One of the thought experiments I have done often over the years is to imagine what the world will be like at specific points in the future: 10 years from now, 50 years, 100, 1000, and so on. What inspires me to think along these lines is the knowledge of how much life changed in the western world from 1900 to 2000. At the beginning of the century, when the horse (and buggy) served as the mode of transportation for a majority of people, I seriously doubt that much thought was given to space travel. Also, only the keenest of imaginations might have considered the possibility of air travel, the ability to send images over invisible airwaves into a box later to be called a TV, or the development of a global network we would call the Internet.
But as we know, civilization marches forward at a seemingly exponential rate. Why does it grow so quickly? How do we (as the human race) continue to raise our level of knowledge to greater and greater capacities? Is that capacity infinite?
It is my belief that the advances of the 21st century will dwarf those of the previous one hundred years. The primary reasons are globalization and the Internet, which will lead to one overall factor: the rise in human creativity.
Whatever one thinks about globalization on a moral level, an inescapable outcome is that more and more people on Earth are getting the sorts of high level education that only elites (particularly western European or North American elites) used to receive. As Thomas Friedman makes clear with his "flat world" analogy, the percentage of people earning graduate degrees is skyrocketing in the world's two most populous nations, China and India. Factor in places like Japan, South Korea, Russia, and hopefully someday Latin America, and the overall percentage of the human population with significant knowledge will reach unprecedented levels.
As Friedman points out, the rise of engineers in cheap-labour places like India and China has resulted in an outsourcing of certain types of jobs to those countries. What is left for many in North America and western Europe is whatever they create for themselves -- which is to say that so much intellectual talent in the first world is now devoted to creative processes. People are developing new types of work or designing new methods for building and distributing their products and services. The less interesting work is being handled (so far, happily) by the newly educated in Asia; the West's best hope is to work on new ideas that advance our civilization.
(If the previous paragraph isn't clear, take just one of the examples in Friedman's book The World is Flat. In America, when you take your income taxes to an accountant, there's a very good chance that they are actually being calculated by a person in Mumbai who has been educated in whichever specific state's tax codes you happen to belong to. Meanwhile, the American accountant you are paying to handle your taxes will be engaged in international negotiations to expand his/her business, or finding loopholes to serve you better, etc. All of this is done in lightning fast time because of the Internet, which of course enables nearly real-time business operation on a global scale.)
But what happens after a few decades when all of these highly educated people around the world begin to get bored with the "easy" work? It's simple. They will also turn to the creative side of the ledger. The engineering talent that is coming in the next two-three generations, from all over the world, will devise new systems, machines, computers, and probably other things we haven't thought of yet. Combined with the continued accumulation of information on the Internet thanks to Google, Wikipedia, or some other as-yet invented global repository, one can see that the digital world consciousness will begin to take us places we've never dreamed about. About the only thing that can stop this march is some kind of catastrophe (man-made or natural) that would cut a significant swath of the population from this equation.
So what will the world look like?
In 10-20 years, the World Wide Web will be much more advanced than now, allowing for easier-to-access information (much easier than now), and the ability to communicate with others as if they were in the same room as you (better video conferencing, for example). There will be virtually no barrier to information accumulation or sharing. In education, advances in brain theory and learning style theory (already well developed) will cause an increase in knowledge in the general population. This will push the next wave of human consciousness.
In 50 years, our modes of transportation will be different, but recognizable. I think hydrogen-powered vehicles will become common. Our environment will be better off for our efforts, and maybe we will have turned the tide back on global warming to some extent.
In 100 years, I'm not sure how recognizable our world will be. Perhaps we will all live in eco-sustainable housing. So many jobs will have been invented that we can't predict what our economy will look like. Wars will have taken place, certain cultures will rise and fall. Maybe robots will have become standard members of the family. Our knowledge of science will take great leaps forward to make such achievements possible. Organized religion will be on its deathbed. That's my personal hope, anyway.
And in 1000 years? Your guess is as good as mine.
Friday, August 21, 2009
Wednesday, August 19, 2009
The Best of Richard Feynman
Below are links to some of my favourite Richard Feynman clips on YouTube. Each one usually comes in many parts, so for full value click on the ensuing clips.
