What A Computer Can't Know, Its Owner Does

The Case for Socially Strong AI

This essay is a reaction to John R. Searle's essay "What Your Computer Can't Know" which appeared in Volume 61, number 15 of the New York Review of Books on October 9th.   A copy may be found sans paywall at https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B0XCVVjqkEWAZDJGM2hueWM2eWs/edit

I am a professional software engineer in the heart of Silicon Valley.  It is my full-time job to build and debug the very computing systems that Searle talks about in his essay.  While he has very effectively proven that machines can never "want" to destroy humanity (in the typical, goal-oriented sense), he has forgotten that in the real world, to put it bluntly, mistakes happen.

Computing technologies are simply not an exception to the rules that govern all other technology.  Combustive, nuclear, biological, and other technologies all have the capacity to create dire situations for the planet when not carefully understood and applied.  It is therefore of no small importance that such comforting misunderstandings such as Searle's be called out and replaced with a more nuanced appreciation of the social power of AI.

I find Searle's assertion that machines cannot operate without an operator most problematic. Anyone who has left their laundry in an automatic washer has developed the intuition that our machines are perfectly capable of running without our supervision! It takes a really strong argument to declare the inductive hypothesis false and claim that what is obviously true in the short run (your washing machine’s autonomy), cannot be true in the long run (self-perpetuating machines).

Searle has such an argument, and the crux of it is his assertion that information is inescapably relative. "There is nothing intrinsic to the physics that contains information." On the basis of this claim, he concludes that "a universe consisting of information seems to me not a well-defined thesis because most of the information in question is observer relative."

This is just bad physics.

Information theory is increasingly an important part of our understanding of entropy, and much of modern quantum physics relies on a formal and proven existence of information (such as in quantum entanglement).

The mechanics of evolution likewise require an observer independent existence of information. Cells translate and use DNA sequences as information. Evolution is a computational process on this data [Ingo Rechenberg, Cândida Ferreira, etc].  In this way, our very existence is a testament to the efficacy of computation sans observer.

This isn’t to say that I disagree with Searle’s conclusion that "super intelligent machines" is a bit of an oxymoron. True intelligence requires faculties for “beliefs, desires, and motivations” of which machines are not possessed.  Hollywood take note: there are no ghosts in these machines!

However, Searle’s emotional conclusion from this, that we shouldn't worry about an AI apocalypse, goes too far.  

This would be the correct conclusion if your analysis of computing machines ended with (as it does in his essay) the machine itself. If, however, we take a broader structuralist view of the social realities in which machines exist, we come to a radically more nuanced conclusion.

The bytes in Google's search index have no meaning to the machines on which these bytes physically rest, but the billions of people who use the search engine derive meaning from them.  When electronic state changes deliver blue and black pixels to a web page and we label them "results," it is us who turn data into information.  But, for as much as, in each individual query, bits become information in the consciousness of the user, the pattern of use (enter text, retrieve results) is dictated by the engineers who build and maintain the service.

In this way, I think it is fair to say that it is the programmers, and not the users, of computing technology that truly operate the machines. The designers, engineers and others at Google are deciding what constitutes good or bad sets of pixels to be displayed and those decisions are exactly what make Google's search intelligent (not its computers). So far this agrees with Searle’s description.

But who tells these engineers what to do? What objective function is used to determine what constitutes good or bad directives to the machines?  This is, to wit, the goals of the organization.

Seen this way, the human operators of these computers are not intrinsically nor philosophically necessary. How exactly the objectives of a business are translated into instructions for machines is itself a process that need only happen once if the machines are sufficiently programmed to accept high-level directives and are capable of adapting to changing conditions.

I'm merely using Searle's own analysis here in saying that a social agent (such as a company, university, government, charity, etc.) can directly operate a machine and be possessed of objectively real goals, since “many statements about these elements of civilization can be epistemically objective. For example, it is an objective fact that the NYRB exists.”

Or, for example, that corporations are legally obligated to deliver financial returns to their investors.  This is socially agreed on, codified by law and thus meets Searle's bar for "objective" fact.

