neocortices vs genes

A spider will spin a web, a caterpillar will create her own cocoon, and a beaver will build a dam, even if no contemporary ever showed them how to accomplish these complex tasks... The evolution of animal behaviour does constitute a learning process, but it is learning by the species, not by the individual, and the fruits of this learning process are encoded in DNA. To appreciate the significance of the evolution of the neocortex, consider that it greatly sped up the process of learning from thousands of years to months (or less)...

There are on the order of a quadrillion connections in the neocortex, yet only about 25 million bytes of design information in the genome (after lossless compression), so the connections themselves cannot possibly be predetermined genetically... The connections between modules are created on the whole from experience (nurture rather than nature).

- How to Create a Mind (Raymond Kurzweil)

Development of neocortex was in some sense inevitable. As evolution created more complexity over time, the ecosystem became harder to navigate and its participants needed a more versatile and quicker way of absorbing greater quantities of information.

Genes are slow and one dimensional, while the brand new neocortices are lightening fast and three dimensional. The downside is that what is learned through a neocortex has much lower chances of being faithfully transferred to the next generation. Cultural mechanisms are limited and nowhere near as accurate as the biological ones. 

Note that this intergenerational transferability issue is what is responsible for the much deeper computational complexity of genetic learning. While we could basically reverse-engineer the neocortex through hierarchical hidden Markov models, we still can not even define what it means to be a single gene. Usually later technologies are harder to reverse-engineer, but it has not been the case here since neocortices and genes do not replace one another but are built on top of one another.

Keep in mind that Kurzweil is probably significantly underestimating the genomic information density:

1. Firstly, he does not take into account context dependency. Same code fragments can assume entirely different meanings in different contexts. (This is part of the reason why we still can not define what it means to be a single gene.) In other words, some of the information is sourced from the environment.

2. Secondly, the extremely complex relationship between the code and the environment has a sequentially nested character. Decoding alters the environment and this change in the environment sets off a new chain reaction of decoding and so on. In other words, the code works on itself through the environment. This loopiness implies that the apparent one dimensionality is deceptive. Once we factor in the time dimension, genome too looks like a connectome. (Nodes are the set of all subsets of the genome.) In fact, most of the complexity comes from the network of interactions, not the nodes. (Wheat has nearly 100K genes while we have 20-25K genes. Guess who is more complex.)

pursuing beauty and strength

You want to create beautiful things?

Do not become an artist. That is the easy way out. Work inside the intersections. Beauty intersected with science is just mathematics and beauty intersected with business is just design. Hit two birds with one stone. Pave the way for science and business breakthroughs while also training your artistic muscles.

You want to train your physical muscles?

Do not go to a gym. That is the stupid way out. Go learn a dancing or a fighting skill. Why just lift weights or run on a stupid treadmill? Carry watermelons, help out your local grocery. Even that is smarter.

etiklik ve çözünürlük

Etiklik bir çözünürlük meselesidir, bu çözünürlüğün dağılımındaki eşitsizlik diğer tüm eşitsizliklerin anasıdır.

Çözünürlüğü düşük olanların etik gördüğü davranış kümesi daha geniştir. Güç ve benzeri şeyler çözünürlük düşürür.

Çözünürlüğü düşük olanlar başkalarını sürekli kırarlar, kendileri ise hiç kırılmazlar. Yüksek olanlar ise başkalarını hiç kırmazlar, kendileri ise sürekli kırılırlar.

Bir insanı sadece iyi prensiplere sahip olmak iyi yapmaz, çünkü çözünürlüğü düşük olan kişi prensipleriyle ne zaman çeliştiğini fark edemez. Bu yüzden iyi insanlar genelde iyi doğar. Kötünün sonradan iyi olması çok nadir görünen bir şeydir. Çözünürlük hassasiyet gerektirir ve hassasiyet ya çok erken yaşta öğrenilir ya da genetiktir.

infinity, randomness and insanity

There are 2 things that will impair your mind and eventually drive you insane:

Infinity: A novice math student is literally playing with infinity since the subject matter is so vast. To maintain his sanity, he must either have strong internal aesthetic guidance or a good external advisor. 

