JellevanDijk.org

Op de achtergrond luister ik naar een rapportage over hoe slecht de inspectie voor de gezondheidszorg functioneert. De politiek zal niet veel ondernemen, zo lijkt het. Het lijkt me heel simpel: we geven de *zorgverzekeraars* hiervoor fikse boetes. Moet je zien hoe snel de problemen opgelost zullen zijn. Dat is marktwerking in de zorg.

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A thought: tools, like hammers and such, used to be the things that a skilled craftsman would have in order to be the autonomous, respected, skilled craftsman he was. And the thing this craftsman could do, he could only do, and so this would put him in power with respect to the boss, or the customer, or the city council, etc.., since they needed the carpenter (and the other crafts). The tool was part of that power structure. But now, many tools (ICT tools, like e.g. Microsoft Outlook, but also an office desk or chair) are tools that are *used* by office workers but they function actually to put *other* people in power over those office workers. So the power relations have changed dramatically. Suddenly the tool you use in your work has become part of the system that puts you down, and makes you less autonomic. Of course this only goes for certain tools. Many very complex tools (programming languages, 3d studio max, and so on) still basically function as craftsman tools like the hammer did. But for the non-technical office worker, there is no tool anymore and basically no craft, and so no power.

Poor office worker. I think I am going to learn 3d studio max next.

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Mijn pamflet over een nieuwe op te richten partij lokte redelijk wat reacties uit op Sargasso.nl. Grappig ook om te zien dat een zijdelingse opmerking over het huwelijk wordt geintepreteerd alsof ik mijn scheiding aan het verwerken ben, LOL.Een flink aantal negatieve/kritische reacties. Ik schrik er niet meer zo van, want ik had al eerder meegemaakt hoe lekker negatief en bot mensen willen zijn op zo’n weblog. Vooral mijn verwijzing naar Robert Pirsig deed het bloed koken (en dat omdat hem verweten wordt een solipsist te zijn. Zucht).”O dear”, het is wel lastig voor mensen om goed en met aandacht te lezen. Nou ja, je kunt ook zeggen (en sommige reageerders zeggen dat) dat ik de boodschap niet goed kan overbrengen. Who is to blame? Ik sta er niet om bekend vage teksten te produceren: ja, ik sta er zelfs enigszins om bekend helder te kunnen formuleren! Was het zo’n vage tekst? Er komen wel moeilijke woorden in voor, en de zinnen zijn soms langer dan zeven woorden, dat is waar.Ach, ik geef de lezers deels de schuld, en ik wijt het aan het fenomeen  dat iedereen alsmaar een *mening* over alles wil hebben. Je leest een stuk, vooral zo’n openbaar blog, als iets om het mee ‘eens’ of ‘oneens’ te zijn. (Niet iedereen trouwens). En dan kom je een trefwoord tegen dat in jouw opinie in het ‘eens’ of ‘oneens’ vakje thuis hoort (bijv: ‘Robert Pirsig’) en hopla, er gaat een filter over je waarnemingsvermogen van heb ik jou daar. Ik doe dat ook vaak, dus ik heb zelf iets geleerd. Ik ga nog meer proberen om zoveel mogelijk alleen nog maar te willen *begrijpen* wat iemand zegt, en te doorgronden waarom hij/zij dat zegt.Een probleem dat ik nog wel heb is dat ik niet weet waar ik met het idee van humor en ironie naar toe moet. Ik houd erg van humor, maar ik ben nu redelijk humorloos bezig. Humor lijkt een beetje in strijd met ‘er helemaal voor gaan’ en ook tegenstrijdig met ‘open en ontvankelijk proberen te doorgronden wat de ander bedoelt’. Humor hoort juist een beetje bij ‘het allemaal niet zo serieus nemen’, ‘er afstand van houden’, ‘de ander voor gek zetten’ of ‘er de draak mee steken’.Hier ga ik nog eens over nadenken.

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One of the conclusions in my thesis will be that in groups of people that are trying to solve a complex problem, most of the time the process is not really one of finding good ideas or solutions to the problem, the process is a social negotiation between people. It is about ‘my’ idea versus ‘your’ proposal, and if we can integrate this, we are effectively reaching a social agreement between two people. The game is played over content, but the content is not really what the game is about.

