The Essence of Human Mind

How does brain compute 1 + 1? How does brain store this information and adds another 1 to the result to produce 3. This is what I wonder. Computers mechanically save and calculate operations through electrical current, transistors and capacitors. But brain? I have no knowledge in biology so I cannot tell, but figuring out this basic question could be the answer to artificial intelligence and intelligent machines.

Where does free will come from? How come I can decide to lift my right hand or to write '%' out of nowhere. Did the sum of the overall brain activity tell me to do this, or is the something that creates actions out of nowhere? Sum of overall brain activity has to be predetermined from the sum of brain activity nanosecond before. Therefore that would mean that we do not have free will. But if we do have this 'ability', where does it come from?

Computers do not have this ability of free decision. But can they have it? As previously said, I do not have much knowledge, but something tells me that computer program cannot be programmed to 'think' by itself. Of course the word 'think' is vague, as the great paper 'Imitation game' of Alan Turing shows - terms think, intelligent, machine have to be precisely defined. I do not think that creativity and human like intelligence can be created from silicon chips. The same way chess game of computer against human cannot be won only by brute force of computation thousands of possible steps. There has to be some element of intelligence both in the software and the hardware.

If we look at the power of brain it is many times less than the electrical power of a computer. There is some element that makes the structure of brain intelligent itself. If the intelligent roots and bases of any program or machine are found/created then the result can behave intelligently itself.

If a program is dully programmed then it will behave dully, but when intelligence is created in its structure it will behave intelligently. Question is if it is the same case with hardware. Can we somehow structure hardware so it behaves intelligently? Of course I am here talking contradictory, because software in the end is hardware. Maybe I am talking about the debacle between GOFAI and other approaches to AI.

But I think this is maybe obvious, but to me it is a great reveal I found out - structure itself has to be intelligent in order to produce an intelligent behavior.

But where does intelligence come from indeed? In a great book of Godel, Escher, Bach, Douglas R. Hofstadter nicely describes intelligence as the ability to recognize patterns. Of course he goes deeper than that. But I do think that this is the case.

Another question could be what is consciousness? How to know a person is conscious?

Lukas Cerny, 13. 2. 2015

Life is a mathematical equation

Last week my friend, Jakub, told me, while talking about unsolved mathematical problems, that life is like a mathematical equation. I fell in love with this phrase and I have been thinking about it from that point on. We were talking about the Millennium prize Mathematical problems - I think around 10 unsolved mathematical problems, for whose solution a million dollars prize is waiting. One of these problem, The Poincaré conjecture, was solved by Grigori Perelman, but he declined the prize. He said he didn't deserve it more than other mathematicians who contributed to solving this problem. And that is when Jakub said that Grigori solved his life like a mathematical equation. He argued that  Grigori doesn't need much in his life. That he is glad to do mathematics and doesn't need million dollars to be disrupting the life he has. I was fascinated by this. It sounds so calm, peaceful and brave to decline million dollars.

There are complicated mathematical problems as well as there are easy ones. But there are solution to all of them (ignoring Godel's Incompleteness theorem :)). The same is with our lives. There is solution, sometimes simple, sometimes difficult to find, to happiness in our lives. People tend to always want more and more. But once the solution is found, there is no need for something else. Once it is proved to be correct nothing else is needed.

If I would show a mathematical equation to a kid, it wouldn't have a meaning for him. Mathematical equations indeed are some symbols put together. People have to understand what each symbol means in order to understand what does the equation tell us. But there is a meaning under each theorem. We can find that meaning. Some equations do not tell us a lot, some do. But all of them do not have a meaning and price unless we understand them. It is the same with life.

What is the point of life, when we do not understand its meaning? Then all what we perceive around is, are some random symbols that we do not understand. But if we look deep enough, try to see connections, we discover the meaning. And from that point on we do not have to solve it any other way. We have found, proved, understood its meaning and there is no point in looking for something different, some different way, leading to the same goal. 

