Theory of consciousness - Part 2 - Paradox: Robots Can See But Do Not See

From the discussions in Part 1, we can accept the proposition that "Quarks have visual sensation" to be axiomatically correct. There is no reason to restrict the analysis to just one sense; Generalizing the result, we arrive at the axiom that "Quarks have all senses - visual, auditory, olfactory, gustatory, tactile as well as thermal, and emotional spectrum from pain to pleasure."

The axiom of sensual quarks leads to the corollary of senusal universe. Each element of the Universe can experience sense - yet, it is common knowledge that only living animals really sense - a cat sees, but a wall does not see. A man sees but a robot does not.

We are running into the risk of confusing vocabulary, so let me clarify with an example. In Fenway, during a Red Sox game, there are thousands of people. They all have the ability to pitch the ball. You just need a hand and a ball to pitch the ball. Yet, only one person in the middle of the stadium is pitching the ball. There is a marked differene between being able to pitch the ball and in fact pitching the ball. This marked difference is very concrete - it is having the ball.

In terms of sensual quark theory, the entire Universe is capable of pitching or sensing. The ability to feel redness of rose is equivalent to having the hand. Yet, only the few living things have the ball or in fact are sensual. The equivalent of having a ball is ....What?

When we were performing the imaginary thought experiment of removing one body part at a time to localize the anatomical site of vision, we had made an implicit assumption that the man would be alive even though he did not have most of the parts of the body. Yet it is common knowledge that a fully intact man, who could clearly see one moment before death, no more sees anything after he is dead, even though all his body parts are intact. Revisiting our conclusions from the thought experiment, we would add LIFE as a critical component of being able to see.

LIFE is then like having the ball. Only the living things have LIFE, by definition. Yet, what is LIFE? In the biological sense, even cells have LIFE. Having LIFE really means, being functional - having enough parts in motion so that the whole machine functions. In the same way, cars are dead when their batteries are dead. LIFE merely refers to the functional state of being. LIFE does not reside in one single part, but refers to the state of a lot of interconnected dynamic parts. LIFE is like the word Isosceles. The quality of being Isosceles resides in the entire triangle. It can not be localized to a single point in the triangle. The quality of LIFE belongs to an entire conglomeration of sensual quarks, not to just one single quark.

In conclusion, Lots of Sensual Quarks + LIFE (Quality of connections between then) = Actual sensation.

In the next part, we will examine the requirements for LIFE ...

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A Certain Chemistry - By Mil Millington - Take Home Message

I found the following 4 points from this entire God's narration very interesting:

1. PEA causes you to stop judging the person you are attracted to ... at least for 30 months

2. Love is really Dopamine in your brain ... when you don't get it (as in during a heartbreak) you feel bad ... but really, it is just "Addiction" and "Withdrawl Symptoms" ... you will get over it!

3. Fidelity is really addiction to drug ... You want something, you want it bad, and you want more of it ...

4. When you fantasize about someone/something erotically, you are applying classical conditioning.

These are the four most important "take-home" messages!

Together, they give you a proper perspective of romance in the real world.

Love = molecules + opportunity! Nothing moral or exalting or mystical about it!

Instant Love ... A Certain Chemistry ... By Mil Millington - Part 8 - The end

Hey, I'm no great thinker, but even I could see that was going to end badly. But, like I said, that was why I showed you the thing in the first place. You get me? I picked Tom and Sara and Georgina for a couple of reasons. One reason I picked them was there was no particular reason to pick them, right? The names, the time, the jobs, the superficial details of stuff that happened - the paint job - all that might well belong to them, but really, they could have been anyone, anywhere. The story, if you know what I mean, the story is pretty much fixed: all they can do is use their own handwriting to put it down. Tom might feel he is hurting 'cause he's lost Sara, but he's just hurting 'cause that's what happens to anyone at this point. The chemicals he's been getting are close to cocaine or nicotine not just 'casue they induce the same kind of pleasure, but 'cause they're addictive like them too. Really, I'm not kidding you here; these things aren't all that different. It's no wonder that now he's feeling just like someone who's going cold turkey. And, yeah, it's my doing, again. I wanted you people to keep things going, and that meant not only making it good to get together but making it bad to be apart. Carrot and stick, you see what I'm saying?


But he's not missing Sara; he's just missing his partner. All tthat stuff about people being meant for each other or - what is it some of you say? "Somewhere, there's one person for everyone - it's just down to the two of them to finding each other." What? I ask you, is that any way to run a species? Your "special person" is simply a person who's available. Just one person for each other person? You die out. The fact is, the reason your partner is beside you right now hasn't got anything to do with destiny and paired souls - it's just 'cause they were around. They were around, a fw smells and features were close enough to fit you, and the way tour head works meant that you came to believe that they were "special." You see that, right? I mean, if you think about it for just a moment even, you're bound to realize I'm being straight with you here.


George is famous. Dick Cheney is famous too. You think Tom would have been attracted to Dick Cheney, if they'd met? I know it's against your nature, okay, but don't complicate things. Things are simple. Mostly, you just pair off by attractiveness - I figured this was as good a way to do it as any. All the things that strongly influence a friendship - similar interests, personal beliefs, intelligence, yadda, yadda, yadda - are completely outweighed when men and women pair up in relationships by how similar they are in the good-looks stakes. I can't count the number of your scientists who've done experiments that have shown this. One guy at UCLA even did this study and found that the closer matched pairs were in physical attractiveness, the more likely they were to have "fallen more deeply in love." Ha! I am good, or what? Another one of these study things found there was a really high hit rate when people tried to match husbands and wives together from their wedding pictures based on nothing but how close they were when ranked by looks. I mean - come on - I don't even need to tell you all about this, do I? It can't be like you haven't noticed it, right?


