Edward Snowden, Courageous White Blood Cell or Cancer?

Much more has been learned in the past day or so about where the leaks about the NSA came from.  Edward Snowden, a systems analyst for a private contractor working for the NSA leaked the PRISM information.  The Guardian has posted a fascinating 12 minute interview with him.

Again, as with all of the news around this topic, this is a lot to take in.   There are those who accuse him of wanting to defect to China -- which would make my earlier hypothesis seem fairly sound.  But he himself denies this, saying he picked Hong Kong as a location because it is a "fairly independent westernized government".   His choices may have been limited.  He desires a place that respects free speech (as he claims Hong Kong does) and is willing to exercise some independence from the US -- i.e. not just arrest him and hand him over immediately.

There are some important aspects of what Mr. Snowden has done and of the things he has exposed.  They are even important from the point of view of information theory and personal identity.  There are a number of ways we could approach this topic and still remain well within the bounds of "thinking about thinking".

But I am most interested in looking at his actions as an example of the tiny little "single celled human" and how he behaves in the big beast that is "human society".

As usual I am behind on my concepts, but I touched upon the "hive mind" a few times in earlier posts.  This is an analogy only --  not the literal state of affairs -- that suggests that each human participates in the global thought process a little like the way each neuron may contribute to thinking in the brain.  Well there is another extension of this thinking (which is also simply an analogy and not intended in any literal way) that treats "concepts" as enzymes.  Enzymes promote chemical processes in the body in somewhat the same way that concepts can promote social developments in a community.

Context defines our molds.
Information will bind to our context
only if it has been molded to fit.
We then transform it and pass it along.

This analogy treats humans as little cells running around full of their own enzymes and secretions (thoughts and expressions of those thoughts) in a larger body that translates these chemical reactions into macro-activity.  That is, the same way that a body might digest food or crave alcohol and turn this process into action (whether exercise or going to the store to buy beer), a community uses its collection of individual processes to both enable and motivate it to take action.

The concept of National Security in this model is a powerful enzyme that leverages a bunch of other activity.  Specialized cells give up their entire productive lives to the management of the enzyme called "National Security" -- doing what it takes to make as much of it as possible and even destroy those cells who try to absorb or destroy that enzyme.

Epinephrine!! You guys!  Seriously!

So now take the case of Edward Snowden.  He has sniffed out something he has found to be poisonous.  He has sent out a hormonal signal to the rest of the body.  The body has picked this up and individual cells are deciding how this chemical signal relates to their own enzymes.  Snowden's intention was to alert other cells to danger -- akin to how white blood cells might seek out and destroy a virus.

Meanwhile the cells responsible for production of National Security enzyme have sent out some hormone signatures of their own.  They are intent on treating this rogue cell like it is a mutant cancer cell which needs to be destroyed to protect the health of the body.

Much more on how this analogy fits with our "Information, Context, Action" model later.  But while a perfect example was playing out in international affairs, I wanted to comment on it.

And as far as the particulars of this event -- it will be interesting to see if he does land in China, or even if Xi Jinping allows him to stay or hands him over to the US.  So this is interesting to me on two levels. It is fascinating as an example of how individual cells in the global community can decide on a call to action and how the system responds to rogue signals from misbehaving cells.   But it is also compelling for the real world issues involved -- the balance of security versus the expectation of privacy.

I'll be chiming in about both these angles in the days to come.

China, NSA, PRISM, and Cyber Attacks

That must be a skeleton key
he's got in his claws.

I don't want to get too far off base from the central theme of this blog, but what has been happening in the news is relevant in some important ways to the notion of what the internet means and how we communicate.  So like the sock-puppet concern, the current news fits into our wider context.

In a nutshell what has happened over the last few days, of course, is that separate leaks have revealed some interesting things about the extent to which data has been collected by the NSA and how much the Obama administration has been focused on intelligence gathering and cyber warfare.

We now know that phone records for Verizon for the last 90 days have been vacuumed up and (let's face it) the only credible interpretation of the one piece of evidence we can see points to the idea that this data collection has been going on well past the last 90 days and not just at Verizon.  Alongside of that was the separate revelation that all server data at Google, Apple, AOL, Microsoft, Facebook, etc. has been vacuumed up by the NSA as well.

Maybe someone really is reading my blog!

(Or not.)

A really bad movie.

Now today comes yet another leak.  This time it is in connection with Obama's cybersecurity executive order.  Basically, and unsurprisingly, it contains the revelation that not only did the President authorize cybersecurity measures but also directed agencies to identify possible targets for cyber attack should the need arise.  These attacks would be designed to be executed "with little or no warning" and to result in "potential effects ranging from subtle to severely damaging."

There is a lot to take in about the surveillance and collection of data regarding legal activity of US citizens and this explicit interest the President has in offensive cyber warfare capacity.  But one thing I have been focused on is the timing of all this news.

Today (June 7) Obama began his meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping.  Of course the recent attacks on US targets by Chinese military hackers (which China has unconvincingly tried to deny) was bound to be on the agenda.  This conversation is a little more ticklish in light of recent news.

It is a lot harder to blast China for its hacking when we have been secretly soaking up the data of all our citizens for the last several years, all in the name of "National Security".  And it is even harder to shame China for its foreign adventures in hacking when we have drawn up a target list for attack if the need arises.   Now I am not saying that any of these things are necessarily unwarranted.  The needs of our national security policy are driven by realities I will never know, so I can't really second guess whether these actions which have come to light are overkill or not.  And cyber warfare is a modern reality.  It would be foolish to think that we were not at least preparing for cyber attacks in case the need arose.

But the explicit reminder of this state of affairs takes a great deal of moral steam away from the US as it prepares to lecture China on its "evil ways".  These leaks could not have come at a worse time for President Obama nor at a better time for China's President.

So I have started to wonder if these leaks may have been made by the Chinese or with the help of the Chinese.

During the 2008 Presidential Campaign, the Chinese government had access to secret data from both the Obama Campaign and the McCain Campaign.  The breach was so large, a Chinese diplomat made the mistake of protesting a letter John McCain had written to the new President of Taiwan while it was still in draft form on McCain's computer.   The Chinese clearly had the inside scoop in 2008.  There is no reason to think that this kind of penetration and surveillance is not part of their national security strategy.

So if you connect the dots
  -- that the Chinese have had access to very privileged information in the past
  -- that the Chinese continue to conduct hundreds of cyber attacks (mostly hacking) from military posts in China
  -- that the US government has expressed its concern about shoring up our cybersecurity

it makes me wonder if China does not in fact already pwn us.

(Pwn, pronounced "pown" is geek speak [technically "leet-speak"] implying humiliation or domination of a rival, probably based on the hasty typo "pwned" when trying to type "owned" at the end of a crushing win in a video game.)

Wrong thinking will
be punished.

All we know is China is very aggressive with its covert cyber activities and that they have had some well publicized successes.  What if they have really been so successful that they could leak our own government's secrets at a time most opportune for them?  And wouldn't it be quite a show of force for them to release information about Obama's cybersecurity program on the day the two are meeting about these matters?  It would prove to be both a subtle and unmistakable message at the same time.  It would really hit home with those in the know, while leaving the general public blissfully unaware of the muscle flexing they had just done.

This would be very consistent with Chinese philosophy about the importance of demonstrating your strength.  It would be a very clear message to those who mattered most.  And it would sail by largely unnoticed by the masses, which would mean it wouldn't stir up resentment or agitate public opinion.

If this is true (and I'm just speculating), it would mean lots of things.

First of all it would mean that US cybersecurity is a mess.  It would also mean that drastic measures on the part of the NSA would be called for (and even approved of if citizens knew the score).  If the only way we could identify the degree to which China owned our networks was to vacuum them up and analyze them in detail, most Americans would be very happy to permit the government to do this.   But of course no President would go to the American people and admit this state of affairs.  They would, however, take extreme action knowing it was essential to reclaiming our security.

