England until after England enters the war.

The ability of Shannon and Turing to quickly produce a functioning electronic computer depended on support from Shannon's masters thesis adviser Vannevar Bush and Turing's new boss, von Neumann. It was only after the defeat of Nazi Germany when Turing learned the fact that Shannon already had a U.S. government security clearance as Bush's student. While at Princeton, the electronic components Shannon explained as coming from "the electronic shop at M.I.T." were actually from U.S. corporations working under government contract on military electronics research. For most of the electronic components used by Shannon and Turing, a request from Shannon to the office of either Bush or von Neumann would result in delivery of the items within a week, often by military carrier. The physical nature of the silicon carbide circuit components was a military top secret. It should be noted that Turing was able to recognize the silicon carbide components because of his familiarity with European crystal radio technology. John von Neumann arranged that the physics department workshop was also quickly provided with six new research assistants who worked under Shannon assembling and testing the analog circuits of Turing's zeta function machine.
______________________________________________

The Shannon-Turing ZZ-1 special purpose computer that was built by Shannon and Turing in 1938 used electric circuits to generate the harmonics required in the Turing formula for the zeta function.

The diagram to the right shows the basic analog oscillator element of the Shannon-Turing ZZ-1. 3600 of these oscillators were constructed at Princeton from April to November 1938. _____________________________________________

Cambridge England, 1939

In 1939 at University of Cambridge Wittgenstein lectures on the nature of the foundations of mathematics and logic. Wittgenstein's work on the philosophy of mathematics was of interest to several mathematically trained students who decide to attend Wittgenstein's lectures. In particular, Donald C. MacPhail establishes a relationship with Wittgenstein, becoming the "star pupil" in Wittgenstein's 1939 lectures.

MacPhail, stimulated by Wittgenstein's iconoclastic views of logic, devises a "calculus of contradiction". This new branch of mathematical logic is basically a method for working with a large system of theorems, some of which are contradictory. MacPhail and Wittgenstein realize that MacPhail's methods for dealing with mathematical contradiction are applicable to the semantic networks that form inside human brains when children learn. MacPhail applies Markov chains in the "calculus of contradiction" and publishes a paper on the subject with Wittgenstein: "Population Dynamics of Logical Atom Fields Containing Contradictions". This article attracts the attention of Turing, eventually leading to constructive interactions between Turing and Wittgenstein during World War II. Ultimately, this leads to profound changes in the development of machine learning and autonomous robots with significant progress towards human-like artificial intelligence.

Return to Tar'tron

Neurodiversity
I never pushed Cambridge Computing past the events described above for the year 1939. Still, it is fun to imagine how the history of our world would have been different if people like Turing and Wittgenstein had been free to be themselves, if they had not been tormented by forced confinement in a culture where being different and thinking unusual thoughts was treated as a crime.

Related reading: Alan Turing's pardon.

Next: Dr. Jeppson and Thomas Iwedon

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The Science of Science Fiction

The brain is molecules all the way down.

In what is now probably the most profitable science fiction story of all time (Avatar), the protagonist transfers his mind to a new body. Mind transfer has become a staple plot element in science fiction: human to chimp, human to robot, robot to human, alien to human, human to alien-human hybrid...have mind, will transfer.

From time to time it is fun to take stock of the relationship between our science fiction plot devices and real science. The Dick Tracy science fiction wrist phone of the early 1940s is no longer a gee-wiz science fiction plot element. How are things looking on the mind transfer front? Luc Reid recently tried his hand at comparing the reality of brain science to science fiction depictions of mind transfer.

While trying to explain the complexity of biological brains, Reid describes the mind-generating machinery of our brains as being composed of "two major systems". Reid's approach to explaining how a brain makes a mind is rather contorted and it made me think of Paul Churchland's book "The Engine of Reason, The Seat of the Soul". In that book, Churchland was doing some rear-guard maneuvering to convince philosophical mind/brain dualists that we need not imagine any non-physical components of mind. As an example of how some "explanations" of phenomena can be too complex, Churchland pointed to Betty Crocker's account of how microwave cooking works.

jumping minds

According to Betty Crocker, microwaves cause 1) water molecules in food to vibrate which causes 2) friction which makes food hot. Similarly, Reid's two step account of brain function involves both 1) neural networks and 2) chemical systems. Betty Crocker imagined that making hot food involves something more than vibrating molecules and Reid imagines that our minds are more than neural networks. What more? According to Betty Crocker vibrating molecules is not enough to make hot food because, in addition, you need heat. According to Reid neural networks are not enough to make a mind because, in addition, you need chemicals. Reid seems to imagine that neural networks are little electrical circuits: "our mind is much larger than our brain, encompassing a wide variety of sensations and emotions that, while they trigger neural activity, are at least as chemical as they are electrical." Similarly, Betty Crocker went out of her way to "explain" to us that microwave cooking is more than just making more molecular motion in our food.

source

The alternative view of the mind is that, "our mind is the activity of our brain". Just as heat in food is molecular motion, neural networks in our brains are chemicals. Sensations and emotions do not trigger neural activity, they are the activity of our neural networks. There is a famous joke in cosmology about it being "Turtles all the way down" and in the case of neural networks in our brains, it is molecules all the way down. Neuroscientists do not study neural networks on Mondays and then take up the task of studying brain chemicals on Tuesdays. The study of neural networks in the brain is fully integrated with and dependent upon the study of brain chemistry. Our neural networks are chemical systems.

In The Start of Eternity, the protagonist, Gohrlay, gets to learn about the advanced brain science that makes mind transfer possible. At no point does she pause and exclaim, "Wait, what about the chemicals?" The story assumes that hard-working scientists have developed the technology needed to scan the structure of a human brain and translate the neural networks into the form of functionally equivalent positronic brain circuits inside a robot. Rest assured, all of the brain chemistry has been taken into account.

Update: Foundation of Eternity

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