I'm not saying you don't feel anything, but you feel it 'cause of oxytocin and vasopressin and endotrophins and 'cause that's the game plan, not 'cause of anything mystic. There isn't anything mystic. When a junkie wants his fix, he really wants his fix - it's real. But whatever he tells himself, you can see it's just the drug pulling the strings, right? I know it's tough to step outside on this one, but it's the same thing here - it's just different drugs.

Which kind of brings me to the second reason I picked Tom: it's because we got to see a little of the aftermath. I'm kind of hoing that by understanding Tom's misery - how it came about and what it is - you'll understand your own when it happens. And that understanding it will make it be not so bad. I know I screwed up - I've told you that, and I'm not trying to avoid anything here - but maybe it'll be a bit bettter if you realize that this is all nothing but, you know, molecules and opportunity.

Okay, okay, sure - I've simplified stuff. Who wouldn't? Makes my head ache just thinking about all the biochemistry and the whatever - the neurology - and the variations and all that. But, overall, it's always pretty much the same. And, all the time, however complex the mixture might be, there's no pixie dust in it, you know what I'm saying? Like that guy said ... what was he called? Whatever, it doen't matter, he said - Ryle! That was his name. Cheesh - I'm losing it, I really am. Anyways, like I was saying, however much you 're going to say it's complicated and you can't get some big computer to work out all the interactions and all thay, however complex it is ... there's no "ghost in teh machine," okay?

I'm hoping that'll give you some comfort. I really should have guessed that, the way you are, you'd see meaning and magic in love - because you like tot see meaning and magic in yourselves and you believe love is the most human thing there is - the thing that makes you what you are. I never intended that, but I should have guessed it. So, I came here to tell you straight how things really work. To make amends for my oversight. So that the next time you feel like crap 'cause of all this stuff, you can say, "Sure, I feel like crap. But it's just molecules - I'm not being crshed by, you knkow, destiny or anything." It'll still hurt, but you'll have perspective, right? Stick your hand in a flame and it hurts like crazy - but you don't take it personal, right? You don't let it break your spirit.

So, Tom and Sara didn't work out. That's a shame. I like things to work out; I was really cut up about the Neanderthals, for example. But they'll get over it. They weren't meant to be together - or not meant to be together - they just met and were togehter for a while. Molecules and opportunity. That's the way you've got to look at these things. I hope you understand now, and it'll help you all, and, you know, that my explaining everything here makes up for the way I took my eye off the ball a little with this one.

You all take good care of yourselves, okay?

Instant Love ... A Certain Chemistry ... By Mil Millington - Part 7

So, what I want to talk about here is ... What? No, look, it doesn't really matter about the specifics of Tom and George and Sara - how many times do I have to tell you that? They're only, you know, an ullustration of the general principle, right? Sara's just one woman, in Scotland, at one moment in time; her hearing that recording on her cell phone isn't an issue we're concerned with. No, I'm here to tell you ... What? Hey, don't look at me like that ... What? Oh, for ... Okay, okay, I'll come back later, then. Really - the phrase "the bigger picture" just means nothing to you people, does it?

Instant Love ... A Certain Chemistry ... By Mil Millington - Part 6

You know what I was thinking about back there? Back when Tom was having that problem with the punk outside the bar? Well, I've got to come clean again here, and tell you that back then I remembered that I cut a few corners, you know, "physiology wise." you see, I didn't really think to put enough space between the cues for "love" and the cues for "fear." I just kind of figured it'd be clear from the context. I mean, why wouldn't I, right? Then I hearr that some of your scientists have done this experiment and discovered that, because of the chemicals released, people who experience fear on a first date often "misinterpret" it as love. Was my face red when I heard that, eh? I simply can't tell you.

Yeah, well, it was just a thought I was having. Never mind.

There is another thing, though. I suppose I should have mentioned this earlier, when I was dropping all thes science on you and telling you the names of stuff. But, well, I lost my nerve, you knonw? One reason I lostt it is that this word's no sweetheart to say, I can tell you. Here goes ..."phenylethylamine." What did I tell you, eh? Even your own scientists shorten it to PEA, so they don't keep screwing up when they try to say it and making an ass of themselves during, I don't know, seminnars or whatever. But I got to admit, the length of it wasn't the only thing that stopped me. Fact is, I'm a bit guilty about it. PEA, you see, is a dirty trick. Sure-like I've told you- I was worried you wouldn't get yourselves yogether, tand that things would fizzle out 'cause of it, but PEA ... well. Okay, I'm just going to say it straight out. PEA kicks in when you're attracted to someone, and here's what it does: it stops you from seeing their faults. PEA is, like, your actual rose-tinted glasses. That's bad enough, right? But then ... Sorry. Okay. The length of time varies - it can be years - but after a while ... it stops working.

Yeah, I know.

I'm not sure I'd have had the guts to tell yoou this if your scientists hadn't uncovered that bit of evidence already. A dirty trick, like I say. Worse still, a dirty trick badly done.

Let's just say I owe you one.

Instant Love ... A Certain Chemistry ... By Mil Millington - Part 5

Well. I've got to be honest with you here. I feel like a bit of a jerk right now. Kind of like when you play a practical joke on someone, thinking everyone will get a blast out of it, only it goes wrong and people get upset. I mean, sure, I feel responsible - I'm, God, right? It comes with the territory. But I got to assure you that, for what it's worth, I had only the best intentions. You got to believe what I'm telling you when I say that I never intended things to get messy like this.