It would also mean that we are in a world of hurt in our power relationship with the Chinese.  We already know that they have amassed a great deal of economic power very quickly.  Up until the financial crisis, China was the biggest holder of US debt (now it's our own Treasury).  They have used their rapid industrialization to amass a great deal of money.  But so far the US is still the largest economy on the planet and we have been protected from any truly ugly monetary arm twisting from China by dint of the fact that they need us as much as we need them (at least right now).  But if they achieve global dominance in cyberspace it would be yet another way for them to leverage their growing power.

And if the Obama administration is aware of the level of dominance that China has achieved, they have to be very concerned about the likelihood of being backed into a strategic corner by this suddenly very powerful player on the world stage.  A little show of strength from China, like the leak of some top secret info, would be very unnerving to the US and yet most of us would never hear about it.  It's not like Obama is going to run and tattle on China for what they have done -- it would only prove how much they have us pinned to the mat.

There are other possibilities, too.  The leaks could be unrelated to the Chinese and the timing with the visit of the Chinese President could be either coincidental or chosen specifically but not by the Chinese.  But even the possibility that these events are related to the growing power of China is a thought I find very unnerving.

If we have been upset to find that the NSA has been collecting our emails and cat videos, imagine how we would feel living in China where they can not even successfully Google "Tianamen Square" or "Tank Man Photo".

The democratizing power of one-to-many communication (and its technology multiplying effect) is one of the themes of this blog, so the idea that China may be growing into a world information system superpower is relevant to the subject matter considered here besides just being wet-your-pants scary.

Interview with a Special Flower

For this thought experiment we're going to take a special packet of seeds up in a balloon.  These seeds are for a flower -- a special flower -- but we will get back to that later.  We are going to go up in the balloon high over whatever town or city you like to imagine when taking thought piece balloon rides.

When we get to a place over the parking lots and parks, near the river (if your imaginary town has no river, we'll substitute any body of water), we are going to dump out our packet of seeds.  We will plant flowers from the air, casting them to the wind and letting them all fall where they may.  Some will land in the water where they will become soggy and sink.   Some will land on barren rooftops or scorching hot asphalt and dry out and turn to dust.  Some will fall into unfortunate corners of shade with limited sunlight -- too little to support our seeds.  One will fall into a sandbox, so close to nearby soil but alas in an environment too hostile to support the tender seedling as it breaks through it's husk.  But one, one very lucky seed, will fall into a pile of very moist and fertile soil next to a fencepost that happens to give the perfect exposure of sun with some protective shade during the hottest part of the day.  There are actually a few seeds that happen to fall in pretty good locations, but this spot in particular seems very likely to work out for our young seedling.  We're pretty sure its going to do just fine.  So we'll come back when it blossoms.

Now I said this was a special flower, and I meant it, because when this flower blossoms, it develops consciousness and the ability to communicate with us.  So now we are going to visit our flower and ask it a few questions.

Interviewer:  Who are you?
Flower:  I am a flower.  Who are you?

I:  This is not about me.  I am trying to learn about you and how you see your world.  Are there others like you?
F:  You mean other flowers?  Yes, of course.

I:  No I mean flowers who are conscious and can communicate.
F:  Oh, no.  I am the only one.

I:  Are you sure about that?
F:  Yes, I am sure.  I have seen no other flowers like me, so I believe I am the only conscious flower in existence.

I:  But how can you say that if you haven't been everywhere?
F:  I get your point.  But think about it.  I happen to be in the perfect place.  The space around me is very hostile.  I just can't imagine any other flowers like me surviving even in the unlikely event that I was not the only one in the world.

I:  Let's move on.  Why do you think you are in the perfect place?
F:  Well think about it.  A flower like me can not just grow anywhere.  I need the right mix of sun and rain.  This spot is just wonderful.

I:   I mean, why do you think you exist?
F: I am pretty sure I was planted right here in this very spot because someone wanted me to grow.   I could have been planted anywhere, but I was planted right here.  It is obvious that someone cared about me a great deal and took great pains to make sure that I lived long enough to blossom.

I:  Do you think maybe you could have just been planted by accident?
F:  Not a chance.  You don't get it.   I have consciousness.  I can tell this is something very special.  Something as special as this can't happen by accident.  And anyway, if I was planted by accident, why is the world around me so perfect to support my life?  No, I am sure that this is part of a plan.  I would not have survived if it were not.

I:  Do you think about whoever planted you?
F:   Oh yes, every day.  I thank the Gardener for his infinite wisdom in picking this very perfect spot for me and watching over me making certain that I would grow and blossom.

I:  You think the Gardener watched over you during your early life?
F:  Of course.  Early life, mid-life, the whole thing.  Are you daft?  I have already said that the odds that I would be here at all seem very tiny.  So it certainly must be the Gardener's Plan.  And he wouldn't bother having a Plan if He didn't make sure He saw it through.  I am living proof that the Gardener wanted me here and He watches over me protecting me from harm.

The Gardener doing His thing.

I:  You seem pretty convinced.  Is there any way you could imagine that you were simply a random seed that fell from the sky and you happened to fall in the right place?  Is it possible that other seeds in worse places did not live or maybe that there are even other seeds in other places that managed to live long enough to blossom and that maybe you will communicate with them someday?
F:  Yes, if I think about it hard enough, I can imagine this possibility, but it doesn't feel true.  I have no reason to believe that I am not the only flower of my kind.  I feel like I am special somehow.  And why would the Gardener do that?  What use would he have for other flowers like me anyway?  I can see how you could make some sort of fantasy where this is all happening just by chance, but I wouldn't want to live in a world like that.  It would mean I am not special.  It would mean, in fact, that I am meaningless.  I am not meaningless.  I am special.  Therefore I know I am right.

I:  Thank you for taking the time to talk with us today.
F:  You're very welcome.  I am always glad to have an opportunity to praise the Gardener and share my thanks for His precious gift of life.

Are We Just Making Fun of the Flower?

In "speaking" with this flower, it becomes obvious the message this thought experiment was created to deliver.  But is this just an artificial construct designed to make an argument easy to refute?  Are we just poking fun at a straw man flower?

Quite the contrary, I think the story is instructive and useful.  Yes, we start with the knowledge that this particular flower is the result of a random, haphazard, and disinterested act.  We have no such proof that human beings arose through the same process.  But that's not the point.  The point is that the flower has every reason to believe what he is saying.   From its perspective, every conclusion about its life seems, if not strictly logical, at least reasonable.  Why would he have any reason to believe that the rare event that is his existence was not a very controlled and intentional act of a powerful being looking over and watching out for him?

So all this is meant to suggest is that if you start with the assumption that humanity arose from the random distribution of elements that could under the right circumstances give rise to conscious life, what would our own conclusions and thoughts about this process be?   We should be forgiven for assuming we are special -- all evidence around us through our development supports that idea.  And we should be forgiven for rejecting the idea that our existence has no meaning.  Our minds are predisposed to seek meaning.  This may be another developmental accident or it may be an essential part of consciousness.  Regardless, human minds view the world with a need to order and derive meaning.  That is how we learn.  And if we assign meaning to events around us (which gives us the revelation of causality and allows us to develop science) then why wouldn't we turn that lens inward and seek to interpret the meaning of our own existence.  It would be surprising and out of character if we could make causal and meaningful connections in the world around us but assumed that we ourselves had no role to play in the universe.  Quite the opposite, we have every right to approach our own lives as something meaningful.  And assuming that we are the random result of a scattering of cosmic seeds does not do that, at least not without a great deal of further intellectual development.

So the point in the rather obvious play was to show that the flower is not just some stupid plant, but rather it has drawn perfectly reasonable conclusions about the world around it based on what it knows and can infer.  We have the benefit of knowing how far off base the flower is in this example, but we should still be able to trace the logic involved.

The reason I like this thought piece is that I have sometimes heard that the universal existence of God as a concept lends some sort of support for why God "must" exist.  But here we can see that there is another way we can support the idea of God absent God's existence.

Let's examine this from a different angle.

There Either is a God or There isn't.

Let's start with the notion that God exists.  We would still have a number of determinations to make.  For example is this God anything like what we think of when we think of God.  Is there just one God?  Is the God that exists closer to the Christian God, the Jewish God, the Islamic God, or any other type of God, etc.  But let's set that aside for now.  Let's assume that God exists and He possesses most of the qualities common to all the most popular religions.  That is to say, he created man, he is involved in the daily life of human beings, etc.  (similar to what the flower thought of when it said "Gardener".)

