In Auditory Masking with Complex Stimuli (pp. 343-352 of The Cognitive Neurosciences, Fourth Edition, MIT Press, 2009), Virginia M. Richards and Gerald Kidd, Jr. study the effect of perturbations on auditory signal perception. They call those perturbations masking, and they make the distinction between physical and informational masking.

An example of physical masking is noise from the street that makes the speech hardly audible. An example of informational masking is interfering conversations that make it hard to make sense out of the speech. The authors study those distinctions for a better understanding of human auditory processing.

The question I'm wondering about is how prevalent is masking, both physical and informational, in our perceptory system and its accompanying processing capabilities. The shadow of night is physical masking, and the combination of odors is informational masking. Venetians masks are both physical and informational maskings?

A person with a mask has an identity, just as the same person without a mask. Those identities are at the same time same and different. In terms of Computer Theology (p. 304), the explanation is that the two different identities are those of the person with the mask and of the person without the mask. We call those identities differential. But there is another identity, which we call experiential. In this case, there is one experiential identity for the person in front of you, whether carrying or not carrying a mask.

Back to the auditory system. Is physical masking experiential and informational masking differential? Let me know what you think.

In Olfaction: From Percept to Molecule (pp. 321-342 of The Cognitive Neurosciences, Fourth Edition, MIT Press, 2009), Yaara Yeshurun, Hadas Lapid, Rafi Haddad, Shani Gelstien, Anat Arzi, Lee Sela, Aharon Weisbrod, Rehan Khan, and Noam Sobel present a correlation of two first principal components. One, a first principal component of olfactory perception, which they name pleasantness, and two, a first principal component of physicochemistry, which they name molecular weight.

Their interest is in identifying vectors of research similar to those of other sensations, like pitch and frequency for auditory signals, in order to support a parallel investigation for olfactory signals, even though those latter signals are processed by the brain differently from other signals; olfactory signals go directly to the cortex before going to the thalamus, whereas other signals go to the thalamus first.

My interest here is different, and I definititely plead weirdly ignorant here. There is something in my own feeling of consciousness that is reminiscent of my feeling of odor. This is just a hunch. When I say "I feel good this morning", it that pleasantness related to consciousness; and if it is, is that pleasantness scale similar to that of odor in terms of its relationship to a physical vector which would be that of consciousness?

In Selective Attention Through Selective Neuronal Synchronization, Thilo Womelsdorf and Pascal Fries say (p. 298 of The Cognitive Neurosciences, Fourth Edition, MIT Press, 2009):

Therefore these findings suggest that inter-areal communication during attentional top-down control is conveyed particularly through rhythmic synchronization in a high beta band, either in addition to or separate from the frequency of rhythmic interactions underlying bottom-up feedforward signaling.

Top-down attention is directed attention, as in "look at that cat," while bottom-up attention is triggered attention, as in "something is amiss in this picture." Attention and rhythm; that forms a nice underpinning for social behaviors.

In the Wall Street Journal today Jan 23, 2010, a nice description of Zimbabwe's Inanke cave. The landscape, animals, shamanistic references are so similar in design and significance to the Pecos river cave paintings that the continuity between the two civilizations has to be recognized; but from South Africa to the south of the United States, is that longest of trek testimony to a single religious culture?

I note again that Zimbabwe's paintings are said to be post-glacial (5,000 to 10,000 years ago) by the article. Quite different from the pre-glacial (up to 35,000 years ago) cave paintings of the south of France and north of Spain, which I still don't believe are comparable in terms of religious expression. Where are the pre-glacial African cave paintings? Are there any?

Interesting talk just posted on Ted of VS Ramachandran's The Neurons that shaped civilization.

What he considers is mirror neurons in my prefrontal cortex allowing me to sense when somebody touches something. They mirror the neurons that are fired when I (not somebody else) touch something.

Ramachandran says that when I actually touch something, my hand (say I am touching with the hand) sends signals of touching to my prefrontal cortex and that's how I differentiate direct neurons from mirror neurons.

Now Ramachandran says that if my arm is anesthesied, my direct neurons don't get the usual signals but are still looking for them so they get them from me seeing the other hand. Therefore my brain concludes that I am touching with the hand of somebody else. Ramachandran says that I have just assumed somebody else's consciousness.

But Ramachandran doesn't say: what happens with the mirror neurons then?

I think that the answer is that there are not both direct and mirror neurons, but rather one set of neurons that reacts to touching. However, that set can be linked to a representation of my hand (that's for direct touching) or/and to the representation of somebody else's hand (that's for mirror touching). If I see both my hand and that of somebody else each touching something, my neurons are activated, with a link to my hand (strong because reinforced by my hand signals) and another link to the other hand (weak). If my arm is anesthesied and the strong signal disappears, the only signal around is that from the other hand, even if weak, and it takes the place that would normally be taken by my own hand's signal.