I was thinking about this conclusion when I was listening to the news, featuring the European Crisis. In each news show there is an ‘expert’ that is analysing ‘the problem’ and several options for getting out of the crisis are discussed. I’ve heard about 20 times the analysis that when the Central European Bank would press new money (in order to buy state bonds, for instance) then this would lead to inflation. To me, that is a very simple thing, that I have learned when I was a kid, and so what suprises me most is that this analysis is being discussed in each news show over and over again, as if it was an option in the first place. Or, if it *is* a serious option to consider, then explain how it could be a *good* thing to press extra money. What do the people that want to press extra money have to say in response to the argument of inflation? We never hear. But that is what it is really about, the crisis, like any other complex problem that involves people. It is not about ‘what is the best thing to do’, since there is no best thing to do. The real problem is that the people that are discussing the problem, are also participants in the problem itself. If we make the rational analysis that the best thing to do would be to help Greece and Italy, but if the main player, Germany, does not agree, then our analysis is worthless. In the news shows, the experts keep telling us that we should help Greece and Italy (but Germany unfortunately does not understand this) or that we should not help Greece or Italy (but Greece and Italy keep on expecting us to help instead of taking action in their own hands) and so on. Instead, we should stop describing this crisis as a ‘problem’ (that has a ’solution’) and start treating it as what it really is: a purely human affair, that needs to be negotiated, in search of a compromise (or a revolution).

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Interessant stuk van Dimitri Tokmetzis over een documentaire van Adam Curtis over de relatie tussen mens en technologie (met als uitgangspunt dat de technologie die we maken ‘onze’ natuurlijke wereld is waarin wij leven. Die dus niet natuurlijk is. De discussie over hoe we onszelf zien (als een soort van complexe biologische technologie) deed me denken aan een boek van Douwe Draaisma: de metaforenfabriek. (Al heb ik het idee dat het vroeger anders heette en een heruitgave is, maar zijn andere boekeng aan over de faalbaarheid van het geheugen dus ik vertrouw mezelf voor geenmeter)

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Eerst een item op TV over een nieuwe fraudezaak in de wetenschap (prof Poldermans is ontslagen), en meteen daarna Rene Diekstra (sic!) die met geheime camera bewijst dat zijn moeder in het verzorgingstehuis door personeel wordt bestolen! Mijn associatieve brein deed wel even Zzingkchrkkk.

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Geert W heeft zijn best gedaan, maar de internationale pers haalde hij voor het laatst maanden geleden, vanwege de Noorse massamoordenaar.

Go go Ahmadinejad!

wereldnieuws update:

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O no. They’re doing it again. There are people discussing whether or not the “Google car” is conscious. Apparently nobody stopped them short. It brings back good old memories about good old artificial intelligence, and all the moderner types (connectionism, Alife, behavior-based robotics, etc…).

So I was thinking, we can either answer this question from an ‘engineering’ perspective, or from a ‘philosophy of mind’ perspective.  The philosophical answer I already know: the car will never be conscious, no matter how many special features it has. There’s simply too many hurdles to take. (Frame problem, symbol grounding problem, qualia problem, Chinese Room problems, Fodorian problems, the list goes on…). So let’s first look at the engineer’s point of view, because it seems a little bit more straightforward

Engineers will ask: what is the car’s performance? Can it do things? More specifically: can it do the *right things*. More specifically: Is it capable of doing whatever it is that you need to be able to do if you want to show that you’re sentient?

Here trouble starts already. If we have a good test measure, then we’re happy. Engineers can design a good test to find out whether the car meets its challenge, provided that the challenge is measurable.

So what do you need to be capable of if you should want to be conscious? We don’t want this question turn into a philosophical one of course, so we need to look at observable measurable behaviors. Do we have examples of conscious systems? What do they do, typically? Well, *we’re* conscious. So what do we do?

More problems. We do SO MANY THINGS. What is the relevant aspect of our behavior? What is the property of our behaviors that signals consciousness? Hard one to answer.

Let’s turn it around. What do systems do that are NOT conscious? Perhaps we can substract all of their regular behaviors from the set of our behaviors and see what’s left.

Rocks. For example. Rocks are not conscious. What do rocks do? Well, they sit still. They wear out and turn into sand. And they respond to gravitational forces in the Newtonian way (throw one and see).

We also sit still. So we shouldn’t take that as a sign of consciousness. And the fact that we turn to sand at some point (ashes to ashes) also should’t be of interest. And our response to gravity: not important. Right: we can cross of at least some from our list. Let’s see what’s left. Anywhere near the crash-test laboratory set-up?

Bummer. Still too many behaviors left potentially relevant for consciousness. And apart from rocks, I don’t know many other examples of systems of which I can safely say  that they are definitely NOT conscious. Insects for example. Do I know for sure they are not conscious? I’ve read papers arguing for the consciousness of E.Coli bacteria. There are actually people (mainly in the 19-seventies though) telling me that the earth itself is somehow sentient, and that’s a rock!

I’m sorry. I cannot give the engineer any good definition of conscious behavior that he could use in a test. We’re thrown back into philosophy, even if we deliberately tried to avoid it.

Reflecting on this exercise I think perhaps the question “Is the Google Car conscious”, should be reinterpreted as aiming for something different altogether. Up until now, we’ve been discussing what would be a reasonable argument for or against the thesis that the car is conscious. Perhaps the whole idea of a reasonable argument is the problem. We’ve just found out that it is very difficult if not impossible to give reasonable arguments, simply because we have no clue what would count as conscious behavior and what not.