If this is the case, then the things we (as humans) have written about God and the way he is described can be easily explained as coming from our experiences living in the world God has designed.  If God is real and involved in our daily lives, it stands to reason that we would collectively over time have enough "brushes with God" that we felt there was some evidence for His existence.  The differences in our perception of God could be explained by our having slightly different interpretations of the evidence.  They could also be explained (and have been) as the result of Satan (or the force of evil and ignorance) who has led others astray so that they don't worship the "true" God.  I'm going to put aside these loaded questions right now and simply accept that one reason for believing in God may be that He exists.

But let's look at the other side of this, as demonstrated by our little thought piece.  Could we believe in God if He did not exist?  That is to say, without God, would there be any inclination on our part to create him to explain the world the way we experienced it?  And I think the answer is clearly yes.

Consciousness is not All Seeing

In order to do any of the wonderful high level functions our minds accomplish, we need first to develop consciousness.  This is the knowledge that we exist.  By definition this requires an "in here" and an "out there".  It is the awareness that there is a "Universe" and "I" am a part of it.  We could not wonder who created the Universe or who created ourselves if we did not conceive of these things as entities to begin with.  So the great leap of mental development that is self-awareness or consciousness (which clearly warrants much more consideration in due time) is a pre-requisite for inquiring about the existence of God.  But we should not make the error of thinking that self-awareness comes with complete knowledge of the Universe or even ourselves.   It is one thing to be aware of something, it is another still to know everything there is to know.  This might seem obvious, but it is an important point in the development of our case for the belief in God.

Short of total knowledge about something, we seek to infer knowledge based on evidence.  This is a perfectly legitimate and useful logical tool.  And it has a survival value as well.  If we learn that a particular piece of fruit is poisonous, we infer that other fruits of the same kind are also poisonous.  It may seem obvious to the point of ridiculousness, but it is actually an amazing product of logical thought.  The true experiential way to knowledge is to accept things as fact only when they have been proven through contact and experience.  A mind without the power of logical inference would not accept that a particular piece fruit was poisonous unless it was tasted and found to be disagreeable.  This would apply whether we had tasted two fruits of the same kind already or two thousand.  No, it is a logical leap to conclude that IF this fruit is poisonous, THEN another fruit of this type is also poisonous.  In logical parlance that would translate to:


     A and B are both members of the set F.
     If A=B, then
     If  A implies P then B implies P.


Or, in English, if A and B are both certain types of fruit, then if A is poisonous, B is also poisonous.

This can seem very scholarly when broken into logical rules or very basic to the point of obviousness if treated with a real world example.  But the fact remains, concluding that a fruit you have never tasted is poisonous simply because it looks and smells like another fruit that you know is poisonous is a logical leap with huge implications for the advancement of all creatures who can handle the concept.

What Can You Infer from a Sample of One?

I snuck something into that example that made it seem more simple than it was.  I said that the second, untasted, fruit was "the same" as the poisonous one.  How would we know what made it the same?  In practice, unless you have an identical copy of your first experience (or piece of fruit) it takes more than one experiment to determine when two things share enough in common to belong to the same class.  Look at these three fruits:

If you just had the fruit and not the plant, could you tell them apart?  One of them is perfectly edible.  Which one can you imagine eating?

It turns out that the top one is a very edible Huckleberry.  The next one is the fruit of the Asparagus plant, which is moderately poisonous, and the last one is the Flax Leaved Daphne, which is poisonous and potentially fatal.  How many trials would it take to be able to tell the difference?

The point is that logical inference doesn't work very well unless we have enough examples (or data) to make comparisons.  So now let's think back to our special flower.

When it was trying to determine its place in the universe -- how rare it might be or whether it was indeed unique -- it didn't have a lot to go on.  It had its local space and that was it.  It observed no other special flowers besides itself.  Everything it could say about itself was based on a sample of one.

Additionally when it examined the environment around itself, it saw many places too hostile to support its life.  What conclusion could it draw from this?

The perfectly reasonable inference it made from the available data was that it was a unique and special flower.  It seemed unlikely that it would just happen to be planted in the perfect spot, so it assumed that its spot was chosen for it.  What it did not know, of course, was the spot it lived in was perfect precisely because all imperfect locations had not supported its brethren.  It happened to land where it did, and the reason it thrived was due to the conditions being perfect -- the perfect conditions were the reason it thrived, but it does not follow logically that the location was chosen with intent  (there's that word again).

So what is logical (and in fact true in our little scenario) is that the only special plants that live long enough to wonder about why they are planted in the perfect spot are those who happen to be planted in a place that supports them!  This is, you may know, a restatement of the Weak Anthropic Principle:

we must be prepared to take account of the fact that our location in the universe is necessarily privileged to the extent of being compatible with our existence as observers.

In other words, we see the Universe is the way it is because if it were another way, we would not be around to see it.  Or stated from the point of view of the flower, "Had I been planted somewhere else less suitable to my life, I would not have lived long enough to wonder about why I am where I am."

Jurgen Schmidhuber restates this principle eloquently withe the idea that the odds of finding yourself in a universe compatible with your existence is always 100%.   So it follows, of course that we can't read anything into why the world is "so perfect for us".  We can never exist in a universe where we could ask the question, "Why is this universe so impossible for me to live in?"   (Unless you are an angst ridden teenager, of course...)

Pardise, Jan Brueghel, c. 1620

Why Me?

Weak Anthropic Principle or not, we can forgive the inference, "Because this place is perfect for me, it must have been made for me."  While not strictly logical, think of the relative sophistication of the mind that first conceived this notion.  An early human, still struggling with the vagaries of weather and harvests and the motion of the stars would scarcely have the capacity to reason his way to the Weak Anthropic Principle.  And those special minds who could manage the task would not be able to explain it to the less developed minds they were surrounded by.  Far more popular would be the seemingly obvious notion that we exist because of Divine Intent.  In any case it would be hard to infer much about humanity with only the one example to go on.

One More Trip Back to Conspiracy Land

It is worth reiterating what this early mind, this newly conscious being, is trying to do.  The conscious and logical mind can see order and causality.  The inference is made that if some things are causal, then all things must be causal.  These relationships are sought out in the world.   The season is cold because the Sun is leaving.  Everything is dying.  The Sun is coming back so everything is coming back to life.  Early causality is fraught with observational error even while the essence of the notion is often correct.  The weather affects crops.  This is true.  Early conclusions about what affected the weather (even what weather was), however, were false.  It is well known that the term for the study of weather -- meteorology -- comes from the early misconception that meteors affected the weather.

Finding order by applying reason to the world around us has had a huge survival benefit for our species.  And when the conclusions are essentially correct, the survival benefit remains EVEN IF the reasoning that leads to these conclusions is faulty.  If we think what makes the Asparagus Berry poisonous is that it is inhabited by an evil spirit, that does not diminish the survival value of avoiding the berry.

So from a logical perspective, communities who applied logic and reason -- sometimes even faulty reasoning -- were more prosperous than those who did not.  The rational mind survives because it provides an important tool to endure in a hostile world.  By the time human beings formed communities, the impulse to find order and causality in the world would be genetically entrenched.  Those who could not, or would not, view the world as a series of causal relationships would not endure long enough to pass on their customs.

Cause and Intent

The major problem we have had historically is in terms of understanding Causal relationships without ascribing Intent to them.   This is the old problem of How versus Why that we discussed earlier.  But understanding HOW something happens tells of nothing of WHY.  And here's another shocker.  If you examine the history of our scientific discoveries -- our catalog of causal relationships -- you come to the inescapable conclusion that our track record for explaining HOW things happen is not very good, either.

Plato and Aristotle,
arguing over where to have lunch

Aristotle explained that air rises in water and stones sink because all elements have a tendency toward their state in nature, and air is above water and Earth is below it.  So even though he was seemingly trying to describe WHY something happened, he was also talking about HOW it happened.  And except in the simplest terms, he got it wrong.  He thought he was observing an interplay of basic elements.  He was not.  Since he did not know who the actors on stage were, he could not understand the story that was taking place.