And there is always a solution. No matter how far away from solution we are, we will always be able to find it. Take few steps back, look at the equation from different angle. And eventually after a good idea, a new idea, the solution will be as obvious as it can be - standing there in front of us, being there the whole time we were looking for it. All the time. 

"Life is like a mathematical equation. There is always a solution to it, being there all the time, waiting for us to discover it." 

Lukas Cerny
17.1.2015

The Question ‘Why?’

Take any statement you want. As simple as "My name is Lukas." If we keep asking question ‘Why?’ and try to answer them, we will always get stuck at one point. And this point is similar for all the statements. I want to conclude and philosophically debate on three things I observed.

I am sitting in my balcony, drinking a cold beer and fresh wind is blowing into my face.

Why?

Germany had lost the WWII.

Why?

Firstly, I want to look at actions that happen in time; that create the history and the present. Of course there is a reason for me sitting here in the balcony or for Germany loosing the WWII. But there is not just one reason. Certainly, I am not sitting here at this certain moment just because I wanted enjoy my beer. The whole actions in my last hour led to this point where I decided to sit here. I could have watched a film or anything else… but I didn’t. And in fact it is not the last hour that led to the point of me sitting here – it is the whole history of time.

Germany lost the WWII because of all the actions of all the matter before the War. If these things would not have happen then maybe there would not be WWII at all – but we cannot thing like this, it is too vague and without proof. What we can say is that the history of matter, all the actions of molecules led to the point where Germany had lost the war. I don’t know what would have happened if a one man in Africa would waken up one day in 1929 an hour later, because it did not happen. All those speculative questions “What if?” do not make sense. Importantly, there is only one time line, one present, which is the result of all the history before us.

All the actions now are somehow united. There is reason for all of them. But the reason is not the everyday sense “reason” we would think of – like me having a cold beer because I was in the mood for it. But the reason as the system of all the molecules, atom, particles in the world resulting only one scenario that can happen.

Imagine there are two atoms. If we know their velocity vector, masses and all other physical attributes, can be surely say what will happen with them? I think we can (although I am not a physics expert and quantum theory would surely disapprove this) – but I am thinking of this the way as if we were the nature. Then we would know everything about them (because we as nature actually make them behave in a certain way) and we could say what will happen. Now expand this experiment that there are more atoms. A complete universe. Even then we can say: if we know everything about these atoms, we can deterministically say what will happen next. Therefore the future is predetermined. It is already predetermined from the past.

So all actions are predetermined and are united. They depend only upon one point. The point of creation. The inception. From that point on the future only expanded through the laws of nature, with which this world is created.

And this is the same point to which all the question ‘Why?’ are moving towards. The reason for anything is united with reason for all the matter in universe. Molecule next to me had reason to move this certain way partially because of different molecule moving in China, and the system of these molecules – the present moved this way because of the history, the past, which resulted these two molecules moving these two particular way. And by history I mean the point of creation. Everything is united from that point on and the point of creation is the only reason for everything, now, in the past and in the future. It is the answer to all of the ‘Why?’ questions.

This is what I call ‘God’. It is the reason for the world, nature and matter being the way they are. It is the begging, therefore the present and the future. It is the reason and explanation for everything there is and possibly can be. I think humans are not capable of understanding this. The ultimate reason, I think, is something that cannot be explained but still has a reason and explanation. Not understandable for us.

But what if there was no point of creation? How do I know the universe has finite history? Our mind is not capable of imagining something infinite. We cannot imagine the space being infinite, the time being infinite, we want to believe there are some boundaries.

As always, I got pretty far from the point I firstly intended to analyze. I finished my beer and I am heading towards sleep. Why won’t I finish the article and write all the things I wanted to write about? All the past actions of any matter and the natural system led to this point of me stopping right here.

Lukas Cerny, 25. 12. 2014

A World in a World

I am sitting in McDonald's and looking at people around me. I wonder, what are they thinking about? They are eating their Big Macs, listening to music, working. All of us think, or have the feeling, that this is the center of the world now. I am the most important thing. And yes it is true. And logical. Why would I, finishing my French Fries, we worrying about a Japanese person finishing his McChicken in McDonald's in Tokyo? I am right here, in Prague. This is what I am. Only few of other seven billion people matter to me.