Oh, I don't mean for Tom or Sara or George, obviously. I knew about that - that's the very reason I'm showing them to you now, so you can see waht I'm talking about. No, I mean not for anyone. Because, like I say, Tom and Sara and George could be anyone. I have to check that you understand me here. It doesn't matter, for example, that George is a famous actress, okay? I know you people are built to understand complex stuff and be able to see patterns and meaning - and that's good. But the trouble is, it makes you want to see patterns and meaning, and hate to think you're not complicated. If that terrible Fiona chick had been willing, then Tom might easily be in a hotel with her now. And later he'd think that maybe it was some indefinable connection they had - both being English in Soctland or both working in publishing or whatever - that was the critical thing. But that ain't it. Remember: filter out the scenery. Remember: Sara or George or Tomr or A.N. Other or you - it's all the same thing, okay?

Look, when I set this universe up, I was kind of making it up as I went. There was no "Creation 101" I could have attended beforehand, you know what I'm, saying? Sure, so I could have done a few things better - I'm the first to admit that. No one can say I'm not prepared to stick up my hand and say "mea culpa" when I screw up, 'cause that just isn't right. And I'm, at least trying to make up for things as best as I can - I mean, that's why I'm, here now, okay? We got to deal with the situation we're in; we can't go back and rewrite the book, but I can at least read you the rules we have, so your know where you stand. Should have done it a long time ago, I admit - strike two against me - but you know how you put these things off.

Okay, enough with the beating myself up. Let's get on with business.

You remember what I was saying about the whales? How I just kind of thought up all this stuff and went at it? Sometimes I got a bit carried away, got into a groove and kept pumping out these ideas. I'm like, "Yeah, that's good! Whoa - and I know what else would be cool ... " and I don't know when to stop. They call it plentitude; I just kind of thought of it as "being on a roll." Well, I don't want you getting the idea that I simply threw you guys together, okay? I was really on the case, thinking about all these angles and stuff, all these possibilities. Like I say, though, like with the whales, I don't really know how I do stuff; I just, you know, want badgers and - there you go - badgers. Which suits me, by the way. If I have this great idea for a plant, I don't want to have to figure out cell division and invent osmosis and stuff first - who has the time, right? But like I told you earlier, I'm totally into all these scientists of yours getting out their microscopes or whatever and working out how I did everything. That gives me a real kick. And - I'm guessing here, but I figure I'm right - I think it helps you to understand what's going on if you look at it like that. So, that's how I'm going to explain all this to you, okay? So you kind of hear it in your own language, you know what I mean? And also, so you can check up on it and see I'm telling you the truth here. I'm showing good faith by making sure you can do that.

Now, first off, I thought you'd mostly all be dead by forty. Let's get that straight right from the start. That was the time frame I was working in, and I don't think anyone can accuse me of not doing enough to make this reasonable. Natural disasters, disease, wild animals, cold, starvation - the list goes on. So, I don't think that any charge of negligence is going to stick, you know? And until fairly recently, it worked. How was I to know you'd start coming with all this stuff to keep yourselves alive? Flood warnings and antibiotics and office work. You think it's reasonable to blame me for not guessing that some wise guy would go and invent a dialysis machine, eh? So, for a start, any problems with your love life when you're over forty: not my fault, okay? Past the warranty. Stuff you do beyond thirty-nine you do at your own risk, you know what I'm saying?

So, I'd got this sex stuff - which, I think you'll agree, is kind of neat - and my only problem was how to ... um, how to implement it. You have fourteen years to get a chance to stop being stupid (Okay, okay, third strike, there - let's push on anyways), a bit of finding your feet, then all the sex while you try to defy the odds against dying for a decade or so. Now, it was kind of important you had sex. I was worried you might not do it enough to keep yourselves in offspring, so I put a lot of work into getting you to go for it. (Well, yes, - I went over the top, obviously. Everyone can be smart in retrospect, can't they?) First I made you want it - badly. How? "Gonadal steroids," apparently. As I say, I'm just using your words here - if I'd been naming stuff, you can bet I'd never have come up with "gonadal steroids." I mean, ugh, right? Anyways, you have these gonadal steroids - estrogen and testosterone - to get you all fired up and looking for sex. Off you go.

Now I need to refine it a bit or ... well, I'll let you picture what happens if I don't - but queues would move even slower at the post office, if you know what I'm saying. So, I get you to be attracted to someone, rather than absolutely everyone (I'm going to come back to this later, so remember it, okay?). I'm pretty clever here, if I say so myslef. I throw in a bit of that brain chemistry that you people call psychology - basic stuff, but I do it real smooth like, so you don't notice.

For example, I make you most attracted to faces that are similar to your own. That's to say that, if your're a man, you like your own mug, only in a more feminine style, and the same if your're a woman - you go for the structure you see in your mirror but with the manliness turned up. (You didn't even know that, did you? You think I am making this up. I'm not - ask people at the University of St. Andrews, in Scotland, if I'm just making this up' they'll smack you right in the face.) Better, I thought, that you're drawn to faces like your own than if you're drawn to faces like your dogs'. Tell me I'm wrong. Mostly it's very simple rules that I come with. You don't know about them, but they're pretty fomulaic. Symmetry: you prefer symmetrical people. Smell: women prefer the smell of men whose immune systems are different from theirs. Oh, and they go for male pheromones pretty reliably too. (I got a bit carried away with women and smelling, to be honest. Ended up with women being a thousand times more sensitive to some smells than men. No need for that, really. Just on a roll again.) And all the time I'm seeing to it that you get really excited about this by doling out the monoamines.

You remember the monoamines, right? Remember I mentioned them a while back, just so you wouldn't start giving some kind of spiritual agenda to the woody that Tom got while he was interviewing George? Yeah, sure you do. Well, let me clue you in on the monoamines.