You may think I am merely cherry picking ancient science that could not possibly compete with our modern understanding of the world.  But any example I could choose would amount to the same thing. Before Sir Isaac Newton there was no coherent understanding of the force of gravity.  And despite Newton's considerable insights into the matter, even his laws were no match for reality.  Einstein's Relativity showed that Newton's explanation of how bodies moved (not WHY they moved, but HOW) was simply wrong.  It was mostly right.  Or right in some cases, most of which pertained to our Earth-bound existence, but he was not, strictly speaking accurate.  Using Newtonian mechanics to describe the motion of Mercury around the Sun resulted in a small error which could not be explained.  Some suggested the influence of an as-of-yet undiscovered planet.  Einstein put the issue to rest with a more accurate set of laws to describe HOW gravity works.  Or more precisely how it behaves (for whatever reason).  Einstein''s Theories are silent on WHY gravity exists, of course.

One could argue the point I am trying to make is not relevant in a modern context.  You could say that citing old science and talking about how it has been replaced by new more sophisticated scientific understanding is testimony to the success of science, not its failure.  We may have gotten things wrong in the past, but persistent application of the scientific method leads us to greater and greater accuracy about how things function in our universe.

You'd be right in a very limited way.  We certainly have a greater understanding than the ancient Greeks about how the stars and planets move.  And building on the science of those who have come before has lead us to greater and greater technology which in turn allows us to achieve even greater scientific progress.  Unfortunately, though, if the end point is complete understanding of the universe and the beginning is complete ignorance about our surroundings -- in other words if ignorance is the blank word puzzle and knowledge is one that is solved -- we have to accept that we are somewhere in the middle of the process.  Each new scientific breakthrough -- each new letter filled into the word -- reveals many more possibilities and questions even as it sheds a bit more light on the solution.

In essence, the word just keeps getting longer the more we try to solve it.  We no sooner get a grasp of basic chemistry than we find out about the structure of the atom.  Exploration into valence electrons and isotopes only leads us to the quarks and leptons which are the building blocks of the atoms themselves.

If you went to high school sometime in the middle portion of the 20th century, you may think of the atom as being composed of electrons and protons and neutrons.  While that basic concept hasn't changed, particle physicists are now describing the world of the very tiny in terms of 25 elementary particles!  [That is six quarks, six leptons of which the electron is one, and 13 bosons including the Higgs boson, accidentally named the "God particle" in the layman press.]

For every scientific success story we could tell -- about progress in neuroscience and psychology and medicine and physics and chemical engineering, etc. etc., we would have to face up to the fact that every 20 years shows us how little we actually understood about the subject 20 years earlier.  That level of progress is great.  It is certainly no argument for abandoning the pursuit of science.  But it is powerful evidence that whatever we think we know now about reality will be replaced in short order by a different level of understanding.  So to put it bluntly, we may think we are getting smarter, but we have to accept that some of our greatest concepts will be viewed as horribly naive and over simplified in the span of just a few generations.

So, again.  It's not that we do not make progress in science.  But we can't view that progress as being any sort of sign that our current concept of the universe is in any meaningful way "correct".

Ben Franklin, seemingly annoyed to
find himself on a
Soviet postage stamp in 1956

Imagine traveling back in time to talk science and politics with Ben Franklin and Thomas Jefferson  (this is something I fantasize about quite often).  It would be delightfully challenging to explain the future to them in terms that they could understand.  Much of the basics, if properly presented, would pose only minor theoretical hurdles to their understanding.  But taken as a whole, they could scarcely grasp the speed and pervasiveness of energy and travel and communication.  Even if they believed you as you described life in the early 21st century, they would never truly appreciate how anything functioned.

So now imagine that you are deemed worthy of a visit from a similarly interested person 227 years from now -- in the year 2240.  Even if we make the very clearly incorrect assumption that change will not accelerate over these 230 years -- even if we simply mapped a degree of change onto the future that is approximately equal to the last 230 years -- we'd have a very hard time keeping up with a description of life in the middle of the 23rd century.  We would be prepared to accept that there were advances in medicine and nutrition.  It would be no surprise to find that people live longer.  Breakthroughs in energy transmission would almost go without saying.  But if our time traveling friend tried to explain the science behind the technology, we'd almost certainly be lost.

We could speculate wildly on what the next 230 years might bring, but the point is that what we view today as the success of our world view -- the application of logic and science in the quest for greater understanding -- would have to be seen as a mediocre accomplishment at best.  We'd be reduced to the role of high school gym stars talking about our basketball prowess with Michael Jordan.

At every point in our history we think we know the world around us.  And with each passing year, we see historically that our simplistic comprehension has been rather quaint.   So logic insists that we accept this:  Despite our feelings to the contrary, we do not understand the world around us at all.

Our causal view of reality yields some benefits of understanding HOW things happen which are quickly made obsolete.  In the meantime, we make little or no progress with the more interesting question of WHY.

Time to Put Context into Context

What is Context Really?

We have said that context is everything, and we have talked about frameworks and how signals take place within a context, but we have really neglected the details of what context really is.  So far it has seemed like a cheater term used to capture anything we wanted to explain but didn't have the time for.

So it's about time we took a closer look at what we mean by context and how it figures into information, perception, and action.

Context is Information

The easiest and most circular treatment we could give to the concept of context is that it is merely all the other information that surrounds any piece of information in question. Context is the "background" or "circumstances" which surround any given event or piece of data.  So viewed this way, the context for any piece of information is simply all the other information it is surrounded by.   As useless as this sounds, it is partly true, and it actually turns out to be surprisingly powerful in action.

Let's look at this through the lens of what we have already said about information theory and how the power of information relates to the surprise it delivers.

Look at this sentence, uttered by a fictitious 14 year old:

Bob is always borrowing money and never paying it back and then he lies about it later and says he never took it in the first place.  He is such a narlyball.

The first thing that jumps out at us is that there is a word we do not know.  The term "narlyball" is not in our vocabulary.  (It shouldn't be -- I made it up.)  So if we have never heard the word before, simple logic would suggest that we can't know what it means until someone defines it for us.  But within the quotation we cited (invented), there is a definition or at least a suggested definition.  The logical structure of the two sentences is a description of Bob's behavior and then a label that describes what Bob is like.  So when we marry to the two together, we know that, whatever else narlyball means,  it seems to be an uncouth person -- possibly a liar, a moocher, or just someone we don't want to be with. A loser.

But even in isolation, the word narlyball could contain some clues.  If the teenager had simply said, "Bob is a narlyball" we would probably have been given a negative impression.  Why?  Well first the term "narly" seems to suggest "gnarly" and is something tangled or challenging or nasty.  The second term "ball" would suggest a collection of "gnarly" or an objectification of a person as an inanimate object (c.f. "tool" or "knob").  So taken together "narlyball" suggests, even just by its sound, a collection of tangled things or a difficult object.

Now the problem here is that teenagers have a long history of intentional irony.  That is, to the extent that teenagers have a long history of anything (the concept of teenagers as a cultural group only goes back to the 40's which will be a blog entry for another day), they have a habit of coding their language  to make it intentionally difficult for outsiders to understand.  So in the 80's "gnarly" was actually something cool or special.  In the 70's to be "bad" was to be very good, and in the 90's to be "sick" was to be exceptional.  One could say "that jump was SICK''  or even "She has a SICK body" and despite the literal meaning of the phrase, it would be intended as high praise.

But even the potential snag in our exploration of what the context of words can mean happens to point to a greater sense of context.  For the word SICK means something else in the context of certain social groups.  But we'll get back to that.

For now we will focus on how information is given meaning by the information it is surrounded by.  Or in a specific case, words are given meaning by the words which surround them. Which is to say "text" is given meaning by the "text" it is "with".   Con-Text literally means, "with text".