That assumes that seeing my own hand, anesthesied or not, primes my neurons for searching signals from it. That sounds right, but now somebody needs to tell me if my explanation fits the neurological evidence. From what I have read of the original litterature on mirror neurons (see the reference in Computer Theology, p. 420: Mirrors in the Mind, by Giacomo Rizzolati, Leonardo Fogassi and Vittorio Gallese, Scientific American, November 2006), it is. In their original discovery, the authors had a monkey's neuron monitored by sound when the monkey touched a banana. One day the operator, instead of the monkey, touched a banana and the monkey's neuron resonated. I was actually the same neuron, which is what I say in my explanation.

Now a final point. My touching neurons get input from both the image of my hand and that of somebody else, but how do they themselves communicate where the input was from? The only explanation I see to that is that the recipients for the strong signal out (which means that my touching neurons think, rightly or not, that I am actually touching something) and those for the weak signal out (which means that I am watching somebody else touching) are, in the former case, far from my touching neurons, and in the later, close to them. Attenuation would make the difference. I have no idea whether that's a realistic hypothesis. If not, what else?

In The Quest for Consciousness (Roberts & Company Publishers, 2004, p. 161), Christoph Koch gives the following title to a section of the text:

Salient Objects Attract Attention

Maybe he should have said instead:

Attention Makes Objects Salient

That would be consistent with the computer theory of exceptions. Exceptions are raised when the brain cannot otherwise handle the situation; a situation that can't be handled by the regular process is salient.

Or an otherwise unremarkable object, i.e., an object fitting the current process, may be subject to attention. It then becomes salient, and therefore triggers an exception.

As with computers, the exception is an opportunity for the exception-handling procedures to examine the process that raised the exception. A process that can so be examined is called reflexive in computer science. So the brain uses the exception-handling procedure to investigate itself. That's what consciousness is made of.

You may ask at this point: how does a computer bring an object to attention? Technically, it sets for that object an explicit Throw procedure. That procedure goes out of the current process to find the next Catch procedure, that manages the exception thrown. In the absence of attention, the Throw procedure is implicit and simply triggered when the on-going process finds it can't handle the case at hand (it has found a salient object).

How does the brain know where to set up an explicit Throw procedure. Well, we've now moved the discussion of consciousness to that of attention. The way a computer does it is while it is in exception mode, i.e. when it is capable to look at a reflexive process, it can intervene on that process as dictated by the exception procedure.

Add to this recursivity and voila. We've built a conscious brain.

Reflecting on the past decade, it dawned upon me that clerics, from shamans to priests to imams, have historically be fond of blessing acts of war (and sometimes war itself) and celebrating their consequences, while they don't appear to participate in the same way in acts of police.

In the computer theology (Computer Theology, Midori Press, 2008, p. 373) recursive hierarchy of trust and policy infrastructures, that would mean that wars involve trust infrastructures, while police involves policy infrastructures.

So war would be about trust, or the lack thereof. One analysis would be that as long as two parties' trust infrastructures are compatible, everything goes fine, but when the context (or the trust infrastructures themselves) changes, incompatibilities demand resolution.

In Computer Theology (p. 141), we emphasize that, under breach of the trust that consolidates it, the social ecosystem is quick to revert to the physical ecosystem. That would reinforce that analysis. War would be an act of trust, albeit externally oriented, police an act of policy, internally oriented. Trust being a religious matter, clerics come into play on the war theater.

That begs the question of today's context or trust infrastructure changes. Might be one of those context changes the radical shift in information sharing brought in the past two decades by the Internet, that shaped a new perception of economic realities?

Christoph Koch writes in Biophysics of Computation (Oxford University Press, 1999, p. 87):

Given an approximate density of 100,000 cells by mm3 in the primate, a synaptic density of 6 x 108 per mm3, a total surface area of about 100,000 mm2 for one hemisphere, and an average thickness of about 2 mm, the average human cortex contains on the order of 20 billion neurons and 240 trillion synapses (2.4 x 1014) [...]

This reasoning is not yet complete as while the number of synapses falls from the argument, the number of neurons doesn't. However, in The Quest for Consciousness (Roberts & Company Publishers, 2004, p. 71 note 5), the same Christoph Koch says:

Given a packing density of 50,000 cells per mm3, a total surface area of 2 x 100,000 mm2, and a thickness of about 2 mm, the average human cortex contains on the order of 20 billion neurons and 200 trillion synapses (2 x 1014).

Also in The Quest for Consciousness (Roberts & Company Publishers, 2004, p. 26), Koch says:

All the visual information that the brain can access is implicitly encoded by the membrane potentials of the more than 200 million photoreceptors in the two eyes.

Since photoreceptors are neurons, those facts combined provide a formal proof (we insist on the terms "formal proof" here) of the elaboration of symbols by the brain. The proof is that if each image is using 200 million neurons, only 100 images (100 x 200 million = 20 billion) can be stored by the entire brain, obviously insufficient. Information needs to be reduced (which we actually know it is, but that's besides the argument here).