Monoamines are a collection of chemicals - neurotransmitters - and they, well, they are sexual attraction, basically. What happens when you feel attraction? Nah, don't give me any of that, "Oooh, I go all tingly" or "It's like tiny little bunnies are hopping around in my stomach and my mind starts twinkling" stuff. Not only are metaphors part of the trouble here, but I asked you what happens, not how you interpret it. Attraction isn't controlled, it couldn't give a damn about your morals or your worldview, and it definitely isn't the work of Cupid, tiny pink fairies, or magic of any kind. It's monoamines. You've got your serotonin, your norepinephrine (that's adrenaline to you and me), and your dompamine washing about in your head. Your brain's lighting up around the medial insula, the anterior cingulate cortex, the caudate nucleus, and the putamen, while it's "good night" to the posterior cingulate gyrus, the amygdala, and, right-laterally, the prefrontal, parietal, and middle temporal cortices. What the hell does all that mean? It means you're mad as crab, basically. I'm not kidding here - you're clinically barking; you really shouldn't be allowed to drive. Monoamines are the ruthless, amoral storm troopers of sexual attraction; these things really do take no prisoners - dopamine alone buys your entire better judgement in exchange for a warm glow - and together they make the kind of cocktail that can, say, lead to you ending up in a hotelroom on top of a soap star.

But, as you'll have guessed, all of this is no good if, when you manage to get sex, you find it's about as appealing as chewing a truck driver's sock. So, stage three: neuropeptides. What we have here, basically, are your standard oxytocin and vasopressinn. You have sex, oxytocin hits the pleasure centers of your brain, and you think, "Whoa. That's something I'll be doing again." But - and this is where I got real smart - oxytocin also encourages you to be faithful. I really put in the effort with this one. Did the road work. I tested the idea of faithfulness with prairie voles first - to see if it was possible. Didn't know I was using oxytocin, of course, but that's what it was, and I tried faithfulness with midwestern prairie vole males and skipped it with the northwestern ones. I have to tell you, with prairie voles, it was fine either way. But with you I went for the faithful approach - figured you'd enjoy the grounding. So, I hit you with oxytocin when you had sex, and I made its release what the white coat call a "a classically conditioned reflex." What that means is you get oxytocin when you have sex, but if you have sex with one person enough it gets so as a bit slips out when you just see them. If Tom thinks he feels guilty now, just wait until he sees Sara again and he gets a shot of oxytocin to hammer it home.

So, there you go - pretty well planned, I think you'll agree. You don't have to bother about sorting yourselves out to reproduce, 'cause I've set up everything for you. No thought required on your part.

Then you go and begin moving goalposts.

I didn't know you were going to change from small groups to cities of eight million, did I? I thought you'd be very lucky to reach the four-decade mark before you died from the flu or were eaten by a wolf, so why bother about the long-term durability of faithfulness? The effects of the monoamines only hold out for - best-case scenario - thirty months. After that your body becomes "tolerant" to the neurotransmitters and, well, passion fades. That's the end of the running through parks in rainstorms, laughing - there's only reflexive oxytocin holding you together now. And how well do you think that's going to hold up when another round of dopamine and serotonin arrives? And I didn't even think it was important to fix that glitch where women - whatever country and culture they've grown up in - have a cycle of about four years from getting together to thinking about finding someone else. Serial monogamy seemed to be fine; chances are that within four or five years either she or her partner would have succumbed to appendicitis or been carried off by an avalanche or something - and even if that didn't happen, well, there'd hardly be four million other people hanging around within an hour's drive for her to move on to, would there? And why not give men an extra helping of testosterone to keep their eyes open? Better to have loved and lost, right?

And this is where it starts to get very embarrassing for me. 'Cause I didn't think infidelity would be a big issue. I certainly couldn't have guessed that more people would be, would even get the chance to be, unfaithful than faithful - you really shot me down in flames there, didn't you? 'Cause I didn't allow for it, it's all done really, really badly. I never thought to throw in a bit of sleight of hand to make it look random or varied. I didn't even give it the thought I put into snow-flakes, is what I am saying. It just runs on the basics, it falls back onto the low-level, unrefined chemistry and psychology (and psychology is nothing but chemistry in a groove, of course). That's why every affair is like every other affair. It doesn't matter whether it's an infidelity between two people who make the same bolts at the same factory, or an English wrriter living in Edinburgh colliding with an actress from the country's highest rated soap ... it's always the same. The trivial details vary and the settings are different, but the people go through the same thing time and time again. I know you must have spotted this, which is partly the reason why I felt I should own up here. Admit what you all knew anyway, just to clear the air.

I messed up. But I got lots of other stuff right. Take bananas, for example. Bananas I got dead-on. Okay, okay, I sense the hostility, and that's fine; best to acknowledge it. If we don't both acknowledge it, we won't be able to move on.

And, you know, I think we can move on, a little. I'm not going to discuss that now, though. Right now, I think you need some time to yourself, a little bit of space.

We'll talk later, okay?

Instant Love ... A Certain Chemistry ... By Mil Millington - Part 4

I'm sorry you had to witness that, I really am. You're classy people, some of you, and you shouldn't have to be confronted with that kind of thing. If it's any consolation, just think how Tom's going to feel when you all meet up in the afterlife and he learns that the bunch of you sat there watching him trying to get a quick one off the wrist, huh?

