Author Archives: Wil

About Wil

A groovy guy thinking deep thoughts.

On the virtue of being unprepared (a curious note about jazz)

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As I think most people know, I play a lot of music. Lately I’ve been working more on jazz and am learning jazz tunes, focusing on my improvisation etc. I’ve started to notice an interesting philosophical question related to this music.

Jazz is considered improvisational music. Players know the chords and the melody but make everything else up on the spot. (Frankly, even the chords and melody are often varied and altered on a whim.) This might sound hard but once you get it down it’s actually pretty easy as well as liberating.

Now, I personally like to know the tunes I’m playing pretty well before I play them live. By this I mean I like to really know the melody, know the chords from memory (as opposed to using a chart) and have some soloing ideas worked out in advance. But I find some people object to this as being over prepared. How can anything spontaneous happen, they might argue, if you have it all planned out in advance? And it’s not a bad point and I presume as I get better I’ll prepare less. But the funny pooint here is that jazz is one of the few pursuits where being unprepared is a virtue.

I suspect this ties in with something I’ve thought about before. Jazz really broke on the scene in the early 1900s, right when a fellow named Freud and his ideas about the unconscious where taking hold. Jazz is essentially music produced “unconsciously.” By this I mean it is not supposed to be planned or written out (aside from some basics); it happens on the spot before the conscious mind has time to analyze anything. How could musicians even know that they could create anything worthwhile (choruses upon choruses of solos for example) without thinking it through? I think Freud and his then burgeoning theories were what convinced them they could.

What is a species?

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I mentioned that I have been reading a book by the natural scientist E.O. Wilson. The book is “The Future of Life” and makes his case for what we would call environmentalism. Specifically he focuses on the rapid, man-caused decline of species throughout the world. I believe he wrote the book as a polemic, something to spur people into action.

And for me, at first it worked. You read about the permanent extinction of one species after another and say, “something must be done.” But then you keep reading and a certain malaise strikes. “Aw fuck it… it sounds like an impossible problem.” How exactly can we control the actions of humanity on a planetary scale? Americans can barely get anything done in their country, much less in Africa.

But I have another troubling thought, one I’m sure will anger any reading environmentalists: What exactly are we saving when we save a species from extinction? Or more to the point, do species even exist?

You might recall me exploring a similar point when talking about the controversy over Nicholas Wade’s book on racial differences. Critics of that book argue that the concept of race (a division which correlates to what is often called “sub-species”) is a man-made concept. From a DNA perspective, there really isn’t much separating a black man from a white man from a yellow man etc. (Curious that the only term there that sounds overtly perjorative is “yellow.”)

Of course this observation can be taken further. All labels are merely that, labels. They don’t correspond to any objective truth built into the universe. All words are subjective, though certainly quite convenient.

So what is a species? As I understand it, what separates different species is their inability to mate with each other. Dogs and cats can’t have kids so they are a different species. There are other species that probably could mate but don’t tend to in the natural environment.

There’s a point in the book where Wilson lists several species that were eradicated from New Zealand (I think.) Among these are several versions of something called a hopping mouse. I have to confess reading this thinking, “Is this really the eradication of several species or one? And even if all the hopping mice are gone won’t we still have plenty of regular mice? Is this the calamity Wilson is making it out to be?”

I realize I sound like an utter douchebag to be saying that, but I understand why people start to glaze over when environmentalists list every species of tree frog on the verge of extinction. Non-scientists think of species as categories like “dog” and “elephant.” But in fact the term applies at a more granular* level.

*I have to pause even here and note that the term granular here is again simply a man-made term with no real meaning. The hierarchy it implies does not exist in an objective sense.

This must all seem like meaningless parsing of words designed to induce analysis paralysis. And indeed I do think we should try and save these animals on the verge of extinction. But I’m starting to wonder in treatises like Wilson’s book do more harm than good.

Ant slavery

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I’ve started reading an E.O. Wilson book (can’t remember the name and it’s not nearby) and it has already imparted an interesting fact: Ant species sometimes kidnap young ants of other species and force them into slavery. This site provides some interesting details.