I have a smile on my face. Not just because I finished McDonald's French fries, which I think are the best out of all fast foods, but because I realize how small my life is. What is a center of the world for me, one small table out of twenty in McDonald's, is not even a sand in the whole city. I try to zoom out and try to imagine what would Prague look like from the sky. I definitely could not find this specific McDonald's. I am nothing in my city. Just one little creature. I am nothing in the world. Just one little creature.

What are we in the universe? Absolutely nothing. What we think is the center any action, our problems that we deal every day with, are absolutely meaningless in the eyes of the whole universe. There are thousands and thousands of galaxies. One bigger than the other one, one smaller than the other one. Everything is so relative, when we think of things in different way. Everything so big is so small. Everything so small is so big.

Different planets are attracted to each other with the Newton's Universal Gravitational Law. Of course this equation does not explain what gravitation is, it only describes it. Describes what is observable.

This mind path took me to completely different topic, and I will come back to Newton. But I wonder, can we explain things? Can we have one hundred precent reason for something happening? I don't think so. Why do the lightbulbs shine? Of course physicist would say that because of current passing through it, creating sufficient resistance that transmits energy into heat and light. But why does it do this? Why does the world function the way it does? Why is there any world? Any matter? In any question we could keep on asking why, why, why and we would ultimately come to the conclusion that nothing is certain. Of course this comes to the question, can science reason everything? As recall somebody telling me - only atheists believe it can.

Now back to Newton. Newton described the effect of the gravitational field by the Gravitational Law.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Newton's_law_of_universal_gravitation 

Now let's look at the electric force between two charges.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coulomb%27s_law

This got me thinking. These two equation look almost identical. They are identical, with the only difference in substituting mass for charge and different constants. Equation for potential, potential energy, field strength are identical as well. 

I concluded two things from these amazing facts (I am taking IB Physics HL so I do not have the ability to go into too much depth in physics knowledge).

First, physics is absolutely beautiful. The world we are living in is somehow interconnected. There are some basic principles that function and that apply to big objects as well as small objects (of course I am not talking about Relativity or Quantum Mechanics). But it truly is somehow interconnected. Did somebody create this? Is there a Divine power, the Creator, that created this? Who created this? Is this just a coincidence? There are million questions striking me.

I little kid next to me is enjoying her ice-cream and explaining her mom why she got a bad grade.

Secondly, aren't atoms another worlds? If big objects such as planets, galaxies, indeed any matter at all is driven by the force that has the same properties as electric force between charges in little atoms, couldn't it be that there are worlds in worlds? That where we are living now, our space, is only an atom? Our space is only an atom in other world, which is again an atom in other world? Why not? Give me a proof that it is not this way?

Maybe one Big Mac has intoxicated me so much that my philosophical essay got too much away from where I started. But anyway.  Where I am sitting here right now, this McDonald is an atom in the universe. Even though it is center of the world for me, in our galaxy it is a piece of sand, an atom. Why couldn't the same way apply for an atom. Maybe atoms have do have a center of importance in them, but they are atoms in our world where they are not important at all, exactly the same way I, sitting in McDonalds, am not important for somebody right next door, or on the other side of the world. 

Lukas Cerny, 10.12.2014

Fight for Our Dreams

There is no point in being realistic. There is no point in thinking realistically. Dreams and visions are things that nobody can take away from us. We are confronted with reality every day. Bad grades, waking up at 6:45, studying, working. Why do we care to do this? It is because we have a dream and the opportunity to realize it. Nobody can achieve something they want unless they work hard for it. We have the vision that one day “we will not be living in the world that was given to us, but we will live in the world that we dream of.” And these dreams define us. We spend ten hours a day at school because of this motivation. We work hard. Maybe it will be worth it, maybe it won’t. Maybe we are just completely wasting our time. But the vision is the only thing that we have in our hands right now. It is the only thing we are fighting for. So, once again, answer the question, what is the point of thinking realistically?