Of course, I've got to take some responsibility myself, and I'm big enough to put up my hands and accept part of the blame - that's why I'm here telling you all this now. When I started this whole thing - you know, the universe and all that stuff - I thought it'd be a nice little distraction. I'd set it up, leave it running, sit back and watch it like a lava lamp - kind of fascinated, kind of just letting my mind drift. You know what I mean? But, anyways, to keep it working you need to have the whole sex thing, and so I put that in the mix. Never though it'd be such a big deal, I swear to you, I really didn't. It's like, okay, I heard this thing about Rachman and Hodgson that other day. These guys are scientists - I'm a real science freak, by the way. Do you watch Discovery Channel? It's great - I love that stuff. You see, I didn't have a clue about how anything works - why would I have? I want a whale, I go, "Boom - whale," and that's it - bada-bing, bada-boom. I'm not going to get all caught up in the details, am I? I mean, the devil's in the details, right? Ha ha- "the devil's in the details" - get it? No, no, I 'm kidding you again. Relax, there's no devil - why would I make a devil? What am I, stupid? But that's a good one, right? "the devil's in the details." Ha ha. Anyways, what I'm saying is, these scientists come along, and they study stuff and investigate and explain how everything works. And I'm, like, "Wow! A whale. So that's how I did that ... cool." So, same thing, these guys Rachman and Hodgson - Stan and Ray - Stan and Ray do these experiments to see if they can persuade people to have, you know, "a thing" for boots. They're basically seeing if they can grow a fetish in the lab, right? Because, they're thinking, some people have these things anyways, so let's see if we can understand how that could happen by trying to make one of our own. And they chose to make one for boots. Don't ask me why. Maybe they think using underwear would cloud the issue, you know, and trying to get folks to have the hots for a gas turbine engine is just making things hard for themselves - so they settle on boots. Whatever, ask them if you want - it's not important to what I'm telling you here. Anyways, they do it. Stan and Ray do these, you know, kind of, conditioning things with volunteers, and eventutally they get guys to go, "Phwoar!" when you show them a picture of a boot.

So, back there, Tom was doing a bit of conditioning of his own. Self-condition: reinforcing his attraction to George by looking at pictures of her while ... you know, "applying stimulation." He didn't know that, of course. He didn't intend to do it, but that's what he was doing all the same. Maybe some of you might want to bear that in mind, eh? Be aware of what you're doing sometimes - just so you avoid getting yourselves more into spin dryers or certain kinds of fruit or socks full of Jell-O than you ever intended. It's okay, I'm not going to name names: you know who you are.

But that's not the most important thing here. The most important thing is what happened after Stan and Ray worked thier shoe trick. You see, they got a result, and they're happy. They go out for a meal to celebrate, maybe, I don't know - and then, because they're straight-up guys, they set about deconditioning the volunteers. Ridding them of this unfortunate boot attraction that's been created for the purposes of scientific investigation. And here's the thing, right .. a lot of volunteers don't want to be "cured." They're into it now. I mean, you can imagine how it is for them. It's like they've discovered a whole new sex or something. They can probably spend the entire afternoon standing looking through the window of a shoe shop; it's probably like watching an orgy for them, right? It's just a programmed reaction ... but that's all "normal" attraction is. I simply put it in there to make sure you kept things going - but to guarantee that, it needed to be powerful. So powerful it has Tom playing five-knuckles shuffle in his dining room when the house is empty. So powerful, right, so powerful that it seems more than functional, it seems precious and mystical to those who feel it. The boot squad don't want to have their desire for a nicely turned insole taken away from them, but would you want your desire removed? If some doctor said to you, "We're going to do a desire-ectomy on you, so that all those feelings you have looking at a film star or a singer or a model or the person across the road no longer get in the way and you can live your life undistracted by such urges, "would you go in for the operation? Like I siaid, this is partly my fault. I make things important for you guys, and then I',m all surprised when you feel they're important in ways I didn't intend. I needed them to be strong: I never intended them to be special.

I'm sorry about that. Really, I am.

Instant Love ... A Certain Chemistry ... By Mil Millington - Part 3

Right, now I know what you guys is like, so I think I need to step in here - just quickly - and get something straight. 'Cause I can just see you all sitting there going, "Yeah, I know what's happening here, " and starting to invent this big theory that I'll never be able to get you off of. You just can't stop yourselves. That's part of the problem, in fact. I don't know about what George (Georgina is her real name) said back there a ways about wanting to have a shrink, but I do know that every one of you secretly thinks you could be a shrink: you just love to analyze one another. If I don't step in here, you'll be giving it all the "this means that" and "he does such because she does whatver" and "it's all to do with unfulfilled needs" and "faulty images of self" and "the table represents his mother" and who knows what you'll end up believing. Well, before you start doing that, I',m going to say one word to you, okay? Here it is: monoamines. Got that? Monoamines.

I'll explain this more later - now's not the time. But I want you to stay focused, you hear me? I want you to keep on the path and, if you ever find yourself wandering off into some tangled forest of theorizing, you just say to yourself, "Monoamines, " and get yourself back on course. Think you can do that for me? Yeah, well .... at least try - okay?

Instant Love ... A Certain Chemistry ... By Mil Millington - Part 2

Hiya, God here again. Forget I was watching, did you? Yeah, that happens a lot. Ha ha! Relax, relax, it's okay - I'm just kidding with you. I got to tell you, one of the real drags about being God is being, you know, misunderstood. You know what I'm saying? It's like I crack a joke and everyone's, "What did he mean by that? Should we laugh? Or is he going to smite us or something?" I'm telling you, it'd really get me down if I let it. And expectations too. Man, you wouldn't believe the expectations people have of you when you're God. They can come to you with a real attitude because you don't do things the way they expected. Sometimes I have to get a bit heavy, you know - remind them all the lines. "I hear you're upset, and that's okay. But lose the attitude or you'll find yourself in a situation - you hear what I'm saying?" Like, say, when they die. Some of them stand there shooting their mouth off. Real obstreperous. They're like, "Hey, Tony, we followed this religion or that religion and this god or these gods, and it turns out you're nothing anyone's ever heard of! Why didn't you tell someone, eh? Do you realize the time we've wasted panicking about certain days and what to wear and how to do things and what we could say? And don't even start us on the nightmare we've had keeping to the diet." You know, like that's my fault. I have to try to calm them down, yeah? Say I can see where they're coming from but I didn't make all that up and, frankly, some of it ... well, for ages I didn't think anyone actually believed that stuff, I thought they were just pretending to believe it for a joke. You know, being kind of ironic. Anyhow, eventually I generally get them to calm down. It's a bit of a kicker wasting all that time (though, I tell you, mostly I think they're angry just because they're embarassed), but that's over. Put it behind you. Fresh start. They usually come around in the end. It's a pretty good place here, all things considered. We even have minigolf now.