This sets the scene for a formal study of symbol construction, starting with a very small number of photoreceptors and going up from there.

In Computer Theology (2008, Midori Press) we wrote (page 40):

There is indeed a tendency to observe a reducing perspective on computers, and particularly on computer systems. For example, Roger Penrose seems to suggest as much when he bases his analysis on an equation of computing with Turing machines in The Emperor’s New Mind, even considering the extreme example of a Turing machine with infinite memory, infinite state variables and unlimited computing time; there is more to computing than theoretical equivalence.

In The Quest for Consciousness (2004, Roberts & Company), Christof Kock writes (page 8, note 12):

Penrose's books (Penrose, 1989, 1994) are among the most lucid and best-written accounts of Turing Machines, Gödel theorems, computing, and modern physics I have read. However, given that both monographs nominally deal with the human mind and brain, they are equally remarkable for the almost complete absence of any serious discussion of psychology and neuroscience.

This is most remarkable in that, as we observed in Computer Theology, we should extend Koch's mention of a lack of serious discussion ... to computer science. Turing machines, as important as they are, are a minuscule part of any cursus in computer science, or, for that matter, of theoretical computer science. But that's all that Roger Penrose and Christof Koch speak about when they think of computers. In the case of Roger Penrose, it's just sad. In the case of Christof Kock, it's also surprising, as his most wonderful book of neuroscience is entitled Biophysics of Computation (1999, Oxford University Press) and is so exquisite in its description of neural computation. But again, all he seems to know about computer is Turing machines (he also make some references to computer hardware, but they are even more of a case of ignoring mainstream computer science). See for example page 469:

The brain has frequently been compared to a universal Turing machine (for a very lucid account of this, see Hofstadter, 1979). A Turing machine [...]

and then Koch explains differences between Turing machines and the brain's operations. What's remarkable is that it's obvious to a computer scientist like me that Turing machines are the wrong metaphor. I'd rather think of the theory of exceptions when considering consciousness, or of object-oriented concepts when examining miror neurons, or more generally, in mapping the brain, of ontologies, of Bayesian networks, of stochastic grammars, and many other computer science constructs. That neither Roger Penrose nor Kristof Koch, great scientists in their fields and purporting to address computer questions, would stop at computer science 101 reflects the dire state of interdisciplinary studies. If this note encourages them to dig into a science that would indeed benefit so much from these most important scientists' insights if they were more informed, I'll be happy.

Computer Theology discusses at length the role of spatial metaphors in language and cognition (p. 281; see also Generics and Metaphors Unified under a Four-Layer Semantic Theory of Concepts).

In A Right Perisylvian Neural Network for Human Spatial Orienting (chapter 17 of The Cognitive Neurosciences, MIT Press 2009), Hans-Otto Karnath presents the symmetry between the right and left perisylvian networks:

"I appears as if this lateralization of spatial orientation to the right hemisphere network parallels the emergence of an elaborate representation for language in the left-sided perisylvian network."

In non-human primates, both the right and left perisylvian networks lead to spatial disturbance when they are damaged. In humans however, right network damage leads to spatial disturbance while with the left one there are only traces of such spatial disturbance. In a major difference with non-human primates, the human left perisylvian network is rather totally associated with language and praxis, with damage leading overwhelmingly to aphasia and apraxia, instead of spatial disturbance. (I need to point out here that I have expressed that carefully to leave the question open of the rudiments of language found in monkeys and chimpanzees -- and I would suspect more to come, since we are still on the discovery path).

If the language and spatial systems are then in fact symmetrical, this is no wonder that spatial metaphors ("I am staying on that table" vs. "I am working on this topic") are fundamental to language?

Something that Tim and I have been considering for some time is to illustrate Computer Theology. We refrained from it because for displaying images either in the book or on the web we think that we'd need to get individual copyright release for every image, an impossible task for the time being. So what we've decided is to just put an external link to images that we think are relevant to the text, which redirects readers to the external site, so that we don't access the site ourselves. An early version of it is at:

http://www.midoripress.com/computer_theology/653295239572397523957570-381.html.

It's not as pretty as when pictures are actually interspersed in the text with an internal image link, but it allows at least to start working on the project. Incidentally, a possible benefit could be that Google may find our text more interesting and the images it points to more popular, giving both more salience in the sea of the web. Something puzzling is that Google themselves show images that they have uploaded on their own web site from external sites when one makes a web query with "Images" turned on, so perhaps we could do like them and put the images in the text after all, in the web version at least. Something to explore.

In her interesting presentation at Ted, Rebecca Saxe talked about the "hard problem of consciousness." Hard for neuroscientists, but what about computer scientists?

Let's imagine that I replace my visual system with an artificial one, as we are on the verge of being capable of. This doesn't affect my consciousness, so I can progressively replace my entire sensori-motor system and still be conscious alright.