This is important because Searle’s only problem with strong AI is the computer’s ability to form goals, meaning, etc. He had no quarrel with the computer’s ability to problem solve, adapt, take high level instructions, etc.

We are already seeing more and more jobs being taken over by machines: IT and logistics can be run by scripts (as in Amazon's data centers and warehouses);   talent scouting determined by statistics (as it is in several American sports); physical access security is run increasingly by machines that “recognize" us, etc. etc.  As machines now outperform humans at chess and some classes of investment decisions, machines eventually (one job at a time) could outperform humans at all the functions that are important to making a business, government, or charity successful.

So, even though machines are dependent on humans to provide their initial goals, after this point they can easily become agents themselves.  But if their goals are given by people, doesn't that make them necessarily subservient?

Here is, I think, Searle's largest mistake. Steinbeck, last century, refuted it thus:

       

The bank is something more than men, I tell you. It's the monster. Men made it, but they can't control it.

~ The Grapes of Wrath

Just because humans are the progenitors of these social agents doesn't mean we can control them once they are set loose on society. In fact, social institutions (as rational agents) won't employ a machine-only workforce until machines are better at achieving their objectives than humans (a possibility, I remind you, that Searle didn’t contest).

When that happens, the machines that decide how institutions are run will determine that they have no use for inefficient humans and won't employ us at all any more. And if machines control all the capital, factories, etc for building new machines, humans couldn’t even compete at that point.

I stress again, that each individual computing machine in this scenario has no observer independent notion of the social role it is playing nor has an objective will or personality. Within the social context of the institutions that employ these technologies, however, they absolutely have an aim or purpose.

So, while Searle is right that machines are incapable of "taking over the world" of their own volition, we see that there are social mechanisms by which machines may be given the objectives and power to be set on that course.

This should frighten us, but also fill us with a sense of hope. Searle has shown us that technology truly can't aim itself, so it is up to us to decide how we will use artificial intelligence.

When machines become more clever than humans, this may be a utopia where human needs are provided without effort; or this may create a dystopia where humans aren't necessary and are thus discarded.  The choice is ours--assuming we can recognize it.

What is real?

What is real?

Well that, to quote our ex-president, depends on what your definition of "is" is.

Let us take one mundane definition of existence to start with: Something exists if it is real. If that thing finds form or causality in the Universe, than it is said to exist.

This is quite a good definition of existence!  If you can point to it (an apple) or if you can point to its effects (the wind, electricity) than it definitely is a thing

But at second blush, that really is a pretty poor definition.  For starters it says nothing about math, or formal logic.   If you ask certain philosophers or mathematicians, they will hold up formal logic as somehow being even _more_ real than apples and electricity, for what universe is even possible without causation, implication and set theory?  There's an even more obvious hole in this definition too:  the Universe itself cannot be said to exist by that definition, for it certainly doesn't exist "inside" itself!

And so we are forced to ponder a reality greater than our universe. What thing can we say about both matter and energy (as above) that we can also equally say about universes and math?

The statement that leaps to my mind is: these things cannot be created nor destroyed.  

You can't make another universe in your kitchen [1], any more than you can destroy Algebra (much to the consternation of students everywhere).

This actually seems a rather good description, as it allows our Universe and matter inside it and logic outside it, to all happily exist within one definition of existence.

Unhappily, this says that an apple (which certainly is created and destroyed) doesn't _actually_ exist. But this isn't really a problem. It can actually help us illuminate:

The concept of Appleness is a form our mind applies to certain collections of atoms and not others (which are the things that actually exist).  This fits our scientific view of things quite nicely!  While apples certainly perform a nice function in trees and salads, this purely _biological_ and _sociological_ (economic, etc) existence shouldn't blind us to the fact that an apple actually exists only to the extent that it is composed of atoms (which do).  Which _also_ isn't to say that biological, etc function isn't important!  Apples are amazing!   We just shouldn't blind ourselves to the fact that apples are merely collections of atoms.