Tuesday, August 18, 2009
Quotes I Like
"I don't know anything, but I do know that everything is interesting if you go into it deeply enough."
-- Richard Feynman
"It is dangerous to judge ability by short-term results."
-- Leonard Mlodinow
-- Richard Feynman
"It is dangerous to judge ability by short-term results."
-- Leonard Mlodinow
Thoughts on Intuition
One of the ideas I've thought about a lot of late is the notion of intuition. What is it exactly? What role does it play in our lives? Is it a good thing or not?
The source of my interest in intuition is not just one book or personal experience, but several. It is brought about by a variety of subjects, including physics and mathematics, as well as history and current events. It is a theme that pops up again and again in the books I read, so I figure it is worth exploring.
According to dictionary.com, intuition is the "direct perception of truth, fact, etc., independent of any reasoning process." Also, it is "a keen and quick insight." The "independent of any reasoning process" part is what catches my attention, as this separates the idea of intuition from science.
Of course, intuition does serve a purpose in our day-to-day life. Without it, we would be forced to consider various possibilities we face every day without referring to past experience. For example, if I fail to set my alarm, my intuition may tell me that I'll wake up late and not get to work on time. I don't need to consider every single day whether I should set the alarm. But this is not such an important example of intuition. It is when we make decisions based on probability -- which can also be called incomplete knowledge -- that intuition tends to muddy things up.
In the book The Drunkard's Walk: How Randomness Rules Our Lives, physicist Leonard Mlodinow describes how intuition comes from experience, and the perceived causal connection between events/actions. He notes the research done by scientist Daniel Kahneman, who found that people often make false connections based on intuition. The example was a group of Israeli air force flight instructors who argued that they could change the behaviour of their pilots by yelling at them after they messed up. In the same vein, these instructors usually found that praising the pilots for doing a good job resulted in poorer performance the next flight. Therefore, they logically deduced that praise was a waste of time, while punishment brought about the desired effect.
Kahneman eventually realized that what was happening was a phenomenon called 'regression to the mean' (p.8). Extreme performances (either good or bad) are beyond the norm, and they tend to return to a more average performance in subsequent trials. In other words, there was no cause/effect relationship, but the instructors' intuition told them otherwise. Throughout the 1960's, research found that people's intuition about randomness failed them.
Mlodinow later discussed another phenomenon that tends to support a false trust in intuition, the 'confirmation bias' (p.189). "When we are in the grasp of an illusion... instead of searching for ways to prove our ideas wrong, we usually attempt to prove them correct." He also quotes Francis Bacon: "The human understanding, once it has adopted an opinion, collects any instances that confirm it, and though contrary instances may be more numerous and more weighty, it either does not notice them or else rejects them, in order that this opinion will remain unshaken" (p.189). So, humans have the unmatched ability to ignore facts when they disagree with intuition.
--------------------------
Richard Feynman was possibly the smartest man of the twentieth century. I have only begun to learn about his impact on science through reading the book The Pleasure of Finding Things Out, and through viewing a number of interviews with him on YouTube.
One of his points that really struck me in the above video is how he desired to speak to knowledgeable men, those men who had explored their subject as deeply as possible to the point where they have nothing left but more questions (for nature holds many mysteries). This statement implied that most people don't have complete knowledge upon which to base their conclusions. We think we "know" something when, in fact, we are guessing or assuming the truth of the matter. We are greatly impacted culturally by superstition or so-called common sense. And this is, in part, why intuition tends to confuse us rather than enlighten.
In my own world, I sometimes wonder about history (in the sense of the official story that is taught in schools and taken for granted within a culture at large). How certain should we be about what we think we know? My intuition tells me that what we learn in Canadian history classrooms is what actually happened. I am led to believe that Canadians have fought valiantly in wartime. And yet, I remember talking to an old Korean man one night many years ago in Seoul who had been in the Korean War. He told me that the Canadian soldiers he saw behaved like cowards. This assault on my common knowledge of the Canadian soldier was a major affront to my pride. But what if it were true? Do we tend to get duped by what our cultural myths would have us believe? I believe it is foolish to think otherwise. It is intuitive to believe that which we are constantly told unless we learn to doubt. Question authority, goes the old saying.
