Belief As Probability Estimation

Belief is another way of describing an estimate of the probability of truth.

Facts about the world are sometimes clearly true or false.  These clear cut cases tend to be the less interesting aspects of the world. They are the dependable facts of the world like Newtonian Physics.

Yet science and materialist philosophy wants to deal in these “facts” and dismiss all else as belief and, worse “speculation”.

Everything in between may or may not be known true or false, but is not an undifferentiated grey zone. The likelihood of truth is probability from 0 to 100%. Some speculation is clearly very low probability and some is close, but not quite certain.

Sometimes this kind of probability can be analyzed mathematically, as when flipping a coin or playing cards. I know that flipping a coin gives me a 50% chance of heads and a 50% chance of tails. If my chances of getting on a plane depended on a coin flip I’d be complete unsure as to whether or not I’ll be leaving town. But if it depended on my drawing the King of Hearts from a deck of cards, I’d believe I was very unlikely to get on the plane.

Of course, more often its a complex state of affairs that makes me doubt I’ll be flying. I’m late in leaving for the airport and there are traffic and weather factors that can be known pretty well, but can’t let me be sure about whether I’ll be getting to the airport with enough time to get on the plane.

These statements about belief regarding a future state of the world are critical for deciding. Do we believe that the stock market will be higher next year than now?

More often when discussing belief, its more commonly stated in the present. Do we think its raining now? Do we believe that vitamin C is good for treating colds? Do we think the new drug can improve memory in patients with Alzheimer’s disease? Or the past- do we believe that Barack Obaama was born in the US?

Interesting, most of these questions of belief are important in the present because of how they will affect our present actions. And those present actions reflect choices that are aimed at influencing future states of the world. If I believe its raining, I will choose to take an umbrella. The truth of whether its raining will result in either my being happy I’m dry or unhappy that I’m dragging around an umbrella. I believe its likely the drug will be a blockbuster; I invest millions.

To me, it doesn’t matter whether we grab that umbrella without thinking or after 15 minutes of consulting internet weather sites and considering the burden of various umbrella choices in the event that it does or does not rain. Instinctive decisions or analytic decisions are based on beliefs that are probabilistic statements about the past, present and future.

Uncertainty in the world is way too complicated to submit to constant rigorous analysis. And too much analysis costs time and effort. But fortunately our brains are great estimators of probability- what we call belief. By honing the sense of probability, we probably can become better deciders through having more practical sets of beliefs: understanding the world and adjusting our beliefs to be more accurate, more predictive.

The glow of night



Garden Night, originally uploaded by jjvornov.

This image was captured as the light was fading. You wouldn’t think that the conditions were right for photography, but with the high ISO abilities of today’s DSLRS and an fast prime (35mm f/1.8 DX).

How the Mind Controls the Brain

The study of the brain is really only about 150 old. And as recently as 100 years ago there were arguments about whether at least the cerebral cortex was intrinsically specialized or was some how able to assign any task to any part. We’ve made a tremendous amount of progress to the point that many neuroscientists are willing to talk about human behavior in terms of the brain, leaving consciousness and mind out of the equation.

This attitude generally called materialism or functionalism is placed firmly within the scientific tradition of studying only that which can be weighed and measured. While I’m a neuroscientist and professionally interested in the advancements of brain science, I’ve always found this disregard of mind troubling. Its as if the most important part of human experience is being ignored or, worse, just explained away.

I’m reading Michael Gazzaniga’s Human: The Science Behind What Makes Your Brain Unique. Its full of great insight into brain science as one would expect from one of the leaders in the study of higher functions of the brain. But in the latter half of the book, as he tackles the tougher questions, I get that old feeling that mind is being dismissed as being some how unreal and not worthy of study. There’s this dichotomy created between “instinct” and these unexplained “rational” agents that he seems to want to make the part of the brain that we experience as mind.

For example, Gazzaniga has a nice discussion of the data showing that the mind frequently makes up reasons for actions after the fact. This post-hoc rationalization by the mind is especially true for emotions triggered in a way that avoids conscious awareness of the input. Normally, emotionally charged stimuli like disturbing photographs go to all parts of the brain simultaneously, so the mosaic of the brain acts in concert. Our minds are normally in sync with our feelings.

One dramatic example is the split brain patients that Roger Sperry and then he, Gazzaniga, studied. These patients have had surgery for severe, uncontrollable seizures. In an attempt to stop the spread of seizures, the major connection between the right and left half of the brain was surgically cut. Sperry described how these patients can appear to have two minds in one brain. If, under experimental conditions, information is presented to half of the brain only, the other half doesn’t have access to the information. So if half the brain is asked to do something, for example peel and eat a banana, the other half of the brain doesn’t know why. When asked, the ignorant other half makes up plausible rationalizations, saying for example, the banana looked tasty.