Textile, Texture, Text, and Context

The latin verb Texere means "to weave".  It is where we get the words: textile, texture, and text.  "Text" are words which are "woven" or composed.  Con (with) and Text (woven) is the stuff that something is "made with", "composed of", or simply "woven with".  In other words, context is the environment surrounding something.  But in an informational sense, how can we tell what "surrounds" something.  What other information is "woven into" the information we are dealing with?

Relational Databases, Linked Data, and Associations

Beyond the words surrounding other words in a sentence or two, there is another way that information is readily associated with other information.  This is through relationships that data shares with other data we have already created context for.  In other words, each new thing we learn is woven in with all the stuff we already know.  And how it is woven in has to do with the order and patterns into which we have placed our other knowledge.  To take a crude example, when we see the Asparagus Berry, we might think of other small round redish-orange fruits like the Huckleberry.  Before we get two far with context in the sense of the human mind, though, it may be helpful to explore how computers can organize data and what they can do with that organizational scheme.

Probably the most common strategy for dealing with a lot of computerized data is the "relational database". So let's look at this for a second.  Now first of all this is a "database", which is nothing more than a bunch of data all arranged as "records".  Each record contains related information about some person or thing.  For example, if you are on a mailing list for a shoe store, there would be one record that had your name and address, an account number assigned to you by the store and probably an email address:

407987...John Doe... 123 Main St....Metropolis... New York...JohnDoe@Gmail.com

(I don't know the zip code for Metropolis, so I ignored that data.)  Now since it is a shoe store, the company database also contains entries for their inventory.  These entries contain data that describes the product by brand, size, color, name, price, or whatever, usually including a part number (or Product ID):

100456B13...Ballerz....Big Boy...Blue...Size11...$85.00

Now the magic of a "relational" database is that there is another set of data that "relates" these two other sets.  In this case, that is the purchase database, containing the Account Number of the customer (you) and the Product ID of what was purchased, as well as some other useful data like the date of the transaction:

407987...100456B13...05-20-13 

What this data structure does is allow the computer to keep track of the fact that John Doe of 123 Main St in Metropolis ordered a Size 11 of the Ballerz shoes in Blue on May 20th without having to duplicate all that data every time a sale is made.  By keeping data that is specific to each kind of record grouped together, each database can be KEYED to a certain field (e.g. Account Number) and  that field acts as a stand in for all the other data associated with that record.  So every time the Number 407987 appears in other places, such as the purchase database, it stands for "John Doe, 123 Main... etc".

This data storage strategy is fairly compact and very versatile.  Not only can it easily produce a list of all the shoes you have ever bought (by searching the purchase database for your Account Number) but it can also produce a list of all the people who ever bought Size 11 Ballerz in Blue (by searching the purchase database for the Product ID "100456B13").  It can produce a list of all the products sold on May 20th by searching the purchase database for that date.  And it can produce any number of other useful reports, such as how many people who live in Metropolis have bought shoes within the past six months.

The relational database is a powerful concept.  The example above only scratches the surface of what it can accomplish, but it does give us at least a basic idea of the concept.  We'll consider that concept now when we explore the mind.

The Mental File Cabinet

No one is actually certain exactly how the tremendous amounts of information we experience in our lives is organized in the brain.  Any simple analogy drawn on comparisons to file cabinets (for example) or even computers quickly breaks down in terms of describing real world behavior.  The brain does not simply file each piece of data into a drawer and pull it out when needed.  If it did, we would never forget anything and we would always react the same way to identical information.  In short, we'd be nothing but information storage machines.  We are certainly not that.

But the brain clearly does store information in some fashion.  And the relational database analogy applies fairly literally in some very basic ways (and it doesn't apply at all in other ways we'll get to later).

When someone says "wedding dress" to you, it is more than a simple piece of clothing worn at a ritual.  If our brains were merely mental file cabinets, all we would think when someone said "wedding dress" was what the online dictionary has to say:

A gown worn by the bride at a wedding

Probably not what you imagined.

But we take the mention of a wedding dress and imbue it with much more than that.  We may picture a dress.  We may remember a recent wedding (or our own wedding).  We may think of a bridal boutique.    We may even assess the sexual history of the bride in order to assign our imaginary color.  Think on that for a second.  Someone says two words that describe an object and we go mentally prying to the past of someone we may barely know.  That's a kind of relational thinking that goes way beyond what the shoe store database does with its data.

There is possibly an emotional component as well.  We may get excited or depressed or angry or relieved or anxious, or maybe a combination of those things, depending on what the mention of that garment means to us at that given time (again, of course, because of the "context" which is why we are talking about this to begin with).

But even though the process is complex and the associations are many, we do in fact "KEY" the concept of a wedding dress to other "records" in our brain.  If we picture a dress when we hear the word, that mental image can only be called up because we have associated it with the words.  We don't imagine a wedding dress when someone says "chocolate milkshake".  So there must be some kind of associative filing going on.

So too it is true that if we allow the mention of the dress to trigger memories of weddings or people or events or emotions, then this had to come from somewhere.  The exact way the phrase "wedding dress" is woven into our mental patchwork is never fixed and always related to our own personal experiences. But except for very few people, the words will mean more than simply their definition.

Take a moment to think about each of the following phrases or concepts.  Imagine (or recall) something for each one.  Just three or four seconds for each one:

    rusty pitchfork
    dented car door
    starving baby bird
    clumsy drunken guest
    pushy salesperson
    elephant driving a sports car down on a mountain road with the top down
    muddy bootprint
    important piece of mail
    unfinished project

No two people are going to have the exact same response to any one of these phrases, let alone all of them.  Yet each of them triggers something in our mind based on how we have organized our mental data and where "our mind has been" lately.

For example, I did not grow up on a farm.  I have probably held a rusty pitchfork in my life, but I can not really recall it.  To me the phrase conjures up a fairly stock image of a pitchfork resting against the wall of a barn near its open door.  I can see there is a white farmhouse partially in view in the distance.  Maybe this is something I saw on TV or in a movie at some time.  Maybe I am recalling a barn I saw once and inserting the pitchfork into the image because in my mind, the word "pitchfork" implies a barn.  I do not know why I picture what I do.  I only know what I see.

On the other hand, if we get to "pushy salesperson" I am brought to a specific memory.  The event was several years ago and I had not thought about it for a long time until I chose the phrase more or less randomly for my list.  I was buying something -- I don't even remember what -- and the sales clerk was trying to get me to buy the extended warranty.  The problem was that she would not take "no" for an answer.  I started to get very angry by the time I had convinced her that I was not interested.  She kept responding to my "No thanks... Not interested... I am really not interested...I do not want that..." with what she must have felt were more and more compelling arguments for why I needed the extended warranty.   The story is not important, except that it left enough of a lasting impression on me that this woman (whose face I can't even really remember) is apparently now my poster child for "pushy salesperson".

It is perhaps interesting to note that some of these phrases call up a more or less static picture with no emotional content and no noise or motion, while others have an almost video quality to them -- motion, sound, and emotional response. (I can't tell you how your mind works.  I am only saying how these things affect me.)

Dude, where's my car?

Moving down the list, we get to the elephant in a car.  Few of us will have a specific memory to draw upon here, so what do we do?  I suspect my mind draws upon stock advertising images of cars to get a mountain road with a car moving down it, and then I "CGI" in an elephant at the wheel in much the manner that it would appear in an amusing commercial -- like perhaps a commercial for auto insurance.

Individual responses will vary, but it is interesting to note that we can all react and imagine this scene if we try even though none of us has ever seen such a thing.  So our mental system of organization is more than just memory -- it allows for us to shift around ideas and images and moods and associate new things in new ways.  We may rely on memory  for the components of our imagination (if I had never seen at least an image of an elephant I would have more difficulty imagining the seen), but the act of pondering or recalling is a creative act alongside of a mechanical act of retrieval.

Now, some folks are more auditory than visual.  So I would be remiss if I did not take a few seconds to describe the amazing creative power of the mind in auditory terms.  The example will be different, but the results will be very similar to the elephant driving the car down a mountain road.

Imagine President Bush giving a speech.  Hear his voice in your mind.  The Texas drawl, the conversational nonchalance of his expressions.  Now imagine he is talking about a problem.  Imagine him saying with a shrug, "The problem is the number of purple ostriches."   Could you hear him say it?