Should intuition be ignored? For daily routine, I doubt it matters if we follow intuition. But in matters where people tend to have opposing points of view or a different cultural background, intuition is probably the greatest barrier to seeing the truth. Once we recognize this, we can learn to control our impulse to accept that which we assume.
The source of my interest in intuition is not just one book or personal experience, but several. It is brought about by a variety of subjects, including physics and mathematics, as well as history and current events. It is a theme that pops up again and again in the books I read, so I figure it is worth exploring.
According to dictionary.com, intuition is the "direct perception of truth, fact, etc., independent of any reasoning process." Also, it is "a keen and quick insight." The "independent of any reasoning process" part is what catches my attention, as this separates the idea of intuition from science.
Of course, intuition does serve a purpose in our day-to-day life. Without it, we would be forced to consider various possibilities we face every day without referring to past experience. For example, if I fail to set my alarm, my intuition may tell me that I'll wake up late and not get to work on time. I don't need to consider every single day whether I should set the alarm. But this is not such an important example of intuition. It is when we make decisions based on probability -- which can also be called incomplete knowledge -- that intuition tends to muddy things up.
In the book The Drunkard's Walk: How Randomness Rules Our Lives, physicist Leonard Mlodinow describes how intuition comes from experience, and the perceived causal connection between events/actions. He notes the research done by scientist Daniel Kahneman, who found that people often make false connections based on intuition. The example was a group of Israeli air force flight instructors who argued that they could change the behaviour of their pilots by yelling at them after they messed up. In the same vein, these instructors usually found that praising the pilots for doing a good job resulted in poorer performance the next flight. Therefore, they logically deduced that praise was a waste of time, while punishment brought about the desired effect.
Kahneman eventually realized that what was happening was a phenomenon called 'regression to the mean' (p.8). Extreme performances (either good or bad) are beyond the norm, and they tend to return to a more average performance in subsequent trials. In other words, there was no cause/effect relationship, but the instructors' intuition told them otherwise. Throughout the 1960's, research found that people's intuition about randomness failed them.
Mlodinow later discussed another phenomenon that tends to support a false trust in intuition, the 'confirmation bias' (p.189). "When we are in the grasp of an illusion... instead of searching for ways to prove our ideas wrong, we usually attempt to prove them correct." He also quotes Francis Bacon: "The human understanding, once it has adopted an opinion, collects any instances that confirm it, and though contrary instances may be more numerous and more weighty, it either does not notice them or else rejects them, in order that this opinion will remain unshaken" (p.189). So, humans have the unmatched ability to ignore facts when they disagree with intuition.
--------------------------
Richard Feynman was possibly the smartest man of the twentieth century. I have only begun to learn about his impact on science through reading the book The Pleasure of Finding Things Out, and through viewing a number of interviews with him on YouTube.
One of his points that really struck me in the above video is how he desired to speak to knowledgeable men, those men who had explored their subject as deeply as possible to the point where they have nothing left but more questions (for nature holds many mysteries). This statement implied that most people don't have complete knowledge upon which to base their conclusions. We think we "know" something when, in fact, we are guessing or assuming the truth of the matter. We are greatly impacted culturally by superstition or so-called common sense. And this is, in part, why intuition tends to confuse us rather than enlighten.
In my own world, I sometimes wonder about history (in the sense of the official story that is taught in schools and taken for granted within a culture at large). How certain should we be about what we think we know? My intuition tells me that what we learn in Canadian history classrooms is what actually happened. I am led to believe that Canadians have fought valiantly in wartime. And yet, I remember talking to an old Korean man one night many years ago in Seoul who had been in the Korean War. He told me that the Canadian soldiers he saw behaved like cowards. This assault on my common knowledge of the Canadian soldier was a major affront to my pride. But what if it were true? Do we tend to get duped by what our cultural myths would have us believe? I believe it is foolish to think otherwise. It is intuitive to believe that which we are constantly told unless we learn to doubt. Question authority, goes the old saying.
Should intuition be ignored? For daily routine, I doubt it matters if we follow intuition. But in matters where people tend to have opposing points of view or a different cultural background, intuition is probably the greatest barrier to seeing the truth. Once we recognize this, we can learn to control our impulse to accept that which we assume.
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