In normal volunteers these effects can be studied with presentations of pictures for a very short time, too short to percieve consciously. They register and can provoke feelings that are not available to conscious perceptual systems. So the subject rationalizes why an emotion is being felt. It seems likely to me that this kind of rationalization occurs in people with mood disorders. Even if the mood is generated internally, one will tend to explain it based on external events.

Some one who’s depressed will walk through life seeing many things as depressing just to rationalize why they feel sad.

Materialists like Gazzaniga want to use this kind of data to convince us that all there is is brain. These mental agents in the brain are just some kind of internal explaining agents, which of course makes the brain the motive force for an individual. The mind becomes like some kind of narrator trying to make sense of it all.

Yet there’s a very telling phenomenon called reappraisal that shows that mind does affect emotion. It’s a two way street.

An external event can trigger a strong emotion. For example some one yelling and shouting stirs up all kinds of feelings in us. But as soon as we realize that the shouting is not at us, but at some one else, the emotions melt away quickly. When you realize that the police lights in the rear view mirror are just passing and not pulling you over, the fear turns to relief. There’s almost a limbic decay constant you can feel as the feeling evaporates over a few seconds.

As john Searle points out, materialists have an easy time going from brain to perception, but a much harder time seeing mind affecting brain, mind being causitive. The problem is that because they dismiss mind as being unreal, they are left with this strange residual of consciousness that we all percieve, we all think is causative in the world, but doesn’t seem to really exist. How can something that isn’t real do anything? These strict materialists end up sounding like dualists because they recognize brain and brain events only. The mind is unexplained except for being some kind of hidden brain process.

Adopting the attitude that mind is real, embodied in the brain, allows one to see the role of mind in the world. And there is a fascinating interplay between the mind and perception of the world, both external world and the internal world of body signals like hunger and fear.

My D7000 Choice

Thom Hogan is out with his D7000 review. I think that he’s right that most pro D300 users probably would not be buying a D7000.

Nikon D7000 Review by Thom Hogan:

“So, no, unless they need a DX backup body I don’t think the average D300 user is going to be interested in the D7000. Really. I mean that.”

However much I liked the D300 ergonomics and image quality, I always found it too big and heavy. The D7000 is smaller and lighter, especially with a small prime on it. I just had my old 20mm f/2.8 repaired by KEH, so I’ve got a really nice light and small kit. Even with the bigger Tamron 17-105mm f/2.8, it’s much more my style than the D300.

The D300 will actually go up for sale on eBay since it still has some value.

Back in Business



Dark Woods, originally uploaded by jjvornov.

My photography efforts have taken a bit of a back seat to my renewed interest in writing. But I have my older Macbook Pro (15″ 2.2 Ghz Core 2 Duo) up and running again as a dedicated machine.

I have to hand it to Apple. The video on the machine had died. I brought the machine to the Towson Apple Store on Sunday afternoon, getting a Genius Bar appointment immediately. They sent it off for repair, $310 flat rate for logic board replacement. I had it back early Wednesday morning. Video fixed and the video problem on wake from sleep is now resolved.

If I have a complaint, its that Apple fixed earlier machines with the Nvidia card but stopped at a serial number prior to mine when I was clearly having the same problem. However I feel like the repair price was fair for a 3 and a half year old machine.

There’s now support for the D7000 RAW captures in Aperture and as Thom Hogan has said, the conversions are near the equal of Nikon’s own Capture NX2 without the hassle.

The updated edition of Vincent Versace’s “Welcome to Oz” has arrived and I’ve only had a few minutes so far to flip through it. As you can see here, he’s so right about bringing darkness into photos using a clipped curve. Here I’m highlighting a central tree, trying to create a believable reality.

The image isn’t quite there, but as Vincent says, quoting Vince Lombardi, Practice doesn’t make perfect. Perfect practice makes perfect. You first have to practice at practicing.

A Predictive Theory of Reality

Truth is what works. -William James

William James may have been America’s greatest philosopher. His philosophical approach, one he dubbed, “Pragmatism” underlies my approach here. During the Enlightenment, beginning with Decartes, philosophy struggled against simple, materialist views of reality. Just about every possible view of reality between simple materialism and complete acceptance of mental phenomenon. And of course the dualism of Descarte, accepting both as reality.

William James rejected these continental theories in favor of an approach that arose from a more naive point of view of a psychologist and experimentalist. Doubting everything, James took the scientific view that predictive ability was the value of any theory, whether in psychology or in philosophy.

Taking this pragmatic view of evaluating the truth of a theory, we look only at its predictive value. The more generally a theory can predict, the more true it is. If it misses some cases or is not generally predictive, a truer theory can be found.

If metaphysics is a theory of reality, what can be predicted? I’m working towards a systems based metaphysics that takes complexity into account with probability. This view predicts that knowledge of reality is derived purely from interactions with the systems around us, but that knowledge is ultimately limited by our perspective and system complexity. Getting outside of a system and having a longer, broader view is needed to transcend the limitations.

Embracing Uncertainty

How do you abandon the illusion of control and embrace uncertainty?