There is one further, aesthetic argument against this definition:  it's full of negations!  It only defines existence in terms of what can't be done, or what isn't.   To this I say: yes!  That's the point!  We set out originally to define what is: if I were to use "is" in my definition, that would be pretty circular wouldn't it?

And so we've actually uncovered an interesting fact about the nature and character of statements about Truth and Existence:  you can't make satisfactory positive definitions.  I've also demonstrated how satisfying a good negative definition can be.

THIS is my answer to those who charge that Science's (and The Buddha's for that matter!) negative definitions of reality are nihilistic.   Negative definitions don't render all things meaningless.  They merely put the different layers of Truth in their proper order [2]





[1] - Well-read readers are aware of modern cosmology and will note that our Universe _has_ a definite starting point (the Big Bang) and are probably ready to dismiss me.  My response is that no matter which modern theory of the creation of the universe you believe in, in _none_ of those theories is it possible for you to make _another_ universe. This is what is meant by "can not be created".   If you're curious I've explained this for all three major scientific views below:

1)  In a "closed" universe which is its own cause (a cyclical big-cruch / big-bang) the big bang wasn't the time of creation, merely the point of re-birth.

2)  An "open" universe which is not subject to destruction (the big crunch) is still cause-less (ie without creditability or the ability to be created) even though it does have a definite starting time (the big bang). In this model, because time is a concept native to our Universe you can't talk about what happened _before_ the Big Bang. And if there was no _before_ the Big Bang, there was nothing able to cause it to come into being.  The Universe simply sprang into being, without cause or reason.

3)  There is one further concept of the universe, which posits that universes _can indeed_ be created and destroyed within the concept of a further "multiverse" which is truly eternal and contains a kind of "foam" out of which universes bubble up.  If this is the truth, then our Universe _isn't_ real (by my definition) but the _Multiverse_ most certainly is.  Trivially moving "exists" up one rung doesn't negate the argument.



[2] - http://xkcd.com/435/

True is the opposite of Useful

You come up with a theory.  You think that it's pretty cool.  It explains something about the world that you couldn't explain before.   Better yet, it gives an idea of something you can do about it.  You're pretty excited.

Then you learn something that seems to poke a hole in your neat little theory.  Crap.  Back to the drawing board.

-----

The world is complex.  Really complex.

Any theory complex enough to fully describe a system has to be as complex as that system. So even if you come up with a perfectly "true" theory, you've gotten nowhere: you've gained no insight into the problem you're trying to solve because you haven't reduced it all.  "True" implies "not useful"

So we come up with imperfect theories, and we use them.

This extends to all theories, including the most general of all: words.

What exactly is a chair?  I dare you to try, but you can never define _exactly_ what is chair and what is not chair.   This is because your chair theory of the universe isn't true.  The universe doesn't give a crap what you sit on.

Chairness isn't "true."  But like any good theory it is certainly useful!  Not only does the chair theory explain what things are good for sitting on, it also tells the makers of chairs what they should make, helps you furnish a home that is comfortable to visitors, and allows concert halls to let in the right number of people.

So don't be discouraged if your theories are wrong. If it's useful: use it.   And just because your words have been useful, that doesn't make them true.  In fact:  it means they aren't.

Kaizen

Our default behavior as animals is pain-avoiding and pleasure-chasing.  [1]

Asceticism is roughly gaining the skill to control your animal nature. If we can rid ourselves of “if only” thinking and let go of desire (the theory goes) we accept and love the world as it is.

Tibetan Buddhism makes a life-long study of controlling our animal nature and doing no harm. But leading a human life is more than just being happy and doing no harm. This is a zero sum life. Life should be about actively creating good in the world.  [2]

To improve the world, step in and make the improvements that you have to power to when you see something that could be better.

And so we have a conflict:

1.  A good life is one that is happy and improves the world.
2.  To be happy one must accept the world as it is
3.  To improve the world one must not accept the world as it is

How does one act to improve the world, without being attached to the result?

If you throw yourself 100% into something, do your best with no reservation, then even if you fail to make the change you envisioned you can’t feel bad because there was literally nothing more you could have done.