Humans aren’t the only species that have had to deal with the issue of slavery. Some species of ants also abduct the young of others, forcing them into labouring for their new masters. These slave-making ants, like Protomagnathus americanus conduct violent raids on the nests of other species, killing all the adults and larva-napping the brood.

When these youngsters mature, they take on the odour of their abductors and become the servants of the enslaving queen. They take over the jobs of maintaining the colony and caring for its larvae even though they are from another species; they even take part in raids themselves.

Youtube even has a video, though I’m unclear of the source and why the people in it are wearing historical garb.

The demon in your right hemisphere

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As one might expect, I’m still reading through Julian Jaynes’ “The Origin of Consciousness.” In today’s reading he made a point relevant to the topic of demonic possession. And I think his observations line up with those of others.

Let’s sidetrack a second and consider the research that Mike Gazzaniga did with split brain patients. Gazziniga ran a series of tests on patients who had had their left and right hemispheres separated (for medical reasons.) The details are described here, but, basically, he concluded that each hemisphere was, in a sense, its own person, unaware of what the other hemisphere was doing. Since most of a person’s talking ability is housed in the left hemisphere only that hemisphere could speak, but the right had other ways of making its thoughts known.

Now let’s consider Jaynes’ thoughts on demonic possession. Demonic possession, as anyone who’s ever seen The Exorcist can tell you, seems to involve a person’s body and speech being taking over by another entity, usually one that talks quite differently (in both voice and use of words) than the “real” person. In “The Origin of Consciousness” Jaynes essentially asks, “What if possession is really the silent right hemisphere taking control of a person’s speaking apparatus?”

It’s an interesting theory and seems plausible. And it opens up a thought-provoking question: does everyone’s right hemisphere sound like an evil demon when given voice? Do we all have these dark sides festering without language in one half of our brain? The observation that Jaynes notes is that usually people who become possessed are not great intellects. But is it possible their right hemisphere persona is smarter than the left (vocal) hemisphere, but deprived, most of the time, of speech?

Crazy stuff, y’all.

Of course, I’ve hinted at this stuff before: Do we have multiple consciousness(es)?

Damasio, Jaynes and Sarno

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In past writings I’ve mentioned my excitement when I first read Antonio Damasio’s neuroscience tome “Decarte’s Error.” In that book Damasio laid out his observations that emotions are really physical sensations, particularly sensations of our internal body: guts, lungs, circulation etc. If you take away the physical sensation of an emotion you take away that emotion’s “sting.” (One way to mitigate a negative emotional state is, of course, through booze and drugs which bring about a pleasant body high. Not that I advocate such activities.)

I’ve also mentioned that I’ve recently been reading Julian Jaynes’ “The Origin of Consciousness.” In the chapter I just finished he examines the famous Greek stories The Iliad and The Odyssey. He argues that several of the Greek words frequently used in these stories have been mistranslated. Words such as thumos and phrenes have been translated to mean soul and heart (in the figurative sense) respectively but he argues they refer more correctly to particular sensation of the body, exactly the sort of sensations Damasio wrote about. (Jaynes believes thumos, for example, really refers to the sensations present in the activation of the body’s stress response: increased blood pressure, increased energy etc. Basically, being “amped up.”)

Essentially, Jaynes argues that in the Greek era people were much more conscious* of their body state. When modern people say, “I feel angry” they are only tangentially aware of their erratic heartbeat and hot face, whereas ancient people, Jaynes argues, were acutely aware of their physiological state. He also alleges that people didn’t always feel “ownership” of these emotional states, e.g. they were aware of the sensations but did not ascribe the sensations to a particular self (the way we do.) But that’s a more complex discussion.

* Well, this isn’t entirely true as Jaynes famously argues in the book that for some parts of history men weren’t conscious at all! I use the word “conscious” as a synonym for “aware” here.

I’ve also talked much in the past of Dr. John Sarno’s notion that much recurring pain, gastrointestinal issues and other maladies are actually caused by a distraught subconscious. Jaynes hints at the very same idea with no knowledge (to my knowledge) or Sarno’s work.