Whatever - let's stick to the matter in hand, eh? The tale I'm laying on you here, with Tom and all those guys, I showing you it so you understand a few things, okay? I'm trying to show you why things happen the way they do. It's about how stuff works, basically - that is, it's about how you work, that's the thing I'm trying to explain: the reasons you all behave a certain way and how you stick to the path, even though you can't see the path. Some of you may not like what I have to tell you, but it's for the best that you understand the situation. So, for now, I just want you to watch the people, right? I know how you guys tend to get, well, "distracted". You look at what work people do and where they are and all that kind of thing. The scenery. You get all caught up with the details and can't see beyond them. Well, don't, okay? What's happening here is what always happens. And there are reasons for that, but I'll come to those later. Just don't get distracted by any of the background noise, okay? Watch the people. Don't think about who they are; watch what they do. It's the people. The people are always the important thing.

Instant Love ... A Certain Chemistry ... By Mil Millington - Part 1

Hi there, I'm God. Yeah, yeah, I know, you thought I'd be taller. Cheesh, I created you people and sometimes even I don't get you, you know what I am saying? Some joker's standing here - bit of a problem with his brakes and now he's the new kid in paradise - and he's all with the "Yeah, right - you're God" like there's a height restriction on creating the universe or something. So I'm a couple of inches shorter than he is, so what? I'm God - get over it.

Anyways, don't get me started down that road 'cause I'm here to explain some stuff. It's real important stuff - kind of, you know, sweeping, if you get me. So, what I'm thinking here is that the best way to start doing this is to tell you about somethting that happenned - you know, show it to you as an example of what I'm talking about. This is somethting that happenned to Tom Cartwright. Tom's twenty-eight, he lives in Edinburgh, Scotland, and he's one of those - what do you call them? Those guys who do books for other people? - ghostwriters, that's it, he's one of them there ghostwriters. What I want you to keep in mind here is that - no, in fact, I'll come to that later. Right now, just listen whie I have Tom start to tell you his story.

Yeah, of course I can do that.

Find The MIssing Experiment

Prof. Santa Singh, a world class scientist from Chandigarh, was also interested in locating the Ultimate Sensor, just like us. He, however, was focusing on the sense of Sound. He decided to use the fruitflies - Drosophila melanogaster - for his research for two important reasons - a) firstly, the fruitflies are very genetically amenable and b) secondly, the female flies respond to the male courtship song by spreading their wings, a visual signal for males (and Santa Singh) to indicate their readiness to mate (Not with Santa Singh! but with male flies).


Prof. Santa Singh was delighted with his idea and the possibilities that it represented. He wanted to conduct full time research on it. He decided to apply for NIH Research Grant R01 that would supply him with a crucial fund of 1 million dollars over the course of four years to conduct his research without any distractions. There is a lot of competition for these grants, so some preliminary experimental data is also supplied by the applicants in addition to their proposal to demonstrate the strength of their proposal.


Thus motivated to do some real experimental work before submitting the proposal, Prof. Santa Singh arrived at his lab on one fine Monday morning. He downloaded the courtship songs from the internet, borrowed a few wildtype virgin flies from the neighboring lab, put them on a Petri Dish containing aphrodisiac food and .... played the music!


For the first one minute, nothing happpenned - the female flies behaved as if nothing was happenning. Then one female fly spread her wings for two seconds and retracted them. Then, nothing remarkable happenned for the next 5 minutes. Then, another female fly spread her wings for five seconds. And then, nothing remarkable happenned for the next half an hour. By then, Prof. Santa Singh was frustrated.


He had imagined that the flies would be always ready to mate - they were like machines - Supply the Stimulus, Elicit the Response - but alas, his brilliant idea was trumped a well known universal truth - that the females are very moody and not always ready to mate! He went home frustrated and discussed the matter with his wife, a psychologist who ran a successful marital counselling business. She explained to Prof. Santa Singh that only two types of females are always ready to mate - 1) those who have been abused as children and are suffering from low self esteem, and 2) those that have a higher hormonal level than the normal people due to genetic alteration. "Ah Ha!", said Prof. Santa Singh. He just had had a "Eureka" moment. He thanked his wife profusely for her expert counselling and excused himself to go to the study to write up his proposal.


Prof. Santa Singh's idea was simplicity itself - he wanted to propose an isolation of "horny" mutation in fruit flies, whose behavior would be an immediate spreading of wings in response to the courtship song recording. By way of preliminary experiments, he wanted to isolate such a mutant fly. He knew it would be done very quickly, because his neighboring lab was screening 2000 mutant lines for behavior at the very moment. He just had to borrow their flies, put them on a dish, play the music and watch for the wing-spread. It was a very quick assay! He was very pleased with himself.


The next day, it was a beautiful Tuesday morning, he arrived at his lab, armed with the twenty trays of 100 vials containing 2000 mutant flies. He started doing his assay - anaesthatize the flies by giving them a puff of Carbon Di Oxide, put them on the petridish, play the music and score for wing spread action. He was very efficient ... he was workig with 20 vials at a time ... In four hours, he had screened all 2000 lines. He was no more so ecstatic as he had been when he started out. Not a single vial contained flies that would spread their wings within 10 seconds of playing the courtship song. How disappointing! Yet ... there was that one vial .. vial number 297 ... which had some weird behavior ... he remembered them being particularly "jumpy".