So I'm left with the brain. I can now store out all my memories, and I'm still doing OK as the rest of my brain does whatever it has to do. But now I'm going to eat away at those circuits be replacing them one by one by a computer equivalent.

After a while, I'm all bionic and I never had the opportunity to loose my consciousness, so it's still around. Consciousness is an emergent property of our nervous system in combination with our sensori-motor apparatus, quite mechanical indeed.

But can I loose consciousness? Sure I can. A good night sleep, a coma, and other events will do the trick. In each case, my sensory system stops to stimulate my brain enough that I answer perfunctorily to effect my motor system in return, if I do at all. The loop of consciousness is quite large then.

Let me now drive on the highway. It's a good day, light traffic, and before I know it I have driven 20 miles of which I have no memory whatsoever. I have lost consciousness of my driving, albeit not that of whatever I was thinking about while this all was happening. I can use here the same explanation as above; a set of sensory inputs were answered mechanically by motor output while not involving parts of the brain that were free to be processing other information.

But again, we see a regular pattern here. Routine activities are handled by sensori-brain-motor activities that may be sophisticated yet unconscious, while leaving place for consciousness to operate. Now, a truck enters the highway from the right without respecting a signal, forcing me into an evading manoeuvre. I sure get conscious of that, sweating the event.

Even if the reaction to the truck may have triggered my evasion before I got conscious of it, I can still draw the conclusion that at the same time my brain is conditioned for routine activities (that are likely to be unconscious), and is also conditioned for exception-based activities (that trigger consciousness). Notice that routine activities can become non-routine, for example when I "put my mind to them."

In computer terms, we have a routine environment and an exception environment. The exception environment allows observing, and also correcting accidental modifications to the routine environment. But it also allows inspecting various aspects of the routine environment (in
computer terms, we call that "reflexivity"). Well, that's consciousness, and it is all natural to the computer scientist. It probably puzzles neuroscientists because they have the wrong idea of what a computer metaphor is.

If a neuroscientist of good tenure (Rebecca Saxe?) would contact me, I would tell them which experiments to conduct to confirm the theory; how to look at exception mechanisms and where to find the chemical release they trigger and that we experience as consciousness. Then we'd write an article making a parallel between the computer view and the neurological view and we'd win the Nobel prize. To get ready, I'm currently reading the fourth edition of The Cognitive Neurosciences (MIT Press, 2009), a 1255 pages compilation of 89 up-to-date articles that cover the field. A pleasure.

Recent work in sociology (e.g. Theory and Research on Human Emotions, Elsevier, 2004) equates emotion with status. We constantly scan our environment to evaluate our status. A status that lowers is source of negative emotion, a status that improves is source of positive emotion.

In the volume cited above, there is a seminal publication by Sheldon Stryker, Integrating Emotion into Identity Theory. It is to be combined with Charles Cooley's proposition (in Human Nature and the Social Order) that identity is the self viewed by others. Stryker demonstrated from experiments that we establish and conserve our identity via constant evaluation of status. Emotions allow us to measure our identity and act on it.

That leads us to a new definition of privacy:

Privacy is the provisioning of identity.

With this definition, privacy is the reservoir from which we can draw to modify our status, and therefore, hopefully, maintain a satisfying identity.

Reading Teleological Realism, by Scott Sehon (MIT Press 2009), I finally figured out that a minimalist definition of teleology could be the difference between (1) and (2):

(1) Mary went to the kitchen because she was thirsty
(2) Mary went to the kitchen to have a drink

(1) would be related to causality (logic) and(2) to intent (teleology). But now look at:

(3) Mary went to the living room because she was thirsty
(4) Mary went to the living room to have a drink

(3) is now teleological (she must have an intention) and (4) logical (clear explanation). That would make teleology a contextual (extensional) concept, as opposed to an intrinsic (intensional; yes, with an "s") concept. We'll leave it here for now.

There lies the difficulty.

The hard part of tolerance is tolerance of intolerance.

Computer Theology's definition of identity:

Identity is the self viewed by others

Computer Theology's definition of privacy:

Privacy is the control of one's personal interactions.

Rapid large-scale evolutionary divergence in morphology and performance associated with exploitation of a different dietary resource
Anthony Herrel, Katleen Huyghe, Bieke Vanhooydonck, Thierry Backeljau, Karin Breugelmans, Irena Grbac, Raoul Van Damme, and Duncan J. Irschick
Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 2008 March 25; 105(12): 4792–4795.

Christopher Chippindale and Paul S. C. Taçon (editors). The Archeology or Rock-Art. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, UK, 1998.