I think it is obvious to the medical reader that these matters we are discussing under the topic of the preconscious hypostases have a considerable bearing on any theory of psychosomatic disease. In the thumos, phrenes, kradie and etor we have covered the four major target systems, of such illnesses. And that they compose the very groundwork of consciousness, a primitive partial type on consciousizing, has important consequences in medical theory.

More on robot journalists

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We all know one of my favorite topics: how technological developments in regards to robots and artificial intelligence are poised to disrupt the job marketplace. CNN has a nice overview article about the situation. It’s initially focused on software generated writing (something I’ve discussed) but moves into general gloomy prediction making.

Professor Yuval Harari, Israeli historian and author of Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind, believes it is not just journalism that is being challenged by machines.
He said that while machines may have replaced humans for the past 200 years since the Industrial Revolution, there has always been something that humans could do better than machines.

However, he said that this gap is likely to close over the next 100 years.

“(Since the Industrial Revolution) humans have focused more on performing cognitive tasks. But what will happen once computerized algorithms can outperform humans in that (area) too?

There’s little doubt that the answer to the question involves cannibalism on a massive scale.

Unconscious learning

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I continue reading “The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind.” Early in the book the author Jaynes makes the extraordinary remark that “Consciousness is not neccesary for learning.” He backs this up with interesting studies that show people improving in different skill sets but not really knowing why or consciously directing their efforts.

This shouldn’t sound too crazy. As a kid you first get on a bike and travel a wobbly path down the driveway. You do this for several days and you’re less wobbly. You do it every day for a year and you’re even better. Your balance improves, you more smoothly push the pedals etc. But you didn’t really direct yourself to improve, you simply did. You unconsciously made various micro adjustments to your riding technique and it got better and better.

Of course, that previous paragraph isn’t quite right. When you get on the bike you do have some advice, usually from you screaming parents, that you are conscious of. And you may even conscioussly try different ideas as you work to improve (“what of I push down hard with lef while relaxing this one.”) It seems fair to say that you are somewhat conscious of learning but, nonetheless, a large part of it is unconsciouss. I am very unaware of exactly how I perform many of the tasks I perform daily. If someone had asked me a minute ago how many fingers I use to type I would have been in the dark. I probably would have guessed four, but I now notice that it’s mostly two.

In a way, the idea that learning is largely unconscious is encouraging. Basically, we just need to do something over and over and we will get better at it. But, the whole idea of conscious, directed learning is that we can find shortcuts to become better, faster and also not learn bad habits. Years ago, I read a pretty interesting article by jazz guitarist Tuck Andress about picking technique. He went into quite a lot of detail and I have, rather lackadaisically, been trying to apply his advice, or at least be more conscious about how I pick a guitar string. In that case I’m “consciously” trying to learn.

But the whole point with conscious learning is to try and get the skills into your subconscious. If you have to think about how to do a task, you will probably screw it up. (The Far Side once nailed this.)

All of this points to a more disturbing realization: that we don’t consciously control our actions and lives to the degree that we think. And I suspect Jaynes has more to say on that in later chapters.

Resetting the pain threshold

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I’ve long discussed the topic of physical pain on this blog and I’ve touted the idea that our sense of pain is not a simple measurement system by which X amount of damage to the body results in a corollary amount of pain. I suspect, mood, anxiety and other aspects of psychology change how much pain we feel. A depressing new article alleging that Americans are facing greater pain toward the end of their lives offers some food for thought.

Reports of patients experiencing pain near the end of life increased 11 percent between 1998 and 2010, according to a new study published in theAnnals of Internal Medicine. Reports of depression and periodic confusion also increased 26 percent over this time.

“There were certainly reasons to think that things were getting better,” said Joanne Lynn, the author of the report and a palliative care clinician. “We were using hospice so much more, there was more use of narcotics and so much more attention to symptoms, there was reason to think we were doing better.”

Lynn sees two major possible explanations for her conclusion. Patients and family members could be expecting more from the care provided and have “reset their thresholds” over the 12 years in this study. Another is that the number of treatments have increased, allowing patients to live longer with the diseases that ultimately kill them.

This resetting of thresholds ties directly into my thoughts on the psychological aspects of pain. Having said that, it seems likely the second reason is a factor as well.