Lukas Cerny 3.12.2014

Interesting Essay I, Pencil from Leonard Reed

Leonard Reed’s idea of no one knowing how to create thing as simple as a pen is, is genius. It describes the true nature of modern society. No one would be able to create a pen. Surely not as perfect as the ones we buy at stores. Today’s consumer society enabled every person to have the opportunity to buy products the individual would not know how to produce, and furthermore for a cheap price. A price certainly not corresponding to the hours of work the individual would have to spend on creating the product (as perfect as it is).

Reed perfectly describes the nature of the production of a simple pen. Lead from Ceylon, cedar trees from San Leandro etc. These steps are reinforced by millions of people that even do not know about their contribution. A Brazilian farmer’s coffee will help a miner in Ceylon, truck driver of Koh-I-Noor or others. Leonard Reed does explain this perfectly. Today’s web of work or people is due to globalized communications and infrastructure magically interconnected. But Leonard Reed reasons this connectionism differently.

“I insist that only God could make me,” Reed states. I agree with his argumentation – there is no mastermind, no president of the world telling each individual what to do and yet the resulting opportunities we have are amazing. How can that happen? It surely is not just a coincidence, or even an accident. Reed attributes this to God. Only God can make every individual play their role perfectly, so that person on the other side of the globe can appreciate its contribution.

I would reason this modern phenomenon differently. This trend is something new; something that was not here always. It developed. It did not happen that a magical person, a God, decided to make the world connected from now on, but from a small agricultural communities through Industrial Revolution, a globalized society developed - a society where individuals contribute, but benefit as well. In fact it is an “Invisible Hand at work “ as Reed describes.

Not everything that is occurring, that we have the opportunity to analyze, describe has to have a creator. It has to have a reason! Leibniz, 17^th century revolutionary philosopher, argues that reason is the fundamental property of matter. Indeed, the pens we are using everyday at school have a reason why they are in our hands. We bought them; somebody produced them. But this circle, especially in the production, doesn’t have to have a mastermind controlling every step. Instead every step has a sufficient reason to be made.

We could find parallel in atoms making up the world’s matter. Each step in a production of a pen or other products I will represent by an atom. And yet as chaotic as the kinematics of an atom seem, the result is something stable – something real. Nobody tells each atom what to do. Instead by the circumstances it moves. It moves by a reason! I think that is the same with today’s society. An atom million miles away radiates electromagnetic waves that in a tiny-tiny bit affect the atoms on Earth. I don’t think there is any mastermind. There is only reason, as Leibniz would argue.

Beautiful work of Milan Kundera - Laughable Loves

We had to write comment on some quotes from a wonderful book from a Czech author Milan Kundera called Laughable Loves. The comments and quotes are in Czech, but I truly recommend reading the book. As the title says, it is about stories that readers will laugh about. But deep inside the laughable irony actually describes the awful bitterness of life. And Milan Kundera is a master in delivering this bitterness right to the reader's tongue.

1.     „Nemohl jsem vás poznat!“ omlouval se, ale byla to hloupá omluva, protože je dostala skokem k trapnému tématu, o němž bylo radno spíš mlčet: neviděli se 15 let a oba za tu dobu zestárli.

                                                                                                                          Ať ustoupí staří…
V každé povídce je jasným motivem erotika a sexuální vztahy. Ovšem pokaždé je jim přisuzována jiná hodnota, jiné příčiny a důvody. Kundera se zaměřuje právě na sex, protože je krásným nástrojem na rozebírání tématu duality těla a duše. Sex pro radost, sex pro lásku, sex ve stáří. Sex je klíčovým pojítkem mezi tělem a duší. Mezi něčím hmotným a jednotlivými dušemi. V povídce AUS je sex postavami také využívám k dosažení jistých cílů. Je jimi využit k něčemu. V této povídce se Kundera dívá na fyzickou stránku člověka ve stáří a jak proces stárnutí mění jednotlivé postavy. Znovu Kundera popisuje zdánlivě směšnou situaci, ale přitom toto téma je zásadní pro lidský život. Jak se vypořádat s blížící se smrtí? Nebudeme mladí navěky! První literární dílo vůbec, se zabývá právě tímto tématem – Gilgameš hledá cestu k nesmrtelnosti.