Carolyn Boyd. Rock Art of the Lower Pecos. Texas A&M University Press, College Station, TX, 2003

Gracias a la vida que me ha dado tanto
Thank you to the life that has given me so much
Me dió dos luceros que cuando los abro
It gave me the eyes and when I open them
Perfecto distingo lo negro del blanco
I see clearly the black from the white

Y en el alto cielo su fondo estrellado
And sky high in the back the stars
Y en las multitudes el hombre que yo amo
And in the multitudes the man I love

Gracias a la vida que me ha dado tanto.
Thank you to the life that has given me so much
Me ha dado el oído que en todo su ancho
It gave me the ear wide open
Graba noche y día, grillos y canarios
Catching night and day crickets and Canaries
Martillos turbinas ladridos chubascos
Hammers turbines barks and squalls
Y la voz tan tierna de mi bien amado
And the voice so tender of my dear love

Gracias a la vida que me ha dado tanto
Thank you to the life that has given me so much
Me ha dado el sonido y el abecedario
It gave me the voice and the alphabet
Con él las palabras que pienso y declaro
And the words that I think and declare
Madre amigo hermano y luz alumbrando
Mother friend brother and the shining light
La ruta del alma del que estoy amando
The way to the soul that I love

Gracias a la vida que me ha dado tanto.
Thank you to the life that has given me so much
Me ha dado la marcha de mis pies cansados
It gave me the march of my tired feet
Con ellos anduve ciudades y charcos
With them I have walked the cities the puddles
Playas y desiertos montañas y llanos
The beaches the deserts the mountains and the plains
Y la casa tuya tu calle y tu patio
And your house your street and your patio

Gracias a la vida que me ha dado tanto
Thank you to the life that has given me so much
Me dio el corazon que agita su marco
It gave me the heart that pulses
Cuando miro el fruto del cerebro humano
When I see the fruit of the human brain
Cuando miro al bueno tan lejos del malo
When I see the good so far from the bad
Cuando miro al fondo de tus ojos claros
When I see the bottom of your clear eyes

Gracias a la vida que me ha dado tanto
Thank you to the life that has given me so much
Me ha dado la risa y me ha dado el llanto
It gave me the laughter it gave me the tears
Así yo distingo dicha de quebranto
So I part happiness from sorrow
Los dos materiales que forman mi canto
The two materials of my song
Y el canto de ustedes que es mi mismo canto
And your song which is the same song
Y el canto de todos que es mi propio canto
And the song of all which is my own song
Gracias a la vida que me ha dado tanto
Thank you to the life that has given me so much

Computer Theology (page 281) studies in details the structure of metaphors. What it does not mention is the symmetry of metaphors. That understanding came to my mind when learning that wood floor installers use a tool called a "martyr" in French to push the planks next to each other. The martyr is a piece of wood that is used between the hammer and the plank to avoid damaging the plank. The concept of martyr is readily understood and the metaphor is striking.

Wouldn't a laborer using the martyr everyday get a stronger understanding of the human form of martyr? In that perspective, every facet of a term serves to reinforce all others, a strong form of cognitive reinforcement. When considering the additional hypothesis that a common term supporting various metaphorical senses serves as a cognitive bridge allowing associating ideas during the stream of a conversation, a new cognitive dimension emerges.

A source of inspiration for Computer Theology is the observation of the missing fingers in paleolithic caves of France and Spain (page 401). More rock art with missing fingers has been described beyond that mentioned in the book, for example in Egypt (picture) and in the USA (Canyon de Chelly: description [certainly, a picture is missing here; in the book?]). Perhaps the additional evidence will bring more understanding on the sacrificial nature of the message left on the rock. Or perhaps will it find a different explanation (see for example the surprising if original thesis of Guthrie that it's all graffiti). Independently of the analysis, the fingers are missing and this has been communicated to the rock. That's the point that Computer Theology emphasizes when comparing this with missing information, particularly of the unexpected and therefore threatening kind, in computer networks.

Computer Theology page 246 illustrates the concept of trust reversal, the mechanism by which a trust network can be used against itself, by providing an example from computer networks.

Another example is the recent Bernard Madoff scandal. In a New York Times article entitled Madoff Exploited the Jews, Ronald Cass explains how Bernard Madoff used trust to lower barriers to inquiries into the fundamentals of his ruse. Computer Theology triages between trust by causality and trust by process. While using a common religion is an example of the former, the latter can be illustrated by repeated success, exactly the fodder of a Ponzi schemes. "I paid the last guy, so I'll pay you alright."

That begs the question of the mortgage-backed securities at the center of today's financial crisis. We could hypothesize that they also involve a reversal of trust. Being produced by the biggest names of Wall Street, trust by causality was invoked, and involving complex procedures, it was complemented with trust by process. If that analysis is correct, we might be observing a hole in the trust that's at the center of financial efficiency.

Trust lost is hard to regain. That, unfortunately, would call for a difficult rebound.

"I will develop the position that a hybrid discipline focusing on the neurobiological nature of brain operating systems (especially those that mediate motivational and emotional tendencies) is needed as a foundation for a mature and scientifically prosperous discipline of psychology."

The words "operating systems" speak directly to the core thesis of Computer Theology, that trust calibrated by emotions is at the heart of both human and computer cognition. Computer Theology adds that religion is the epitome of such.