The mind of conspiracy theorists

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I’ve started reading a book I’ve been meaning to read for some time: Julian Jaynes “The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind.” (There’s a title that would not make it in today’s popular science writing market!) I’ve seen the book mentioned in various places for years, mainly for its stunning assertion that humans only became conscious fairly recently, like 3000 years ago. (I think that’s the number; I’m sure I’ll find out soon.)

I’ve read the first couple chapters and see that part of how Jaynes supports his argument is as one might suspect: by defining down what consciousness is, thus making the idea that we could live without it more palatable. That said, I think his definition of consciousness is perfectly valid. He points out something I think we’ve all noticed: the process of reasoning, often touted to be about extensive rumination and consideration (all done consciously of course), is really a sudden gut feeling that is then justified via logic. In chapter one, he states… (BTW, this chapter is online.)

But more complex reasoning without consciousness is continually going on. Our minds work much faster than consciousness can keep up with. We commonly make general assertions based on our past experiences in an automatic way, and only as an afterthought are we sometimes able to retrieve any of the past experiences on which an assertion is based. How often we reach sound conclusions and are quite unable to justify them! Because reasoning is not conscious.

He then adds an interesting point.

And consider the kind of reasoning that we do about others’ feelings and character, or in reasoning out the motives of others from their actions. These are clearly the result of automatic inferences by our nervous systems in which consciousness is not only unnecessary, but, as we have seen in the performance of motor skills, would probably hinder the process.

This ties in with a lot of my thoughts about various conspiracy theories. I’m always amazed by people who believe that George Bush planned 9/11 or that various people are covering up Obama’s secret Kenyan and Muslim roots, or that thousands of medical professionals are keeping quiet about how vaccines cause autism. I’m amazed because these conspiracies would involve organized evil on the part of so many, with not much payoff. I guess I could understand why George Bush might have determined it was in his favor to affect a false flag operation, but why would the various minions who would be needed to enact it decide to go along? Perhaps the head of some pharmaceutical company would keep quiet about his poisonous vaccine, but why would the entry-level chemists who would certainly figure it out? What would their motivation be? I’ve discussed this with people who believe such theories and they don’t seem to see the issue. They freely accept evil as a payoff unto itself. As Jaynes says above, neither I nor the conspiracy theorists are using consciousness in our assessment of people’s character and motivations, we are using automatic inferences. (These inferences play a big part in the ideas of neuroscientist Antonio Damassio who I’m a big fan of.) These are not arguments of reason, but of differing instincts.

Having said that, I believe my automatic inferences are correct and those of people who disagree with me are wrong.

The difference between a psychopath and a sociopath

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A great question that arose once I started reading about the brain and brain disorders is this: what is the difference between a psychopath and a sociopath? Both terms are thrown around in pop culture, generally to mean, “a person with really fucked up morals (or a lack of them.)” But these are two different terms—something must separate them, yes?

I researched this question on the web a few years ago and found very little useful information. Generally I got the impression that psychopaths were somehow worse than sociopaths, but exactly how was unclear.

I was discussing the topic with a friend recently and we looked it up again and found this article. It makes things a bit clearer, though not completely. One point.

Sociopathy, while severely the less understood of the two disorders, can be congenital or acquired. Psychopathy, meanwhile, is generally considered a confluence of genetic and chemical imbalances.

So, psychopaths are born psychopaths, not made that way. So, would serial killer Henry Lee Lucas who was raised in an environment of unbelievable neglect be a sociopath? Maybe, though I’ve always heard him described as a psychopath.

Another point of distinction:

Psychopaths lack the proper neurological frameworks to develop a sense of ethics and morality. Sociopaths interact with their social worlds in a meaningful way, but their moral compasses needed a massive tune-up yesterday.
…
while psychopathy and sociopathy both likely involve impaired cognitive function, the two differ in which circuits are affected. Psychopaths are fearless; sociopaths aren’t. Psychopaths don’t have a sense of right and wrong; sociopaths do.

So the main difference would seem to be that sociopaths understand what they are doing is wrong and they just don’t care, whereas psychopaths don’t really understand that they are in the wrong. This still seems a little vague but is clearer than it used to be in my mind.