Now switch speakers.  Imagine President Obama giving a speech.  Focus in on his abrupt staccato rhythm.  No imagine him saying the same thing.  "The problem is the number of purple ostriches."

If you were successful, you have accomplished an amazing thing.  Neither of these men has probably ever uttered this phrase and even if they have, it is very unlikely that you ever heard them say it.  And yet the incredible human mind can map speech onto words and create a kind of audio record of people saying things they never have said.  The mind can combine existing elements and extrapolate the product they would produce.  It is as if the mind is taking the ingredients of flour and eggs and sugar and baking its own hypothetical cake.

So back to the list for a second...  The last item on the list is "unfinished project".  This should mean something different to everyone and yet everyone should have something they could put into this slot.  It may be associated with guilt (if it is our own unfinished project we are imagining) or anger (if it is a project we waiting for from someone else and are frustrated about it), but it is a nearly universal concept.  That is a fascinating part of context.  The idea of an unfinished project requires no explanation and yet everyone's personal "unfinished project" will be unique to them.  The feelings associated with the project (worry about money, anxiety about a deadline, melancholy about not having more time to pursue our joy, etc.) will be special to each individual's take on the concept.  Yet the concept has nearly universal meaning to modern adults.  This means that this phrase has a high degree of shared context (or it would not resonate with everyone) and yet the specifics of the context are very different (or else we would all think of the same thing).

So it is easy enough to say, "Red means stop" and know that we are talking about signals being interpreted in shared context.  But when we get to concepts like "unfinished projects", we need to appreciate that the simple signal-context model does not encompass the whole picture.

We will get into more about what kinds of symbolism or vocabulary can take us beyond "signals", but for now we should simply note the complexity of the ideas we can all associate with a common concept.  And context can be "shared" even while it is at the same time unique to each of us.

Next Week on CSI: Context

Well we're out of time this week.  We couldn't have really expected to explain all of context in one simple blurb.  But we have scratched a bit deeper into the surface of the woven fiber of information that makes up the context our mind brings to every new perception and idea.

We have much more to consider about how we connect memories and ideas and how these connections can change over time.  But for now, we'll put our evidence on ice and pick it up later.

On a Scale of 1 to 10, Do You Like Bananas?

What kind of question is that, you may wonder.  Either you like bananas or you don't.  If the question is how much you like bananas on a scale of one to ten, that makes some sense, but a yes or no question can't be answered on a scale (unless it is a scale of zero to one).  You either don't or you do.  A scale of one to ten does not measure "yes or no" matters, it measures how much.  So what is the point of this exercise?

The point is that there are two ways at looking at information such as your fondness for bananas.  The first is to simply determine whether you like them or not and the second is to rank them on a scale.  Each method has its own shortcomings and they will, unsurprisingly, both figure in to our discussion of perception and thought.

Let's begin with the scale of one to ten.  We all know it and have used it before.  But what does it really mean?  "How much do you like bananas on a scale of 1 to 10?"  We all accept that 1 means the least amount of love we could feel for bananas and ten the most, but what would it mean to love bananas so much you rank them a 10.  Does it mean you really enjoy bananas?  Does it mean it is among your favorite foods (holding the same rank as all your other "love to the power of ten" foods)?   Could it mean you are obsessed with bananas?    I mean, it stands to reason that no one could like bananas to the power of 11 -- the scale does not go that high.  So if you say you like bananas to the power of 10 and someone else likes bananas more than you, how much does he like bananas?  Would someone who ranked bananas a perfect 10 want to make toys out of them or build their home out of bananas or think of a way to get to work on banana power?  I mean, after all, ten is supposed to be the most you can love bananas, so what does it mean?  Are we talking about just the flavor or are we considering everything that it means to enjoy bananas.  Is the price of the fruit, its availability, its shelf life, its nutritional value, and its cache as a food you could order in a restaurant all figured into the concept of what we mean when we rank how much we "like" bananas?  We'll come back to this.

But let's consider the equally hard question, "Do you like bananas?"  It demands a yes or no answer.  Presumably I either like them or I dislike them.  It is an easy thing to answer if I hate bananas or I love them.  But what if I am kind of indifferent to them?   I mean, let's say I generally like fruit but they are not my favorite fruit.   Let's assume that at a buffet of many options they would not be my first choice but they would not be my last.  What if they fall somewhere in the middle?  Can I say I like them?   And we don't know anything about how hungry I am.  If I am sitting down to Thanksgiving dinner, I may not be craving a banana.  But if I am a castaway on an island with some smart guy, a farm girl, a movie star, a billionaire and his wife, I may be perfectly psyched to have a banana to eat.  Do I like bananas?  That can be a complicated question.

Besides the problematic nature of these banana questions, there is another feature we will want to examine.  That is precisely that the yes or no option is what we can characterize as "digital data" while the other is best characterized as "analog".   Digital data breaks down everything into yes or no questions that can be answered by a single switch (or scale of zero to one).  The switch is either "off" (I don't like bananas) or "on" (I do).  Analog answers everything on a scale.

But to be clear, it is best not to think of analog as a scale of integers from one to ten, but rather a smooth continuum.   Instead of a scale of 1-10 it is more like you have a glass that is nine inches tall and can pour water into it.  (We use 0-9 instead of 1-10 because the glass may in fact contain no water.)  The water we pour in may be 3 inches high, or eight, or it can be just ever so slightly more than 6 and three quarters, something that if we measured to precision might be 6.768349 inches of water.  It can, in the end, be zero or nine or an infinite number of values in between.  In fact the best example of analog would have been to not provide a scale of numbers at all and simply ask someone to "describe how much you like bananas".

The capacity of analog for subtlety is its strength.  It is also its weakness.

Things in nature tend to be analog.  The breeze does not blow in finite increments but along a continuum of movement.  This is fine in that it allows natural forces to combine in an infinite variety of ways, but it is more troublesome if we are trying to measure something.  When we want to get around to assigning numbers to a thing so we can size it up, we end up drawing arbitrary lines that say more about how we number things than it does what we are trying to measure.

Electronic circuits can handle analog values pretty well, because current is intrinsically analog in nature.  We measure current in amperes, but that does not stop real current from flowing in whatever amount it chooses.  Amperes are the "inch marks" we assign, but like water in the glass, the actual current may be flowing in any value between two amps that it chooses.

On the other hand, logic circuits -- like the ones that do the thinking for computers -- require digital precision.  Since they are made up of a series of switches (or relays), these switches are in only one of two states at any time -- on or off.  There is no room for equivocation in a logic circuit.  Either you like bananas or you don't.

I Robot

It is often said that computers are digital and our brains are analog.  But that is really an oversimplification.  To begin with, computers run on electrical current and we have already established that current is analog.  True, this current is used to drive logical circuitry that makes all of its decisions and stores all of its data using 1's and 0's (on and off switches).  But the current that drives the device starts off as analog and must be coerced into behaving digitally.

In the same way, it is true that our brains seem to be able to manage a full spectrum of subtlety between the yes and no of a question.  But our actual neurons fire digitally.  That is, they either fire or they do not.  Yes the electrochemical process in the brain, like the current in computer, is an analog process.  But there can only be two states for a given synapse.  It either fires or it doesn't.

This mixture of digital and analog in computers and our brains will be worth coming back to when we look at how we make decisions and how our mind communicates with our body.

Wheel of Fortune, The Mill Pond, Black Swans and Entropy

That's not just a whacky title.  All those things are related in a pretty simple way that will help us unlock some insights about information and why Black Swans are so transformative.

Let's start with the gameshow Wheel of Fortune.  The puzzle is solved by filling letters into the blanks.  As the puzzle gets more filled in the puzzle gets easier to solve.  Take this puzzle for example:


Historical Figure

_ _ _ _ _ _    _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

Do you know who it is?

Maybe this will help.  I'll give you a 't':


_ _ _ _ _ _    _ _ _ _ _ _ _ T _ _

Know it yet?