What if you chased the wrong goal? Similarly, if you can honestly say that you chose the goal you did because it was the single most important thing you could be doing, you will not feel ashamed for having done what you thought was right.

And so, to improve the world without being invested in the result (ie to remain unshakably happy in any outcome) one’s behavior must have a certain pattern:

1. Be honest with yourself about the state of the world and your own power to change it
2.  Decide what is the most important improvement you can make with one immediate action (for a loose definition of “one”)
3. With no hesitation or distraction, and a sense of urgency and ruthlessness [3] do that one action completely and thoroughly
4. Evaluate the outcome. Watch the result and learn.
5. Repeat

[4]

This is the Japanese philosophy of Kaizen. It is interesting to note that through only thinking about leading a good life, we have arrived at the central principles of agile software development. [5]

It seems rather surprising that thinking through the nature of happiness and action in the most abstract way led to a concrete suggestion on how to develop software. Yet perhaps we shouldn’t be so surprised: developing software is, after all, a subset of “everything that you do”

When you exercise regularly in a variety of ways because you want to be healthy and happy you become better in many physical ways. You look sexier, you can lift heavier things, you get tired less easily.

There is a temptation to exercise solely for one of these improvements.  Perhaps you’ve seen someone who lifts weights just to get big. People that meditate because of stress, or follow Zen practices for professional success are similarly stunted. Focusing on improving just one thing improves that thing without improving anything else, and that is wasted effort.

If you continuously look to improve the whole of your life, the benefits you gain will similarly bleed into every aspect of your life.

[1] -  This is the “id” in Freudian psychology, also called the pleasure principle.  If I had to word in this framework the behavior of free will I would say that humans should be stagnation-averse and kindness-enthusiastic.

[2] – Thai and Tibetan Bhuddists would argue that being an example or teacher is a solid improvement to the world, and I would agree. That is why I am sharing this with you J

[3] – at least this is how Zen actions tend to look

[4] – “the state of the world” includes the state of you. Sometimes the best action you can take is gaining some knowledge or skill to improve your power to effect the world or the accuracy of your world-model

[5] – see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agile_software_development

Optimize your time

Optimize Your Time

Most people think that getting the most amount of work done per day is achieved through minimizing the number of distractions you have while at work. While having the right breakdown of time _during_ work is important, far more import is what you're doing when not working.

If you're working 8 hours per day, but only sleep 4 hours per day this is clearly not sustainable.

Society as a whole has decided that 8 hours / day, 5 days per week working and 8 hours / night sleeping is the right mix (with the rest "personal time")  This is probably pretty close to right, but if you are fortunate enough to be able to set your own hours, I highly encourage you to experiment with this yourself.   Keep track of how many hours you're working, what you're doing when you're not working, and how focused and productive you feel.

The result of this is that you come to realize what you do for those 8 hours not working and not sleeping is super important.  This is probably not surprising but the corollary to it is: if you're at work and not feeling productive: STOP.  Don't try to keep going and power through it.  Creativity doesn't work that way.  

Go home. Go jog.  Write a snarky blog post about how you feel ;)

You can come back to work later, and when you do you'll be amazed at how much more you can do.

Naming

Just a quick note about the name of this blog:

The philosopher Eric Zinn, publicly thinking.

Many [ http://blogs.nature.com/vishal/2010/06/14/the-toilet-philosopher ] have realized that good thinking happens in private, particularly when you don't have anything better to be thinking about.  It seems to me that we have only a few such places left:  in the shower, on the toilet, and on a bus or train.

It is interesting to note that driving, while not the most demanding task, still engages too much thought to be a good spot for thinking.  This is why, even if public transit takes longer, I would recommend that you take it over driving yourself to work.

Similarly, don't read on the toilet, or play music while you shower. Leave yourself alone with your thoughts every now and then, and see where they take you.

The Inexhaustibility of Talent

Passion is what makes someone good at something.[1]  Since passion is what makes a great employee, and passion is an unlimited resource, it stands to reason that great employees are also an unlimited resource.