Siboney, from Ernesto Lecuona, by Connie Francis, a most beautiful primal song where she pushes the feminine voice to extremes (our translation, aiming at the ensuing discussion):

Computer Theology studies the role of aesthetics in communication, and the grounding of communication in metaphors. Could it be, as we tried to express in the translation, that the beauty of this song comes from two readings, one populated with palm trees, cabins, and rough patches of vegetation, and one referring to the palm of a lover, her thoughts, and the path to love?

A most interesting expression is "arrullo de palma". The lullaby of the palm tree, or the lullaby of the hand's palm? Perhaps both. In the latter interpretation, we would observe a superposition of two metaphors. The coo of comfort, and the palm of welcome, then articulating a new meaning that reflects in inner thought and the travel of Siboney to the crystal of love. This is reminiscent of Computer Theology's discussion of a poem by Edmund Spenser ("... the lodestar of my life ...").

In the November 25, 2008 Wall Street Journal article "Does Europe Believe in International Law?" Jack Goldsmith and Eric Posner, authors of "The Limits of International Law" (Oxford University Press, 2006), observe that "Europeans hold their values and interests dear, just as Americans do, and will not subordinate them to the requirements of international law."

Computer Theology shows that policy infrastructures are subordinate to trust infrastructures, with trust being derived from causality or process. In comparison with smaller human congregations, there is less of both in international affairs, and consequently a weaker basis for supporting laws. As trust infrastructures find their roots in religious concepts, the international stage is an observatory of their evolution. The word "secular" comes to mind, but is probably not reflecting accurately the melting pot of religions (say from Confucianism to Taoism and from Christianity to Islam) that reaches into international law.

In A Soldier, Taking Orders From Its Ethical Judgment Center (New York Times, November 24, 2008), Cornelia Dean writes about machines making decisions on the battlefield. The article forgets religion. Computer Theology shows how machines can derive ethical decisions from religious considerations. Who's on top?

Computer Theology provides pp 279-283 a review of cognition languages. In particular, it shows how metaphors can be understood by computers. We could have gone further, and, for example, shown how computers can understand the difference that humans make in "I love eating duck" and "I love eating this duck". In the first one, no specific duck is indicated, in the second one, an unlucky duck is presented. That difference has several names; one of them, in logic, is "intension" for the first case, and "extension" for the second one. "Intension" is a variation on "intention", the idea being that the concept of duck is involved. "Extension" tends to indicate that we're talking about an actual duck, that, may, for example, be part of a count of ducks. Well, do cognition languages used by computers make the difference? Yes they do (here we are going to be technical, going beyond the book's habitual practice of using only layman terms to reach a wide readership). Those who are familiar with the XML language can look at the difference between:

(1) <animal type="duck"/>

(2) <animal>duck</animal>

It appears that (1) would be related to intension, and (2) to extension. The nice aspect of that observation is that it gives a theoretical foundation to what would otherwise be an artifact of convenience. We'd love to hear if this was noted by somebody before us, so that we can provide a reference, or/and to hear contradicting arguments.

Computer Theology studies the relationship of trust and policy, using in particular the concept of trust formalized in computer network to understand better human networks, or, as they are known, human societies.

This morning, US Treasury Secretary Paulson declared that the Treasury had decided to not use the $700 billion authorized by Congress as originally planned a month ago for buying distressed assets in the form of mortgage-backed leveraged security, but instead that the proposal would be that they be used to take ownership in banks and other financial institutions. While he was speaking, the Dow Jones dropped 300 points, and then up to 400 points.

Computer Theology defines trust as follows (page 9):

Trust is an expectation of an outcome with some degree of assurance.

Secretary Paulson explained that he shouldn't be blamed, but rather lauded, for the new turn, because "the facts changed." The analysis that this is confusing trust and policy would explain the Dow Jones drop. According to the definition of Computer Theology, included in the initial trust is the expectation of a model that would allow to provide a level of prediction of facts with some degree. If that degree of assurance is proven to be low by declaring that the facts are outside of the model, then trust is affected accordingly. Related policy is trumped, as modern economies are based on money, an ultimate embodiment of trust.

Computer Theology studies the relationship of religion and trust, and of trust and computer networks.

The International Herald Tribune today quotes a Taipei man consulting with a shaman: "I can say anything to a god, but I can't say everything to a psychologist."

The "anything" expresses full trust, while the "not everything" expresses partial trust. Here is condensed in one sentence the nature of Computer Theology's trust by causality. Computer Theology's trust by process is not involved here, so we have a pure case of determination.

Also, the sentence confirms the particular status of the shaman as direct conduit to the god (under ecstatic conditions, as indicated in the article). In computer terms, the shaman is the broker, arbitrager of trust, the intermediate that provides the trust necessitated by the conditions. An example of such an arbiter is Google: when we search and they present a list, we automatically attribute trust to that list. If the first item in the list made it that high, we think we can trust it; never mind that it is just an artifact of Google search algorithm.