How about if we buy a vowel.  An 'e':

_ E _ _ _ E    _ _ _ _ _ _ _ T _ _ 

Maybe take an 'r'"

_ E _ R _ E    _ _ _ _ _ _ _ T _ _ 

Still nothing?  The most common selection of consonants on "wheel" can be remembered by the word "Translate" or in other words:  TRNSL, so let's go ahead and add the 'n':

_ E _ R _ E    _ _ _ _ _ N _ T _ N

and the 's':

_ E _ R _ E    _ _ S _ _ N _ T _ N


If you are a good player, you probably got this long ago, since you know what letter combos are suggested when certain letters appear in certain places, but I'll just go ahead and throw a 'g' out there for fun:


G E _ RG E    _ _ _ _ _ N G T _ N

Ready to solve now?  Of course you are.  But wait a minute.  There are still seven blanks in the name. What does it say about these remaining letters if we do not need them in order to decode the name?  It says, according to Claude Shannon, that they do not contain as much information as the other letters do.  The fact that we know the name is "George Washington" without it being spelled out entirely has to do with how much information is carried by the letters we do have.  Once we "see where this is going" we don't need the other letters, except maybe as some sort of fail safe verification of the message.  The first few letters have done all the heavy lifting -- they have done all the work.  That is a very important phrase that we will get back to.  The first few pieces of data have done all the work.

Working at the Mill

Hey, speaking of something that does a lot of work, have you seen that waterwheel?  No seriously, the Mill Pond and Waterwheel have a place in this conversation.  Let's find out how.

We need to start with how the waterwheel at a mill works.  The basic model is that moving water causes the wheel to turn.  The shaft of the moving wheel is connected inside the mill to some machine using gears.  In a very simple example, the moving shaft turns a millstone (or grindstone) in order to crush grain into flour.  Other more complicated variants exist, but each uses the movement of the wheel to accomplish some work.

The classic example of a mill is the "overshot waterwheel" where water from above the wheel spills onto it and causes it to turn before settling in the mill pond.

So what does the actual work here?  The water does the work.  But how? By falling down on the wheel and causing it to turn.  You could make a sensible case that gravity is doing the work.  But that's part of the answer isn't it?  Work is done by the water because it starts off at a place that is higher and ends up at a place that is lower.  All we are really doing is capturing the power of the water flow, and that flow is caused by gravity.  In physics terms, the water is moving from a state of higher potential energy to a state of lower potential energy.  The energy it releases in this process is energy of motion, or kinetic energy.  So the water is all full of potential at the top, releases its energy on the way down, and comes to rest in the mill pond at a lower state of energy.  Now in the real world, unless the mill pond is at sea level, there is still a bunch of potential energy in that water -- it could flow from the mill pond into another brook and continue to move down the mountain to another water wheel and mill pond if it happened to be located there.  But all that's important for our model is to realize what takes place at this one mill.  The water starts high, drives the wheel as it moves to a lower state of energy, and comes to rest having lost some of its energy but having done work in the process.

How much work the water can do is determined by the difference between its potential energy at the start of the process and its potential energy at the end of the process.  And that is determined by how high the water starts and how low it ends up.

Entropy is the Same Thing, Only with Heat instead of Water

The concept of entropy is the same thing we see with the mill pond and water wheel.  Substances which are hot contain a lot of ability to do work, but only if they can transfer their heat to something which is cold.  This is a lot like the water starting out high (hot) and moving into something lower (cold).  The ability of heat energy to do work is measured by the temperature difference between it and the thing it is flowing into -- the same way the ability of the water to do work is measured by how far it falls from start to end.  

For a simple example, let's look at a steam engine.  The water is heated and it is turned to steam.  The expansion of the steam gas (based on how hot it is) drives a piston which turns a shaft and we are right where we were with the mill.  The shaft can be connected to anything.  The turning of the shaft is the work accomplished by the steam.  The rest of the engine is devoted to condensing the steam back to water as it cools and pumping it back to the furnace so it can be re-heated.

There are No Steam Engines in Hell

Here's the funny thing about steam engines, though.  They achieve the greatest efficiency when the steam is as hot as can be (because it expands rapidly) and it is vented to a chamber which is as cold as possible (so the steam can be quickly condensed back to water).  If the condensation chamber is at or near the boiling point of water, the steam will not condense and the engine will not work or will hardly work at all.  This would be like having a water wheel which is driven by water that was only falling an inch or two -- there would not be much chance to release any energy.   In both cases the release of energy is tied to the difference between the two energy states.  Hot water (steam) moving into cold water accomplishes a great deal more work than if the temperature difference is small.

So What Does Entropy Measure?

As you may have guessed, entropy says something about the ability of the heat energy to do work.  The higher the entropy the greater the "spent fuel".   It might be easier for us if higher entropy meant greater ability to do work, but it was not set up that way.  The tendency of a thermodynamic (heat energy) system towards greater entropy simply means that heat tends toward equilibrium, and we already know that if everything is equal not much work can be done.  Low entropy means greater differences between the heat and cold and so greater potential work.  The law of entropy suggests that the universe is gradually mixing together its cold and its hot and will someday be nothing but a big bowl of lukewarm.

Fewer Missing Letters Means Higher Entropy

So let's get back to our Wheel of Fortune game and revisit what Shannon had to say about information and entropy.  In a nutshell what he is saying is that the first piece of data in a blank puzzle has the greatest ability to do work.  In a water wheel we measured the ability to do work by the difference between the high point and the low point.  In a steam engine we measured the ability to do work by the difference between the hottest point and the coldest point.  Well in an information system, we measure potential work by the difference between the blank puzzle and the answer.  The greatest ability to do work is when we have no information at all and we need to arrive at a message.  That first letter accomplishes so much in telling us what the answer is -- far more than the last letter does.  So by the time we have the answer nearly solved:

G E _ RG E    _ _ _ _ _ N G T _ N

Each new letter does hardly any work at all.  The work is measured by the distance we still have to travel to get to the answer and frankly that difference here is not very large.  Sorry, 'o', but you are just not doing much for us right now.  We don't even need you to get the job done.  'G', on the other hand, good job.  Your work was excellent.

One Last Step

Now if we look at the message as being "reality" and information as being that data that reveals reality to us, we need to see the blank puzzle as a state of cluelessness about reality, a literal blank slate.  We only learn about the "Truth" by receiving the information that explains the world to us.  The bigger difference between our blank slate and reality, the more work each piece of information can do.  And that is why Shannon viewed the measure of information as the level of surprise contained in each new piece of data.  If the new data is a 'W' to start the second word, well that is pretty much what we expected.  That information is not doing much work.  If the answer was actually "George Dashington", however, the appearance of a 'D' would rock our world and set our previous assumption about reality on its ear.  That 'D' would be doing a hell of a lot of work.

And as you can see here, George Dashington appears in the 1940 census, so he is in some sense a "historical figure".

So now the question is, was 'D' a Black Swan?  After all who was expecting a 'D' for the beginning of the second name!

Maybe that's pushing it, but there is something interesting we can say about Black Swans in relation to this conversation.

The Black Swan Carries a Lot of Information

If, as we have said before, the "potential energy" of information has to do with the difference between the Answer ("reality") and the Puzzle as we have it filled in so far, then a Black Swan does indeed contain a great deal of potential energy.  Or viewed another way, the Black Swan carries a lot of information because the Black Swan event reveals the disconnect between what we think is possible and the world as it really is.  A Black Swan really is the moment we see the 'D' and not the 'W', only with matters far more important than a silly word game.

To cite one of our earlier examples, Columbus' voyage did not create the Western Hemisphere.  It was there the whole time.  And the difference between the world as it really was versus the world that the Europeans thought existed was huge.  Therefore there was a great deal of work that would one day be done by the information that flowed into this gap.  From an information standpoint, the work done by Columbus' journey was huge.  As Claude Shannon says, the information is the surprise carried by the data.  Well what a surprise it was to discover that there was this huge extra piece of the Earth.  It is no wonder it is treated as such a substantial event in history.  It released a great deal of information energy when it opened the spigot between the two worlds.