Kundera kombinuje v této povídce tyto dva motivy a spojuje je. Citát pro mě je moc zajímavý. Zasměju se nad ním, ale přitom vím, že to moc směšné není. Ba naopak. Odráží krutou realitu. Každým dnem stárneme. A v tom je krása života.

      

1.  Snad jsem chtěl nastavit nohu kauzalitě. Nabourat vypočitatelnost světového běhu rozmanitostí libovůle.

Symposion

Komentář k tomuto citátu mohu navázat na předchozí komentář. Kundera si hraje s osudy postav, které jsou nečekané, nejsou v záměrech jednotlivců. Právě doktor Havel chtěl v Symposionu ukázat, že může ovlivnit svůj osud. Že může udělat něco naprosto nečekaného, čímž změní svůj osud, který se zdál být zpečetěný.

Doktor Havel je přirovnáván k Don Juanovi, literárnímu typu svobodomyslného člověka, který není spoután se svým osudem. To se snaží doktor Havel také dokázat. Nebýt ničím spoután. On říká, že by chtěl dát do života jakýsi prvek náhody – vybral si odmítnout právě Alžbětu, přičemž mohl odmítnout i ošklivější dívky. Tím bojuje proti svému osudu.

Tento citát se mi doopravdy líbí (mnohem víc než samotná postava doktora Havla, který se mi znechutil v povídce Doktora Havel po 20 letech). Představuje pro mne zásah jednotlivce do dění celého světa. Do dění budoucnosti a přítomnosti. Jakoby naše životy doopravdy měly možnost něco změnit, měly vlastní smysl. To se mi líbí. Zastávám se názoru, že každý člověk není ničím spoután, jeho limity jsou až ve snech, které je možné proměnit v realitu.           

1.     Člověk prochází přítomností se zavázanýma očima. Smí pouze tušit a hádat, co vlastně žije.

                                                                                                                           Nikdo se nebude smát

Teď jsem si uvědomil, že tento motiv může referovat k Oidipovi. Žijeme realitou, která je ale jakási iluze (Kundera použije tento motiv i v Symposionu v postavě Flajšmana). Neznáme a nemůžeme znát celou pravdu. A právě ta iluze nás zaslepuje před pravdou. Před pravdou, která jediná ovlivní dění na světě. Pravda je to jediné, co je hmotného, nevyvratitelného, konstantního.

Částečně souhlasím s tímto citátem, i když ne tak, jak byl použit v Nikdo se nebude smát. Myslím si, že nemůžeme znát celou pravdu, vždy budeme žít v jakýchsi iluzích. V NSNS mohla hlavní postava čekat, co se stane, z jeho egoistického chování. Možná právě protože je mi ta postava nesympatická, tak se mi tento citát v kontextu NSNS nelíbí. Líbí se mi v postavě Flajšmana, kde otázka je lepší žít v iluzích – být zaslepen, nebo znát celou pravdu, mne doopravdy nutila chvíli přemýšlet.

Podle mne vždy žijeme v jakési iluzi. Pravda je totiž taková, že jsme jenom buňky dané magickým způsobem dohromady, žádné abstraktní věci neexistují. Iluze dodávají našemu životu smysl. Iluze lásky, přátelství, náboženství. Proto myslím, že nejlepší je uvádět vlastní iluze do „reality, do pravdy“. Naše sny, názory, se mohou stát „realitou“ pokud je dokážeme distribuovat – např. Sokrates, Václav Havel, Galileo Galilei rozdávající své vlastní názory a iluze, jímž ovlivňují ostatní a stává se z nich pravda.

Lukas Cerny, 6. 10. 2014