We could be less anxious and less stressed if we gave up trying to control the uncertain future. Living in the now, choosing actions that increase the chances of a favorable state of affairs can be challenging and stimulating.

The uncertainty we live with every moment is hard to grasp. In fact, we tend to simplify the world down to something less complex and more manageable. But the simplicity and gain in control are illusions. So we stress about what will really happen.

Uncertainty is lack of predictability. Predictable situations are comfortable because we know what’s almost certainly going to happen. Surprises are just that- unexpected and unanticipated.

We know we can’t predict the future in part because  our knowledge of the world is generally incomplete. Since we don’t know what’s around the corner or what other people are thinking, that part of the world can’t be predicted.

Even with perfect knowledge, the world itself would remain unpredictable. The result of any particular choice is uncertain because it can result in a wide range of outcomes. We never know whether we made the right decision even in retrospect because we only know what happened after that decision was made. Speculating about what a different decision would have brought about is not very useful, because again the outcome can only be guessed at and never known. There are two many complex interactions and unintended consequences. Once the choice is made, the result is largely out of our control.

Interestingly, giving up the illusion of control is a core belief in religious and spiritual movements. Recognizing a greater power like God or Fate that controls the world is a great aid in abandoning illusions of determining outcomes. I don’t think spirituality is necessary to adopt an attitude of embracing uncertainty, uncertainty arises naturally in the world. But the attitude of humility gained by recognizing a power greater than ourselves seems to help in this embrace of uncertainty. Adopting this mental stance in making decisions provides reward in the  releases from the fear of unanticipated outcomes. It also provides a space for God or Fate to act even in a seeming clockwork world of cause and effect.

After all, the only truth certain is that the world is uncertain and truth can’t be fully known.

The Devil’s Triangle: Fear, Uncertainty, Control

The great goal of Deciding Better is to escape the trap of fear, uncertainty and control.

Decision making is hard when the outcome is uncertain. What’s so bad about a little doubt? Joined to uncertainty are two interacting factors: Fear and Control.

Uncertainty provokes anxiety. When we don’t know how things will turn out, the emotion of fear comes into play. It gets us ready for fight or flight. This is anxiety, a neurochemically induced cognitive state. It’s a deep seated brain mechanism with great adaptive utility. A little fear can be a very good thing at the right time.

The problem is that we experience this fear constantly. Then we call it stress and anxiety. Our big brains help us see how uncertain the world really is. I talked about it the other day in a discussion of what makes decisions hard. Decisions aren’t only hard, they provoke fear because of the associated uncertainty.

So what’s scary about uncertainty? Ultimately, its having to face a loss of control. When we’re masters of our environment and in control, we know what to expect. Lose that certainty and we lose control. Causing anxiety and stress.

Deciding better must include embracing uncertainty without engaging the other two sides of this triangle of fear and control. At least not any more than necessary.

The more we understand about the world and its complexity, the more profound our appreciation of how unpredictable the world really is. We are never really in control of outcomes and we are truly powerless to bend the world to our will. We can powerfully influence the world through our actions, but we can’t control anything other than how we choose to act in the moment.

I believe this is at the core of why what Stephen Covey called the world’s “wisdom literature” emphasizes humility and releasing the illusion that we’re in control of the future. At the same time, Covey started with his First Habit, “Be Proactive” as a step in controlling ourselves rather than controlling the world.

Emergent Behavior of Links and Clicks

One of the most interesting chapters in Mark Bernstein’s The Tinderbox Way is on links- both in Tinderbox and on the Internet. Mark provides a personal and historical overview of the approaches and attitudes toward linking beginning with the early days of hypertext and leading up to our current environment.

Linking evolved, guided by the users of the net in a way suitable for navigation within and between sites for readers. It’s  now adapted and grown to enable search advertising and the social networking systems.

What’s interesting to me is how difficult it is to show the utility of linking in a Tinderbox document. One ends up pretty quickly with a spaghetti plot of links between boxes. Mark provides some illustrations that look interesting but don’t seem to mean much at all as a map. There’s actually a site that collects these pretty network pictures: Visual Complexity.

As I read Mark’s discussion, I was struck by the similarity between these links and the interconnections of metabolic pathways within a cell or the interconnections between neurons. Mapped, we see spaghetti. But there is an emergent behavior from the network that only arises from the functioning of those interactions. On the web perhaps these are communities of shared interest.

We need a large amount of computational power to visualize the emergent network. Its easier if its geographical:

Via GigaOm:

If there’s one thing you get when you have close to 600 million users the way Facebook does, it’s a lot of data about how they are all connected — and when you plot those inter-relationships based on location, as one of the company’s engineers found, you get a world map made up of social connections.

We’re used to seeing maps as geographical metaphor. Maps of meaning are not well developed as mental models. I submit that Google’s algorithms for advertising and ranking are providing semantic functions that are such maps. The actual movement of people through the network as measured by following user clicks across sites is another even more important map. The data is massive and difficult to display simply, but the emergent behavior can be detected and used.