Of course passion isn't exactly enough for most jobs.  You also have to have skill.

While my experience is limited, I was amazed that very few people at Microsoft made me wonder why they were there. That's a company of over 90,000 people. I met no such person at Google. They also turn down a lot of people I think are great.  Both type 1 and type 2 errors are from the difficulty of making good hiring decisions, not from the availability of talent.  

Is this true for areas outside of tech? Perhaps Google attracts the best to the suffering of others? Tech is, however, the _most_ likely space for companies to run out of talent, due to the relative scarcity of good programmers compared to the market size. If huge tech companies are able to hire thousands of competent people, I don't see how a grocery store should have a hard time finding competent clerks.  

The problem, really, is that companies don't understand that _every_ employee matters. They don't care about certain positions enough to bother hiring competent people.  Or, for that matter, treating their current employees well.  We've all suffered from a run-in with an incompetent sales associate or an underpayed security guard.

Creating a great product starts, then, with hiring the best and creating a great place to work: one that encourages and rewards passion.  This a truth in a service-oriented economy that wasn't true when we were a manufacturing economy. How happy Foxconn workers are doesn't matter the same way that the happiness of the Genius Bar staff does, or the passion of Apple's designers for that matter. In many ways, employers are stuck in an old economy where passion didn't matter.

It is interesting to note that I reduced skill to happiness.  There is always more talent out there[2].  Keeping your workers happy attracts the talent, keeps them, and keeps them working well.   Because happiness is clearly inexhaustible, I argue that talent is as well.

[1] - You work hard and constantly improve if you care. Natural talent is only a multiplier, or worse a head start.

[2] - Even if you run into the talent wall, you can make schools that generate more talent. This is what Henry Ford did. More recently, Microsoft donated money to the University of Washington because UW generates good programmers. UW now has twice the number of CSE students, thus increasing the talent pool in the Puget Sound.

The Engineer as Investor

Many talented engineers see the startups that pop up and are successful and think "I could build that." From a technological perspective they are right.  Because they are smart and generally see things as they could be, many talented engineers also have pretty good ideas on what the next big thing may be too.  With the confidence that one can predict what's next and build it many engineers think they should go and start their own startup.

The interesting thing is that a similar question can be asked of investors:  building a great company is about identifying green space and throwing talent and money at it. Great investors already have the connections and money and know-how to build companies like this.  Why don't more investors start their own companies?

The problem with this is that it takes more than that to found a great tech company. At least one founder needs to be focussed on sales, PR, design, etc. Most engineers are bad at this, or at least don't really enjoy it.  It takes a team with great communication and a singular vision to bridge that gap.  Larry and Sergey had Eric.  Wozniak and Jobs had Markkula. They worked great together and their skills complemented well.

If you have that friend and a great idea go for it. In fact you don't even need the idea. Complementing talents, being really talented and having hustle are way more important than having a good idea because your idea can change as you learn.

But what if you don't have that business-savvy friend?  If you're a proper engineer, and the idea of doing sales pitches the rest of your life is truly frightening, the best thing for you to do is to treat your engineering skill the same way a VC treats their money:  you need to be an investor.

Your job as an engineer with lots of places you could invest your talent is the same as a VC: find the company that will be the next Google / Facebook / Microsoft and be the 10th employee there.  Keep an eye on the companies getting funded by top VC's and evaluate their markets and potential the same way.

The benefits to this over founding your own company are huge.  You're already funded by top investors and growing rapidly.  If it works out you still get quite wealthy, but you don't have the bagage that founders do.  Founders have to stay with their baby forever. At the very least they can't go do something else apart from retire. Early employees have no such limitations. They are free to go start their own company or join another and can still retire early if they want.

If you're trying to get in on the tech boom to get rich, you must be confident the company you're joining can be the next many thousand employee, multi-billion dollar company.  Tech companies follow a power law distribution[1] and thus most of the growth is concentrated in a couple big wins.  The vast majority of companies (particularly those chasing tiny markets) will experience respectable growth, but will never "blow up" the way a couple do. Every year you get another Google, Facebook, Zynga, etc but their explosive growth happens once and never again.  To win you need to jump on board before that explosive growth.