Now it is often rightly cited that Columbus did not "discover" the new world.  In the first place there were already people living there, thank you very much.  But even from the European perspective, he did not discover the Americas.  The first Europeans to visit the Western Hemisphere were the Vikings.  But they did not release the potential energy of the reality gap because their discovery was not shared with the rest of the world.  It is not even clear that they knew they had discovered anything at all.  For that matter, neither did Columbus at first, which is why we have the term "West Indies".  He thought he was in the Indian Ocean.  He thought the people watched him from the shore were "Indians".   But eventually they understood where they really were, and the Black Swan event released a great deal of information energy (the difference between what is and what is thought to be).

So where does this leave us?  We now know that the power or potential energy of information is determined by how much surprise it carries, and this sort of informational entropy is measured by the difference between what is expected (smooth sailing to India for example) and what actually is (such as this huge land mass in the way).   Black Swans, by dint of their being so different from what was expected, bring us a huge amount of information.  How we handle that information and put it into context, or form new context to accommodate the new information will be explored later.

Is that a Black Swan or Just a Dark Grey One?

If transformative events that can't be predicted are Black Swans, what do you call the transformative events that some folks could see coming?  The tongue in cheek term "Grey Swan" has been applied to these events, and it is meant to acknowledge that these are not true Black Swan events, but they nevertheless deliver a surprising shock to the system.

The Credit Crunch of 2008 and the Great Recession that followed is sometimes called a Black Swan by folks who misunderstand the phrase.  This may be partially because it was the first earth shattering event that took place after the publication of Nassim Taleb's book.  But Taleb himself suggests the Credit Crunch was no Black Swan.  Many folks (including Taleb) saw the danger building in the financial system and had been warning about it for years.  It may have been a devastating and rare event, but it was not really out of the blue.

Still, when determining what qualifies as a Black Swan, we may run into problems, especially as technology gets increasingly sophisticated and communication gets increasingly powerful.  We already said that just because one nut-job fantasized about some event does not disqualify it from being a Black Swan because it would still be an inconceivable surprise to most people.  But what of the increasing reach of hypotheticals in our lives?  Could our increasing understanding of all the whacky things that can take place in our lives lead to a decrease in events that we would rightly describe as "inconceivable"?

For example if an huge asteroid hit the earth in 1820 and killed millions of people, it would have undoubtedly been a Black Swan.  But what if it happened in 2020?  Can we really say that this would be an inconceivable disaster?  The fact is that scientists have been spending the last couple of decades educating us about Earth's long history of being pummeled from space.  It would seem by our modern understanding that being hit with an asteroid is a when and not an if.  Still, if the asteroid were large enough, it would result in such a devastating chain of events for our planet that it seems disingenuous to deny the event Black Swan status.

If your concern is about the well being of people on a day to day basis, the distinction is not relevant.  If it changed our lives and our assumptions about our own safety on what has till now been a very hospitable planet, the event could be among the most significant in history.  But for strict score keeping about whether it is a Black Swan or merely a dark grey one, the distinction would probably boil down to how seriously the possibility of the event was being considered.  Since we have clever folks tracking extra terrestrial objects this very moment (an international project called "Spaceguard"), mapping out which ones pose risk for potential collision, one could say this event, however devastating when it does finally occur, is not technically a Black Swan.

There is one possibility for Black Swan status associated with such an event, and that is some repercussion from the collision that was not anticipated.  If the collision had some freak side effect that scientists would not have even considered (such as reversing the rotation of the planet) then the event would certainly be a Black Swan.  But a scientifically well behaved natural disaster, however horrible, does not generally qualify as a Black Swan.

The arrival of Europeans in what is now South America would be a good example of a Black Swan, at least to the Myans, Incas, and Aztecs (and all the lesser known native peoples of the time).  It was something that they never spent any time worrying about and it completely shattered their way of life.  The European discovery of the Western Hemisphere some 40 years earlier was also a Black Swan (to the Europeans).  Since Columbus was basically an idiot, he thought he had circled the globe.  The idea that there was a land mass as large as the Americas between Spain and India was, at least to most Europeans of the time, inconceivable.

The proof by circumnavigation that the Earth was round was not, however, a Black Swan.  Even though the popular myth is that Columbus' whacky idea was that the Earth was round, in fact that idea had been well established since the 3rd century BC.  Columbus big idea was that the best trade route to India was to sail West and keep going.

[Aside: The reason I say he was an idiot was that the curvature of the Earth was provable, and most reasonable people knew the approximate size of the Earth.  Columbus contended the Earth was much smaller than people believed and that is why he was convinced that an Western route to India was practical.  Even late in life he denied the science and theorized that the Earth may be shaped like a woman's breast, smaller around the nipple than the other parts.  Seriously, this guy was nuts.]

In any case, over the course of the next few decades, his voyage did prove to be the spark of two major Black Swans, first for the Europeans and later for the indigenous people of the "New World".

And not to belabor the point, but that is how a Black Swan works.  One morning you are waking up to live your normal life and the next morning you are dying of a wound inflicted by a Spanish musket ball by a man you never dreamed existed using a weapon you had never imagined.  Black Swans are not simple surprises, they are game changers.

Grey Swans and Conspiracy Theories

We have established that any "Swan", whether black or grey, is a transformation event.  The assassination of John F Kennedy could not rightly be considered a Black Swan.  The man had Secret Service protecting him precisely because it is dangerous to be President.  Granted the security detail was quaint by today's standards, but the point is that it was not "inconceivable" that a President could be assassinated.  Three sitting Presidents had been assassinated before JFK (Lincoln, Garfield, and McKinley) with McKinley's death being just 62 years earlier.  Sixty two years is not exactly recent, but for comparison it has already been 50 years since JFK's assassination.  In 1963 McKinley was still part of living memory for many people.  So, no, the assassination of a President would not be "inconceivable".

This does not mean that it was not nearly unthinkable however.  The world had changed a great deal in the two decades since WWII and no doubt many people would have assumed that the combination of good will in a prosperous nation and modern police methods had made it highly unlikely that a President would be assassinated.  In any case it was a national shock and certainly a transformational event.  Maybe it didn't change the way each American lived his daily life, but the killing, along with those of Bobby Kennedy and Martin Luther King Jr., certainly changed society.  On the color scale, though, the event would have to be called a Grey Swan. It was simply not inconceivable enough to qualify as truly Black.

The same thing could be said for the 9/11 attacks.  They stunned many Americans.  An early phrase that was used in the first day of reporting was "A New Pearl Harbor".  It was a surprise attack which set everyone on edge and permanently changed the way Americans think.  In terms of lasting daily impact, the hoops we must now jump through to travel on a plane seems the most far reaching, but the impact on the psychology of the nation is not to be underestimated.  It may be hard to quantify beyond bureaucratic and legal responses such as the formation of the Homeland Security Department and the passage of the PATRIOT Act, but the change to America was immediate and far reaching.

Still, even though the notion of hijacked planes being flown into buildings was stunning, it was not really inconceivable.  The 9/11 attacks were quickly accepted as real things that might happen in the modern world.  So 9/11 was not really a Black Swan either. Grey, of course, but not black.

But here is an interesting feature of these and other Grey Swan events:  There are some people who reject that they took place at all, at least in the way that they are commonly described.  To these people, the so called "conspiracy theorists" there was a certain inconceivability to these events.  The events are so tragic and so hard to wrap our minds around that some folks can not accept them.  These people seek answers beyond the common explanation because the truth (or what is commonly accepted as the truth) sounds very wrong to them.  There is no debate that these events are just as transformational to conspiracy theorists as they are to the rest of the world -- in some sense they may be more transformational to them -- but there is some real difference in how willingly they are accepted at face value.

And that is a key connection between Grey Swans and conspiracy theories.  The fact of the matter is that Grey Swans create fertile ground for conspiracy theories.  I have said before that big events with large impacts create instability and a need for order and that this quest for order is what drives the narrative of conspiracy theories.  Well, we now have a framework for understanding what these "big events" are.  They are Grey Swans -- sudden events generally considered to be highly unlikely even if plausible.  The inability to accept the plausibility of such transformational events may be key to unlocking the origin of the explanatory conspiracy theory.