Here are the opening words of Computer Theology, commenting the United States Declaration of Independence (see Computer Theology page 1):

These seminal words of the social order of the United States of America provide a rare direct illustration of an evolutionary event known as speciation; the creation of new species from old. From these words, we can begin to draw parallels between biological processes and social order. The Declaration of Independence is grounded in the metaphorical understanding from which is derived context sensitive communication. Consider that a mere 15 years after it was published, a subsequent defining document of the social order, the Constitution of the United States of America prescribed that men were significantly superior to women and that black men or women were distinctly less than equal to either white men or women. Women of any hue were not allowed to participate in the governance so divined and black people of any gender were declared worth three fifths of a person for purposes of establishing participatory power within this governance structure. Otherwise, they could be property owned and traded as chattel goods. The words “equal” and “Rights” were metaphors meshed in the social interactions of the time. That one could look upon these words and derive from them something other than gender independent suffrage, and in particular could draw from them an acceptance of human slavery, is critically foreign to our current mores. Such is the double-edged sword instilled in metaphorical understanding. As the 42nd President of the United States suggested to us, “It depends on what the definition of ‘is’ is.” Despite its somewhat self-serving nature, this was in fact a prescient observation.

According to Computer Theology then, we've observed with the election of Barack Obama to the presidency a metaphorical change in the trust infrastructure of the United States. Following Computer Theology, a change in the policy infrastructure would ensue.

Computer Theology explores the role of Maslow's hierarchy of needs in both human and computer societies.

However, even as laughter and play might seem about absent from Maslow's original hierarchy, they should find their place in it, from both a human and computer perspective. Any parent knows that it is very hard to keep children from playing, and laughing; that in itself is an expression of a need. Later in life, attendance at sport events and comedy also expresses those needs. We suspect that a better understanding of laughter and play in humans would provide a fruitful path to understanding their role in computer networks. Or should it be the reverse?

Would laughter and play be a reflection of aesthetic needs?

Both are certainly heavily involved in various art forms. Both seem to engage the establishment of altered states of consciousness. Thus, both would seem to lay along the spectrum that we label as ecstasy. Both seem to impact the establishment of the trust infrastructure within the individual. For example, in politics it is perhaps more typical to attempt to paint your opponent as a fool through the use of humor than to discuss specific aspects of policy. In other words, try to impact the trust infrastructure, not the policy infrastructure.

Piaget noted that during the various development phases, the emerging human thinks in different ways. Is not the play of the child the likely precursor to the more structured art forms of the adult? Indeed, it would seem that some artistic endeavors of the adult retain the playtime characteristics of the child; e.g. farce in theater, whimsical music (a common characteristic of bluegrass and country music), slapstick comedy and the like.

Here we are. Since Computer Theology investigates the role of aesthetics in both human and computer societies, we're on the path.

Computer Theology explores the relationship of trust and policy infrastructures in the fabric of society.

The Church of St Francis by Oscar Niemeyer sits on the bank of lake of Pampulha in Belo Horizonte, Brazil. Its parabolic shape is matched by the parabolic shape of the pulpit, reflecting inside the church the word of God from outside. The overall form of the church is that of a gentle wave continuing the waves of the lake, with the mosaics of fish extending inside the church, itself opened to the lake, in a transparent allegory. The confessional is folded in another wave, with but one place. Outside, the cross is dwarfed by the overbearing hammer and sickle that grow from the building. Trust and policy in a single place, and the quietness of water.

Susan Savage-Rumbaugh has shown bonobos that read, write, play music, make tools, make fire, and play with masks. Computer Theology shows that computer networks evolve similarly to human societies with religion. The religious bridge between bonobos and religion may or may not yet be built.

Computer Theology uses Maslow's hierarchy of needs to study both human and computer societies. In particular, the hierarchy has aesthetics in its scale. If we consider that aesthetics is a need for difference, then it is the need that nourishes the theory of Paul Krugman, who just got the Nobel prize in Economy. Aesthetics sells French wines in Italy and Italien wines in France. It sells Corona in the US and Budweiser in Mexico. Computer Theology shows how aesthetics feeds trust, and how trust enables policies for governance.

Meditation and Contemplation

Saint Bruno, founder of the Carthusian order almost a thousand years ago, defined the scale bearing his name:


This corresponds to the scale of Computer Theology:

a scale that applies to human as well as digital social orders. Computer Theology spells out each step by comparing the elaboration of religion with that of computer networks. The following quote by a Carthusian monk provides an encompassing description of the religious scale (our translation into English of the original French text):

Contemplation is mainly a matter of the heart, in its progression it differs totally from discursive meditation, where intelligence has the largest part.
Whereas intelligence easily partakes in its own conceptions; vanity is its obstacle as well as its own punishment.
The heart is humbler; it goes with simplicity and without counting, without searching oneself, toward the loved one; et when day and night, as the Carthusian monk does, it nourishes its desires from this divine marrow that the Holy Scriptures contain, and particularly the Psalms, it transforms itself, becomes flame and raises without reasoning towards regions that intelligence ignores; its faith, its adoration, its hopes exhale in a single loving effusion; it is no longer a prayer, it is an ascent, it is burning transports, it is a passionate surge; under the impulsion of the Holy Spirit, it goes once and irresistibly toward God ...