Randomness: A businessman or a trader in a well established market with extreme competition is playing with randomness since all sources of possible profits now have unpredictable origins like political unknown unknowns, global demand imbalances, interest rate and exchange rate fluctuations etc. (i.e. There is no more space for innovation or value creation.) 

politics and evil

Politics is messed up, not because we are a messed up species, but because we have created messed up incentive structures. I sincerely believe that no one is born evil, it is the systems that make people behave in evil ways.

When the economy is doing well and increased prosperity is felt by everyone, it is very challenging for young and ambitious leaders to enter into politics. Even Adolph Hitler would not have made it if it were not for the Great Depression. 

Opposition parties are incentivised to look out for problems and causes around which to mobilise people. Good ones make up imaginary, outside enemies from scratch. Bad ones hit the already existing, domestic societal fault lines by playing with religious, ethnic and cultural heterogeneities. Ugly ones create entirely new, domestic social fault lines through provocative activities.

empathy and truth

Empathy is a collective coping mechanism invented by the poor and powerless. Hence the reason why feeling powerful is inversely correlated with being able to empathise. 

But empathy does not only bind us together, it also acts as a gateway to truth. Hence the reason why powerful people slowly lose touch with reality.

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Being able to imagine what an electron does requires you to literally put yourself in its shoes. It also requires you to listen to what others felt when they put themselves in its shoes.

If excelling at your profession requires getting closer to truth, stay away from powerful people and their ego boosting contexts. Today's best artists, scientists, entrepreneurs and investors are not writing books or giving TED Talks. They remain outside mainstream and are mostly unheard of. In fact, once they gain attention, praises and prizes, they almost immediately lose their cutting-edge status.

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It is no coincidence that empathy is a trait shared by all child prodigies:

Most intriguing of all, perhaps, is the consistent finding that prodigies share an outsize empathy: a finely tuned sensitivity to the feelings of others as well as the overwhelming desire to do good. One prodigy’s mom reflects that her son “just felt more from the time he was born. He just had so much emotion and feeling inside of him.” At age 2, another prodigy wept uncontrollably when he heard his father playing Rossini’s Stabat Mater Dolorosa. He later stated that he’d felt connected to each note of music he heard and “knew that music was an expression of his soul.”

- The Link Between Complicated Pregnancies and Child Prodigies (Michael Jawer)

It is also no coincidence that Dostoevsky felt greater mental freedom every time he gambled away his entire savings.

başarının tanımı

Çınar: Warren Buffet'a soruyorlar, "Başarılı insan kimdir?" diye. "Yaşlanınca sizi sevmesini istediğiniz insanlar sizi seviyorsa tamamdır." diyor.

Tarık: Yani Buffet'a göre çok başarılı kamyon şöförlerimiz de mi var? Peki neden onlara hiç bir dergi yer vermiyor? Başarı toplumsal bir olgu, popüler medya organları da toplumun birer aynası. Dolayısıyla Buffet'ın ne cevap verdiğinin aslında hiç bir önemi yok, sorunun bir kamyon şöförüne değil ona yöneltilmiş olması zaten toplumun bu konudaki fikrini açıkça dile getiriyor.

hazların ayrıştırılması sanatı

Keyifler irdelemeye değer şeylerdir. Tam olarak neden keyif aldığınızı kestirebilirseniz, işin özüne inmeniz ve daha fazla zevk almanız kolaylaşır.

Mesela geçenlerde çay içmekten aldığım hazzın yüzde doksanını ince belli bardaktan sıcak su içerken de aldığımı farkettim. Olağanüstü değil mi? Hem boşuna çaya ekstra para veriyormuşum, hem de "Bugün çok kafein aldım, daha fazla içmeyeyim." gibi yapay sebeplerle boşuna kendimi sınırlıyormuşum.