He went back to vial 297, poured some more flies out, anaesthetized them, laid them on a petridish, and waited for them to become active. They were behaving normally. They looked normal. The eyes were red, the wings were straight, the body was normal, the bristles long ... in fact, as far as looks were concerned, they looked completely normal! Yet, when he turned the music ON, a few of the flies JUMPED and hit the ceiling of the Petri Dish. The kept JUMPING. They stopped when the music was turned off.


Prof. Santa Singh felt another Eureka experience building up in him. So, he did not have "horny" mutant but a "jumpy" mutant. He needed the "horny" mutant because he wanted a visual response of spreading wings to the stimulus of playing courtship song. But "jumpy" mutants also had a visual response - that of jumping to the ceiling of the Petri Dish - in response to the very same stimulus - namely the courtship song. All he had to do was substitute "jumpy" for "horny" and "jumps to celing" for "spreads her wings" in his proposal that he had drafted yesterday, and the proposal would essentially still be good!


This indeed was very good luck! He already had the "jumpy" mutant fly. In fact, he even knew which possible genes were mutated in it, because the flies had come from the Bloomington Stock Center, a centralized stock center in the world, on which the whole world was working!


Prof. Santa Singh quickly revised his proposal, and rushed it by FedEx to NIH. The grant was reviewed and voted on. It was a fantastic proposal - it ranked in the top 90 percentile of all the proposals. A few months after the submission of the grant, Prof. Santa Singh received a letter congratulating him on being awarded the R01 grant from NIH and the details of how he would be receiving the $1,000,000.
...............................................................................................................

In the meantime, Mr. Banta Singh, an aspiring graduate student, had expressed his desire to join Prof. Santa Singh's lab and conduct research on the anatomical location of Sound Sensors in "jumpy" flies. Just the day before receiving the letter from NIH, he had concluded the most fascinating research in his entire life - he had made a breakthrough! He had identified THE ANATOMICAL location of Sound Sensor. When he mentioned this to his mentor, Prof. Santa Singh smiled at Mr. Banta Singh and advised him to write up a thesis proposal and take his qualifying exam. When Mr. Banta Singh submitted his thesis proposal the very next day, all the members of his thesis committee were surprised by the industry of Mr. Banta Singh. Three weeks later, everyone was looking forward to the presentation.


Mr. Banta Singh started his presentation by narrating the story of how the "jumpy" mutant had been isolated in just a day and what a brilliant tool it had turned out to be in the research of anatomical location of the Sound Sensor. He then outline the four approaches he had initially undertaken - a) to genetically ablate a few neurons in the brain, b) to anatomically ablate a few body parts at a time c) to use laser to ablate different patches of neurons in the brain and d) to combine these approaches and ablate Multiple body parts simultaneuosly.


Genetic ablations of neurons by induction of the apoptotic genes in the adult head in different tissues resulted in dead flies, normal flies or severly retarded flies. Anatomical ablation of single body parts such as a leg, a wing, an eye etc. did not lead to any difference in the "jumpy" behavior. Laser ablation of different patch of neurons in the brain yielded the same results as the first one. However, the final approach had yielded some really great positive results!


He then showed a video he had made of the final crucial experiment. The video showed a single "jumpy" fly in a Petri Dish. The courtship music was turned on. Within a second of starting the music, the "jumpy" fly jumped. Then one leg was removed from the "jumpy" fly and released back into the Petri Dish. The courtship music was turned back on again, and now the "jumpy" fly jumped again! Mr. Banta Singh proceeded to remove one leg at a time with a pair of tweezers, release the fly into the Petri Dish, play the courtship song and write a comment in his notebook until the "jumpy" fly had only one leg left. Mr. Banta Singh placed the "jumpy" fly with just one leg back into the Petri Dish and played the courtship song one more time. The "jumpy" fly made its best effort to jump, which he recorded in his notebook. After he pulled off its last leg, he placed the legless "jumpy" fly back into the Petri dish for one last time and played the courstship song. After repeating the song many times without the "jumpy" fly responding, he stopped the video, and exclaimed to his audience, " After the fly loses all of its legs it becomes completely deaf!"


The audience laughed. They thought that either Prof. Santa Singh or Mr. Banta Singh had played a joke on them. They were surprised by the solemn expression on the faces of both Prof. Santa Singh and Mr. Banta Singh. They were in earnest! They both really believed that the site of auditory sensation resided in the legs of the fruitflies. Mr. Banta Singh proceeded, "I did one last experiment to confirm the results, and here is the video". After his demonstration of the video, his entire audience was dumbfounded. They burst into applause. Everyone thought that Mr. Banta Singh and Prof. Santa Singh had made a Nobel Prize winning breakthrough. Indeed, ten years later, they both went to Sweden to accept the accolade.


The question to you, my gentle reader, is: "What was the last experiment performed by Mr. Banta Singh that was documented in the final video"? Hint: The last experiment was performed on wild-type flies ... the clues / information are already available in this article .... And YEAH! THIS IS A SERIOUS SCIENCE QUESTION DESPITE ALL APPEARENCES!

Theory of consciousness - Part 1 - Sensual Universe: Deductions from reductionism

Richard Feynman said:

If, in some cataclysm, all scientific knowledge were to be destroyed, and only one sentence passed on to the next generation of creatures, what statement would contain the most information in the fewest words? I believe it is the atomic hypothesis (or atomic fact, or whatever you wish to call it) that all things are made of atoms — little particles that move around in perpetual motion, attracting each other when they are a little distance apart, but repelling upon being squeezed into one another. In that one sentence you will see an enormous amount of information about the world, if just a little imagination and thinking are applied.


Let us then apply a little imagination and thinking to that one area of biology that has eluded any explanation (not even a wrong explanation!) so far - that of consciousness. By consciousness, I mean that quality which distinguishes the conceivably most advanced robot from a human. Thus, consciousness has got nothing to do with reproduction ... we can design robots that make other robots. Nor does it have to do with memory - robots can be designed to never forget.


