I like this quoteJune 6, 2009
"When I see an adult on a bicycle, I do not despair for the future of the human race."H.G. Wells
On the experience of consciousnessMay 24, 2009
Here's my reply to a recent
Slashdot article:
When I read stories like this, I have two reactions.
The first is to be encouraged that people are investigating the experience of consciousness (
qualia), because in my opinion it is probably the most bizarre/amazing thing in the universe, and yet almost completely not understood. (And not studied very much given how amazing it is)
My other reaction is, gosh, we just don't seem to get it. It seems so obvious to me that the experience of consciousness cannot be a result of "software", nor "hardware" -- it cannot be the result of atoms, molecules, and electrons. Isn't that obvious to anyone else? And I'm not even talking about religion, I'm just talking about common sense. But science is so set on explaining everything based on physical observation that it seems to conclude that the experience of consciousness MUST be due to atoms and molecules and electrons, end of story. Again, I'm not advocating for the "spirit" here, I'm just saying that I find it dumbfounding that we're still convinced that something as completely bizarre/unique as this can be due to the physics that we know.
I guess that's why people are interested in exploring any possible connections with quantum mechanics, because if it's not due to classical physics, which it simply cannot be, then it must be due to something else, and quantum mechanics is the only "other" thing under the physics umbrella.
The only physical analogy that makes sense to me, personally, is dimensionality... that in addition to the classic dimensions we're familiar with, there must be additional dimensionality to our reality that allows for the experience of consciousness. That makes some sense, because there is obviously an extremely strong spatial and temporal correlation between our brain and whatever it is that allows us to experience consciousness -- any distance in time or space space completely interrupts consciousness, and that's something that we can observe.
So if there is additional dimensionality that allows us to experience consciousness, is there any way to "observe" that other than the usual way, which is simply to be alive and experience life? I guess to interact with something in a dimension, you need something else that is at the same coordinates in that dimension. For example, to affect something at a current XYZ coordinate in the universe, typically you need something else at that XYZ coordinate. Or to affect something directly at a certain time in history, you need to be at that same time in history. Perhaps this is similar with additional dimensionality to the universe: To observe it or affect it, you need to be at the same "coordinates" in that dimension -- and as far as I know, we don't have any scientific sense of anything in the universe that can observe or affect that dimensionality other than our own brains. So humph, a mystery.
But yeah, I wish people would talk about this more and I wish that our society and government would spend more effort encouraging the study of what, seriously, is the most mysterious, amazing, observable phenomenon in the universe!
Using computers for meal planningNovember 6, 2008
It strikes me that computers and home automation could be used to improve health and give people more free time if they were used for meal planning. Consider the following scenario:
"Grace, make a meal plan for this week."
The computer would have the following information at its disposal:
  | The family recipes, including ingredients lists, and therefore, nutritional value. Each recipe would have a rating to indicate how much it was liked. |
| An inventory of what food was currently in the fridge, freezer, and cupboards. |
| A record of what meals were eaten at home in previous weeks. |
Using this information, a meal plan could be put together that would:
| 1. | Be nutritionally balanced and not deficient in any important area. |
| 2. | Use foods more often that are already in the fridge, freezer, or cupboards. |
| 3. | Use foods more often that are in season, and likewise, foods that could be purchased from local producers. |
| 4. | Use recipes more often that are liked. |
| 5. | Not use recipes that were already used very recently. |
There are a number of variables to optimize, but that's what computers do best: Crunch possibilities and come up with something that is optimum. Since different families would value different things, there could be "sliders" to adjust how important the different criteria were, such as how important it is to use local foods.
Another, related use case would be to ask: "Grace, recommend a recipe for tonight", which would take into account what foods were already in the house to plan a tasty meal, helping to use up foods that would otherwise go bad and reducing unnecessary trips to the grocery store.
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