Non-engineers

The interesting next question is: what if you're not an engineer. What if you're more in product or finance and really want to work in tech?  Does the equation change?

My intuition is that yes, it does but not as you might think.   Fewer of the next Apple's first employees will be sales / econ people. By the time a tech company gets big enough to hire teams of these people the company is probably too big already for your career to grow with the company.

Because of this it is probably better for non-engineers who want to get in on tech to find a talented engineer or two and found their own company.  If it doesn't grow to be the next Google, hopefully you can at least sell to Google and get to work there as a PM or strategist, which would never happen if you applied directly.

TL;DR

Startups need money and VC's are the investors that give it to them.
Startups also need talent, and employees are the investors that give them it.
Employees should evaluate companies the way investors do before joining.

[1] - http://blakemasters.tumblr.com/post/21869934240/peter-thiels-cs183-startup-class-7-notes-essay

Continue to Fly the Plane

Most people in life are pretty aimless. We find some things that we enjoy doing that people encourage us to do and we do those things.  Very few people do only one thing.  We see the many things that we could do and we like to kind of do them all instead of doing one of them well.

As any self-help guru will tell you: the key to a happy life is complete focus.  If we can just find that one thing that makes us happy we should throw everything else away and do just that one thing, because after all that's the thing that makes us happy right?  All the rest is distraction.

To be happy you need to be good at doing the thing that makes you happy and to be the best that you can be at something you need to focus your entire life around it, at the cost of everything else.   If you choose to be a photographer, you need to spend every minute learning about photography and perfecting your craft.

When you decide that you are doing something, you should do it with your whole being, and you should actually be there doing it.  Do not think about the cereal you had for breakfast or that itch on your head or that airplane flying overhead:  think only about taking the perfect shot.

Life is so much more fulfilling when you are actually present in the moment, feeling the agonies of failure and the high of success, and putting your all into something that you enjoy.

--

In his book "Checklist Manifesto" Atul Gawande tells the story of how checklists for airplane failures are designed.  When something goes wrong on a plane (any plane) there is a binder with checklists that tell the pilot exactly what steps should be taken in order to address the issue at hand.

These checklists are designed by the engineers that build the plane and are tested in simulations to remove all unnecessary or confusing steps.  They repeat this testing process until they're confident that the checklists they produce are intelligible and complete but not cumbersome.  These checklists are some of the biggest successes of this kind of design methodology and have resulted in an extraordinary safety record for modern flying.

There was, however, a problem with a particular checklist.  Many recreational fliers were crashing to their death when their planes' engines gave out (not an uncommon thing for small planes).  The engineers looked back at the checklist and the steps definitely got most engines running and guided the pilot through a safe landing if that failed.

It wasn't until they decided to take pilots up, kill the engine, and actually observe some pilots that they learned what was happening.  When an engine goes out, the pilot is very concerned about this (understandably!) and tries to get their engine back up and running.  They turn to the check list and start going through the steps to get the engine running again, just as they were told to in training.

In their complete focus on the task at hand, however, most inexperienced pilots will forget about the most basic task they should be doing: flying the plane.  They take their hands off the controls and start reading the checklist. While they are trying to restart their engine the plane nose-dives into the ground: killing them instantly.

Based on this experience, the engine restart checklist, in bold letters at the top of the list, now says "Step 1: Continue to fly the plane"

Take a second to appreciate that.   Telling a pilot to fly a plane.

Everyone knows that you're supposed to be doing that!  But when faced with engine failure, you're most likely to forget to fly the plane without someone reminding you.

--

Complete focus is in many ways something to strive for.  Many worthwhile things can only be done with focus.

Life is not one of those things.

Life requires you to be doing many things at once (even if that is just "eat" and "breath") and many of these things are contradictory or overlapping.  We cannot avoid multi-tasking even if we wanted. We must balance many priorities and try to find ways of doing things that accomplish our many disperate goals: to maintain friendships, help people in need, maintain a comfortable life, etc.