Let us consider that part of consciousness that deals with vision. Going back to the definition of consciousness, Vision Consciousness is quality of vision that distinguishes the conceivably most advance robot's vision from a human's vision. A human's vision can be thought of as the ability to sense some spectral information about outside world, recognize patterns therein, and either match them to known objects in memory, or add a new entry into the memory. A robot with a sensitive camera can also accomplish the same feat. Yet, we do not say that the "Robot can see just like we do", because we sense that there is some additional quality to our vision that the robot is lacking. If we could somehow define, understand and get a grip on this "difference", then we could understand consciousness so much more better.


For the purposes of this essay, let us define the difference between Robotic Vision and Human Vision as Conscious-Vision. Both human eye and robotic camera are capable of recognizing the "red" color of rose ... as in the light reflected from the rose had a wavelength in the neighborhood of 400 nm; yet, only human eye can sense redness while robotic camera merely records the wavelength. This ability to see, sense, feel and experience the chromatic beauty of rose is the essence of Conscious-Vision.


Which parts of the body are the essential for Conscious-Vision? By process of accidental elimination of body parts, we can postulate that the fingers, the toes, the nails, the legs, the stomach, the heart, the kidney and other parts below neck are not necessary for Conscious-Vision. Within the head region, we can similarly eliminate the tongue, the ears, the nose, the external skin, the hair, the mustache and the beard as being unnecessary to experience Conscious-Vision. Thus we are left with the relatively small parts of the body - "the eye and the brain" - as essential body parts for Conscious-Vision.


That the eye and the brain are necessary for Conscious-Vision was perhaps expected. Before we proceed further in our investigations, let us pause for a moment and indulge in a minor tangential, albeit very interesting, question - Can A Blind Man Dream In Colors? By definition, the blind man cannot "see" when he is awake. However, it is conceivable that he still might be able to "see" dreams.


Medically, the answer seems to be - "it depends" - it in fact depends on whether the blindness was at the time of birth or only recently. If the blindness was congential, then there is no notion of "sight". However, if the blindness was recent, then the blind man does have vivid colorful dreams.


Returning now to our original quest ... we had so far concluded that the eye and the brain were essential for Conscious-Vision. With the added benefit of dream-ability of a blind man, we can further postulate that the "eyes" themselves are not essential for continued Conscious-Vision. Thus, we are left with "just the brain". We can congratulate ourselves on our achievement - we started with the statement - "Man has Conscious-Vision" and ended with "Brain has Conscious-Vision". If Man were considered to be sum of all the parts, then we elimiated all but one part!


Can we repeat this same feat? Brain, after all, can be thought of as sum of all of its parts - namely all the cells that constitute it. So, can a cubic millimeter region of the brain be idenitfied as the site of Conscious-Vision? With today's scientific knowledge, we can not answer this question. However, there is no reason to suspect that this question does not admit a positive answer. Let us then suppose that at some future date, a cubic millimeter region of the brain was shown to be sufficient to experience Conscious-Vision.


Would our intellectual curiosity about the site of Conscious-Vision be satisfied with the identification of a one cubic millimeter patch? No! We would demand application of the process of narrowing down one more time! We would demand that the cubic-millimeter patch of the brain be considered as a sum total of all its parts - namely the hundreds of neurons and the glia that form the patch - and we narrow down the site of Conscious-Vision to one single cell.


Would our intellectual curiosity about the site of Conscious-Vision be satisfied with the identification of one single cell? No! We would demand application of the process of narrowing down one more time! We would demand that the single cell be considered as a sum total of all its parts - namely the thousands of proteins, the DNA, the RNA, the lipids, the sugars and other simple ions and complex molecules that form the cell - and we narrow down the site of Conscious-Vision to one single molecule.


Finally, Would our intellectual curiosity about the site of Conscious-Vision be satisfied with the identification of one single molecule? No! We would demand to apply the process of narrowing down one more time! We would demand that the single molecule be considered as a sum total of all its parts - namely the hundreds of quarks that form the molecule - and we narrow down the site of Conscious-Vision to one single quark. Only with the identification of a quark as a site of Conscious-Vision will our intellectual curiosity about the subject be finally satisfied!


The very act of asking the question - what is the site of conscious vision - narrowed the possibilities of answers to just one, namely - that the quarks must be the site of conscious vision. This kind of reasoning is called deduction. Let us then re-examine the elements of our deduction.

1. We started with the fact that we can "see" while the robots cannot "see".
2. We also started with the fact that reductionism is a valid logical tool.
3. We applied the tool of reductionism to the issue of "site of conscious vision".
4. We ASSUMED that the atomic hypothesis is correct - namely everything is made of fundamental things that themselves can't be further broken down (now thought to be as quarks).
5. We CONCLUDED that site of conscious vision must reside in the fundamental particles, namely the quarks.



The postulation of quarks having capacity for Conscious Vision immediately gives rise to the following absurdity: If everything in the Universe is made of these fundamental particles - then, everything in the Universe is capable of Conscious Vision! The stone can see, the chalk can see, the hand can see, the nose can see! But none of them do!


Posing the conundrum in terms of the very definition of Conscious Vision ...

A: Conscious Vision is defined as the difference between Human vision and Robotic vision.
B: The capability for Conscious Vision resides in the fundamental particles of Nature, namely quarks.
C: By Atomic Hypothesis, everything in the Universe, including the Human and the Robot, are made of the fundamental particles, i.e. quarks.
D: From B&C, both Humans and Robots have capacity for Conscious Vision.

How does one explain the Robot having the capacity for Conscious Vision but Not in fact having Conscious Vision?

The answer to this question is similar to the answer to another question - What is the difference between a man who is dead and the same man, who, a couple seconds ago, was still alive? This will be taken up in the next essay ...