But we could also use the ‘case’ of the Google Car a different way. We could ask ourselves, on our gut-feeling: “Right from the hart, is the car conscious or not?”. Personally, I would say no. Perhaps you would say yes. We could either decide democratically (ask 1000 people). Or we could ask the most emininent professor in the room, provided s/he’s able to give us an skilled expert, gut-feeling answer (and not an argument based on reason).

Then, once we’ve decided first whether the car is conscious or not, we now have a different situation and a different engineering question to ask. Suppose, for example,  we decide the car is conscious. We now have a system, completely open to us (since we’ve built it ourselves), and we know it’s conscious. So now the question becomes: what made it conscious? That is an interesting question. And in our attempt at answering it we actually might learn a lot about consciousness.

I think it is the sort of question cognitive science actually has been trying to answer all along, be it about consciousness, or memory, intelligence, emotion, or motor planning. It is a question that stems from creating a working hypothesis about  a mechanic model (this model *has* quality A) and then doing the reverse engineering job of trying to find out what in the mechanics made it such that A is present.

It’s not really about the real thing though. It is a thoroughly pragmatic affair. We’ve first *decided* (based on no rational argument) that the model has A, and only given that hypothesis we analyse the system in the way we do. But I think it is a good way of doing science.

And quite designerly at that! Cowabonga!

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This afternoon I arrived in Dagstuhl, a small village close to Wadern, a town two hours by RegionalBahn south of Frankfurt, Deutschland. I am here to discuss issues of ‘human and computer problem solving’, and whether we (who?, well, ‘us’) are in need of new foundations. (Some pictures appended below). I am honored to have been invited by Iris, since I am certainly not the expert in this field (and several of the people I met so far are pretty much The Expert). So I get to learn a lot. And yet it is a return to old times, since the world of problem representations, state spaces, search algorithms, frame problem, etc…, is the world of Cognitive Science that I was academically trained in. It’s fun to be back again! And I do hope I can build some bridges to my current Phd work, since I realize I have been drifting away from the things I was educated in quite a lot. The nice thing about this Seminar is that there are people from psychology departments and people from Computer Science, so there is enough opportunity for cross-disciplinary connections. But of course also we should expect some cultural clashes and misunderstandings. (My secret mission is to investigate (the lack of) shared understanding between scientists :-).

Talking about problem solving: In the train to Frankfurt there was a nice conversation I overheard:

Man with no train ticket “So I have to get out?”
Female inspector “You know that you have to have a ticket on the train”
Man, mocking: “But if you could only tell me what to do?”
Woman: “No no, you know that you have to have a ticket. No ticket, no train”.

So she indicated what he had to know
He then asked what he had to do (in the hope of not having to do anything)
And she then repeated what he should have known once more.

I hope we get to have good discussion on the relation between doing and knowing, and whether there is much of a difference in practice.

The Dagstuhl Premises (Schloss Dagstuhl). [I sleep on the other side of the road in a 60’s computer-science-lab-style appendix to the actual Schloss…]

Academic Seminar visitor Yellow von Diek visits the Dagstuhl Castle Ruins.

Seminar Co-Organizer Iris, not quite ready to accept that Boosting can get you arbitrary good results

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Ik moet mijn leren bank invetten, want hij begint al te craqueleren (is dat een woord?). Maar eigenlijk wilde ik mede delen dat ik na 30 jaar de ING bank ga verlaten. Ik heb een rekening geopend bij Triodos. Dat lijkt me nu wel eens wat. Het feit dat in alle correspondentie staat dat het een ‘internet betaalrekening’ is geeft me nog wat vage twijfels. Internet rekening: wat is dat, is dat iets anders als mijn gewone betaalrekening bij de ING? Is dat gevaarlijker? Valt het internet eerder ‘om’ dan een bank van steen (of leer)? Ik heb eigenlijk altijd al een slecht gevoel gehad bij de Giro, daarna de Postbank, daarna de ING. Toen verdwenen de postkantoren. Toen hoorde ik dat ING allerlei foute dingen koopt van mijn centen. Toen hoorde ik dat ING een recordwinst heeft geboekt. Hoe kan dat, een recordwinst, terwijl de hele wereld ofwel failliet is, ofwel tijdens het demonstreren neergeschoten wordt, ofwel in de regen vakantie moest vieren? Schandalig! Recordwinsten, terwijl zoveel mensen moeten lijden. Ik ga overstappen. Het enige is dat ik nu met zo’n ‘identifier’ moet gaan werken. Een tangible media device. En tangible media devices zijn natuurlijk helemaal top, alleen, ze kunnen wel kwijtraken. Nu ja, ik was ook voortdurend mijn mobiele telefoonkwijt op het moment dat ik een TAN-code nodig had. Of ik was de oplader van de telefoon-die-leeg-was kwijt. Dus veel zal er wat dat betreft niet veranderen.

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