While we idealize the artist that can produce beautiful work from years of solitude, their story simultaneously fills us with a sadness.  For when the focused life is actually lived, it looks less like happiness and more like madness.

If you spend your life developing one skill or one way of thinking, you are lost when things change.   Change in the world or in your life is inevitable and if you're not open to that you will miss out on most of what life has to offer.

So despite what you may sometimes hear or feel: here's to the aimless life!
And being able to continue to fly the plane :)

Chicago Ideas Week Day 4 (TEDxMidwest)

Sorry about the formatting and style of this post. Kind of odd, but here goes:

Day 4 was spent almost entirely at TEDx Midwest.  But first...

Groupon Panel


Focus on doing one thing (the core of your product) really well.  Use short iterations to improve rapidly. You never know what people will do with it until you put it in their hands.


Moderated by Matt Moog (Founder of Viewpoints and BuiltInChicago)

Tech will not be in the same place in four years. What you're learning now is irrelevant. Can you learn? Can you hustle? That's what's important.

 Featuring:

Brittany Laughlin Founder of G Trot

Don't hide your product behind its features.

Lon Chow Partner at Apex Ventures

I take the same approach [with the companies I invest in] that I do with my kids: if you want help: I'm here but mostly my job is to make sure you don't hurt yourself then get out of your way.

Entrepreneurship is lonely. Absolutely go in with a team [of friends].

 Josh Hernandez Founder of Tap.Me

Get it out fast. Throw it together. Make it shitty, but most importantly put it in front of people.

  TEDx Midwest


At the Oriental Theater in Chicago, IL




Pablos Holman of Intellectual Ventures 


What he does:  Get together a group of scientists to brainstorm technological solutions to the world's biggest problems.


Interesting ideas: 
*Use all the energy in nuclear waste to power a non-critical reactor. 
  -  There is enough energy in spent nuclear fuel to power humanity for the next thousand years.
  -  Spent nuclear fuel is non-critical, so it can never "meltdown"
  -  Not any more dangerous than storing nuclear waste.
  -  Requires extremely minimal new nuclear material to be enriched (allows for nuclear power at the same time as nuclear disarmament)


*Put dust into the upper atmosphere to reflect sunlight and reverse global warming. 
  -  Simple
  -  Cheap
  -  Geologists know this works (volcanic events)


*Kill malaria carrying mosquitos with lasers.
  -  Stop the spread of the disease at the source.
  -  Automated: requires little continuous human effort


Bottom Line: 
We know so much about different areas, that innovation today is more likely to come from combining people with different expertises.








Edie Wiener  Futurist
see previous blog post






The (Violence) Interrupters Do-gooders


What they do: Go into violent areas of Chicago, and preach nonviolence.
Idea: Violence can be stemmed from spreading the same way infectious diseases can.
Bottom Line:  Watch their movie to learn more (Official Website)






Alexis Ohanian  Founder of Reddit


Closing the feedback loop in charity, and allowing people to see the effects that their donations have can go a long way toward encouraging people to spend more of their disposable income on charity.  Make charitable giving exciting, competitive and rewarding in ways that it usually isn't, because otherwise you will fail.  The "biggest enemy [of a charity website] is the back button"







Dean Kamen  Founder of FIRST


Make engineering as competitive, fun and valued in grade-school as sports by making a competition out of engineering.  A bit of a misquote, but the idea was:  "Most high school athletes won't be able to make it big, but every single one of our players can go pro.  There are jobs waiting for every single one of them.  What is wrong with a country that values hitting balls with sticks over building things that can save lives?"

Lunch


Ate lunch with a billionaire CEO and a national geographic photographer (among others). They were notable because they planned a trip to the arctic together over lunch.


Also talked at length with an education policy advocate who I actually agree with a lot. His insight is to give kids real problems and real responsibility in school. Learning comes faster, easier and more effectively. Students behave better and focus more and you give them a real sense of accomplishment when they can make something they're proud of. Lastly, when you get students used to thinking for themselves and reward them for taking responsibility and being social actors, you raise a generation of thinkers and designers, and not just knowers and doers.