La contemplation est surtout une affaire de coeur, dans sa démarche elle diffère totalement de la méditation discursive, où l'intelligence a la plus large part.
Or l'intelligence se complaît facilement en ses propres conceptions; l'orgueil est son obstacle en même temps que son propre châtiment.
Le coeur est plus humble; il va simplement et sans calcul, sans recherche de soi, au devant le l'être aimé; et quand jour et nuit, comme fait le Chartreux, il nourrit ses désirs de cette moëlle divine que contiennent les Saintes Ecritures, et en particulier les Psaumes, il se transforme, devient flamme et s'élance sans raisonner vers des régions que l'intelligence ignore; sa foi, son adoration, ses espérances s'exhalent dans une seule effusion d'amour; ce n'est plus une prière, c'est une ascension, des transports ardents, des élans passionés; sous l'impultion de l'Esprit Saint, il va d'un coup et irrésistiblement jusqu'à Dieu ...

Dom Jacques Marie Mayaud. Le Chartreux, origines, esprit, vie intime. Imprimerie de Parkminster, Partridge green Sussex 1927. (Quote seen at the museum of the Grande Chartreuse, France, Isère).

Credit Derivatives and Faith

Computer Theology analyzes societies, whether of people or computers, as nested trust and policy infrastructures. Borrowing and lending moneys involve policies that are immediately related to trust. If I don't trust you, you won't get money from me, or, if you get it, the strings attached will be tantamount.

In most circumstances, trust is quantified by the credit rate. The more I trust you'll perform, the better the rate. Otherwise, the rate will be quite high. For example, credit agencies evaluate the borrower, and the rate ensues. But what about credit derivatives? In other life endeavors, a derivative is also a measure of trust.

A derivative measures change. A high derivative predicts lots of change, a zero derivative predicts no change. In other words, the derivative assigns a level of trust as to the future evolution of a phenomenon. When applied to credit, of course, a derivative measures the future evolution of credit. Since credit is trust, a derivative assigns a level of trust to the original trust.

We call speed the derivative of the distance a car runs. A value change in speed multiplies in the value of the distance traced by a car over time. In the same way, a small change in the trust derivative affects considerably the original credit trust. A market change in credit derivatives yields a leveraged effect to the trust associated with the original credit.

So natural market fluctuations may by themselves be sufficient to bring down the original credit trust. There may then be no other culprit than the derivative itself. Trust doesn't easily suffer being second-guessed. Here lies perhaps a formal definition of faith.

Wikipedia Society

Computer Theology is about computer networks becoming hosts to digital societies, either with humans on the network, between computers themselves, or in a mix of people and computers. A society of the first kind is best observed with Wikipedia. For the casual user, Wikipedia is an encyclopedic publication of articles written by volunteers, editing at will each other's writings.

The rationale for the publication is that in due course, some kind of consensus will emerge, perhaps representing some level of "truth". Certainly, the result, at least in terms of volume of information, is spectacular, as evidenced by the high ranking that Wikepedia takes on Google requests. Whether more "truth" is found in Wikipedia that in other knowledge repositories of repute is the subject of on-going debates.

An interesting and hidden part of Wikipedia reveals itself to any author seriously interested in doing more than local modifications to articles. Emerging from the Wikipedia society is an elite organization of about 1600 persons (at this writing) called administrators who function as arbiters as well as purveyors of governance policy within the society. Administrators have superpowers in that they can perform drastic changes, including blanking out sections of, or even deleting entire articles. The rationale for such changes derive from obvious rules like copyright violations, but also from much less obvious ones such as the forbidding of "original research".

Thus, we observe in vitro the evolution of a new social order, where creators and enforcers are yet finding their natural places, selected by their effectiveness in promoting or degrading Wikipedia articles. At the present time, a strong parallel to the Wikipedia society is that of a clergy administered religion where the enforcers have the last word, striving to maintain the creators in the "no original research" box: contribute as you will, as long a nothing original comes of it. The deity? Confucius over Diderot.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Administrators
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Deletion_policy

Memorability of Religious Expressions

Generics and Metaphors Unified - Logic and Rhetoric

   

Computer Theology studies the respective roles of trust and policy, in both human societies and computer networks.

Olympic medals were published August 24th, 2008 in the Austin American-Statesman. The policy was evidently to list medals by ordering first on gold medals.

However, in a possible conflict between trust and policy, the United States were listed first, albeit with less gold medals than China. In the web version, trust and policy concord, in an ordering based on the total number of medals. (24-Aug-08 1:45 pm CST: www.statesman.com/sports/content/sports/other/olympics.html)