It has probably been over a year since I started thinking about organizing random thoughts in a manner that would not only make it possible to express them; but also aid in the process of sharing them with peers. My hope has been to express freely without requiring scientific rigor, yet discussing science and other subjects of daily life in a fairly simple manner. Also, a blog would hopefully spark interest in readers to comment on the posts, thereby enriching and/or critiquing the stochastic thoughts.
Tonight, I feel that I am finally ready to commit to a frequent contribution. And so it begins …
The title of the blog basically encapsulates the major areas I intend to write about. Brains – neural science, Machines – computer science and artificial intelligence, Mathematics – well, the mother of all sciences, and Life – all the various aspects of life including sociology, religion, music and numerous other things that just popup in my head from time to time.
I cannot in good conscience leave out the most significant inspiration behind the title; the book “Brains, Machines and Mathematics” by Michael A. Arbib. The moment I saw this book in the university library, I knew I had to read it.
Apart from the major areas highlighted by the title, I will hopefully be writing about several other interesting topics that I come across. Since by profession I am a software developer, I like to think about issues pertaining to software engineering and development. Also, I am highly fascinated by the theory of complex adaptive systems and other biologically inspired methods.
Having said that, I will move on to a couple of questions that have been bothering me all day long. I will not indulge into the details at the moment, however, a brief description is as follows:
- Boolean logic, Fuzzy Logic, Temporal Logic … “Emotional Logic”? – Would it ever be possible and/or useful to develop a formal model of human emotions, that constitutes a form of logic where truth is ascertained by the emotional state of an individual rather than the conventional models of logic?
- Validity of mathematics as the language of proof – All major branches of science use mathematics as the language to definitively devise proofs. Can we prove that mathematics is the one perfect language for proofs? and what if it is not? Oh, by the way, what language would we use to prove that?
This is a glimpse of what some of the posts might look like. With time, however, I hope the ideas and the posts will evolve in such a way that the variety of topics increases and more and more readers find it interesting to share their ideas.
A word to my friends: please feel free to comment, for that will be a very valuable contribution.
Hey Fahad!
ReplyDeleteInteresting blog. Im looking forward to see what this is all about! :)
Speaking of interesting, I got this sent to me at work today. It's about muslims slowly becoming a majority in Sweden!
Check it out: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HaPz7p-1-bk
Hey Fahad
ReplyDeleteNice blog.
Regarding the video, well I think the immigrant 'problem' will go away when there are no jobs (and no welfare state) due to the collapsing European economies.
Hey Fahad,
ReplyDeletejust started to read your blog. I like your thoughts and find it very interesting to discuss them.
My natural way of discussing is to play the evil counterpart (cause there is already someone defending the assumptions), though. So don't be offended if I challenge you. That's not my opinion, but just the way I try to understand things ;)
Regarding you idea of "Emotional Logic": Do you have a real world example that demonstrate what you mean by this? (I think about a guy deciding to stick with a girl, that is not good for him, cause his emotions drive him to her. But that's not about logic, but about weights and priorities in decision making.)
And in addition to it, why would it be important to express that? How would the world be any better? Shall computers thereby understand emotions or do you think they should decide emotionally themselves?
What do you think?
Hey Frank,
ReplyDeleteThank you for your comments; feedback is much appreciated. I apologize for the delay in posting my response. Without any further ado, here are my thoughts on the matter:
When I wrote this particular post, I did not really think about the applications of "Emotional Logic". As you can probably see in the text, what I wrote is in fact a question in itself. Although your comments made me think about the potential applications, and I will now try to talk about them a bit. As per the original post, it will be assumed from here on that "Emotional Logic" refers to "a formal model of human emotions where truth is ascertained by the emotional state of an individual".
Regarding to your example, "logic" is not necessarily different from "weights and priorities in decision making". E.g. fuzzy logic is used in decision making. I am assuming however that in this case you are referring to Boolean logic. Anyway, similar to the guy in your example, everyone experiences the dilemma of "Emotions vs. Rationality" in life. There are many different cases where such a thing might happen; and the emotional response may vary from person to person. In most situations, we tend to judge a person based solely on rationality; making the implicit assumption that emotions are irrational. Emotions are however a product of evolution, and therefore, over an evolutionary time frame, emotions do fall into the realm of rationality. So there appears to be a difference in how we perceive the value of emotions in the life span of an individual, and the value of emotions on an evolutionary scale. This brings up the question, "if, and how can we unify the two perceptions?"
An obvious interpretation would be that humans have not only evolved genetically, but we have also evolved “memetically”. That is, even without any further genetic evolution, our thought processes (as well as social norms) have evolved to an extent, that certain traits with evolutionary advantages are no longer valid for the success of an individual. Nevertheless, I think in order to come to a valid conclusion, quantification of the process of emotions is required. And for such quantification, a model can provide the foundation. The Emotional Logic would be a candidate for such a formal model. To summarize, a formal model such as Emotional Logic could perhaps be used to study the correlations (or a lack thereof) between the evolutionary advantage of emotions in a population, and the advantages/disadvantages of emotions for an individual.
Another possible application arises from your question regarding computers and emotions. I think it is safe to assume that a “computer/robot buddy” would appear more interactive if it could understand one’s emotions (maybe there is already some related work in the field of Human Robot Interaction). As you know, a computer does not really “understand” anything; it merely processes the input through a decision engine and creates an appropriate response. The decision engine would have to use some sort of logic e.g. fuzzy logic in case of industrial control systems. However, for a computer to be able to create a response appropriate to a person’s emotional state, I believe Emotional Logic could be used in the decision engine (so that “truth is ascertained by the emotional state of an individual rather than the conventional models of logic”).
I don’t know whether any of this can make the world any better. That is not for me to say. But I do hope that you found some answers, and perhaps these answers will help you form your own opinion about whether it will make the world any better :-).