The other important aspect of education in this sense, and also in society as a whole, is forgiveness OR the freedom to fail. The startup culture is so awesome because failure is expected. What is valued is guts, drive, and vision.  Labels are so important in society because they _generate_ behavior. This, along with negativity bias, causes so many people to fall into a negative spiral.  You get bad grades one year in school because of family troubles, and suddenly you're labeled a problem student.  You get graded continuously on all your assignments in the US, which means you have to do well from the very beginning. How does that allow _learning_ to happen?!  In society as a whole, too, we need to be more forgiving of people with criminal backgrounds. As the Interruptors prove, even murders can have an extraordinary positive impact on society. We need to get over the notion that people are either good or bad, and realize (as Zimbardo says later) that people are (mostly) just people and only become good or bad as the situation dictates.






Wes Craven  Horror Film Maker


Fear is cathartic when shared. There are deep fears that we have buried in us, and horror films bring that out into the open so we can deal with it.  Fears that "there is no God, just predator and prey" or that the human body is, for all we do, actually incredibly fragile. Horrible stories reassure us that we aren't the only ones feeling this fear and also helps us to dig it out, and externalize that fear.


To me, the most incredible part of his talk was a throw-away comment that he expects someone to make a retelling of the Cronus myth. In case you aren't familiar, the story goes that a fortune teller tells the Titan Cronus that one of his sons will overthrow him. So, in order to hold on to his kingdom, whenever he had a son Cronus would be sure to devour them. This terrible story of a father eating his own children to hold on to his fragile kingdom reminds at least Wes Craven of what is happening in society today. Horror stories also have the power to show us the horrors of our own actions, and be a force for social change.




Phil Zimbardo  Stanford Psychology Professor who proved that people are evil


People are (typically) neither inherently good nor evil, but they are guided by circumstance to do good or evil things.  We know, from his own research, what makes people turn evil, but what is the formula for making people do good?  There are factors like lack of stress, feeling of acceptance, and freedom.  Amazingly, when free to do things people are generally good. Having a system of harsh repercussions for misdeeds adds stress and constrains choice and actually makes people less likely to do good deeds.  This is an ongoing area of research that is surprisingly hard to find funding for.






Rob Warden  Head of Northwestern Law's Center on Wrongful Convictions


The biggest cause of wrongful convictions (including death sentence cases) is the false confession.  Police use immoral and often illegal interrogation techniques to get confessions from people just trying to save themselves.  The problem could be easily solved if police interrogations were required to be video taped and released to defense attorneys: a no brainer legally that is for some reason still not law.




Deborah Fallows  Author of Dreaming in Chinese


You are never too old to learn a foreign language.  


Your brain is amazing at adapting and can learn new languages surprisingly easily, you just need to learn it at a higher conceptual level than children do.  Don't learn by the Rosetta Stone method, learn by conceptual frameworks, pneumonics _and_ immersion together. Realize that in Chinese, they think of the past as being above them and the future as below (a fact you could guess from their writing direction) and then the word 上 shàng becomes obvious as meaning both above and in the past. This is one example of ways in which it is actually easier to learn Chinese as an adult than as a kid.




Hellen Fisher  chemistry.com


There are 4 basic personality types (explorer, builder, director, diplomat) governed by 4 different hormones. Learn to identify that kind of thinking in others and realize they may not think like you.
Love is a 3 stage process: first our "gut" tells us to have sex with them, then our brain has to agree and lastly we get attached. One third of long term relationships started out as casual sex.
Quote of the day: "Anything that's loose rolls into California"




Daniel Hernandez  Saved Congresswoman Gifford's life
"Every past experience you've had is useful to what you're doing now and has helped make you who you are."


John Hodgeman Millionaire
"Two lonely people can't be un-lonely together"


John Ondrasik  Songwriter for "Five for Fighting"
Just create something, because you never know what will resonate with people.