Are sciences and arts perversions?

According to Wikipedia, perversion is

a type of human behavior that deviates from that which is understood to be orthodox or normal.

Now consider the human mind. We evolved so that we find food, make children, avoid predators etc. All these are just means that serve to our survival in a universe that is trying to kill us. Or, even better, they serve to the selfish gene, to its replication.

So, the human mind shouldn't care about things that don't serve this purpose. What evolutionary purpose can be in doing math and physics? Indulging yourself in such activities doesn't serve the purpose of your survival and replication. One may say that, at least for some, science is their job, they earn money, and they survive. But researchers know better that jobs in the industry are safer and better paid, and with better success rate. And better success at ladies (although artists are doing even better). But anyway, sciences and arts are recent, so they can't be the product of mutation and selection. So, science and arts are perversions of the original purpose of the brain.

While they are not the product of evolution, they may be a byproduct. In order to survive, our ancestors had to identify patterns around them, use these patterns to make predictions. To anticipate when a wild animal will attack them, to recognize comestible fruits, to identify a sexual partner with good potential, all these require pattern recognition and the ability to make predictions. And this is why we became intelligent. So, even if we are using our intelligence to other purposes like sciences, this is a byproduct of evolution.

Nature has a way to reward you when you do something good for your genes. This is why we like to eat and to have sex. This is why we feel proud and happy when our children accomplish tasks or acquire new skills. But the blind gene doesn't know the future, so she can't reward us for actually doing something good for her. Instead, she rewards us for guessing patterns. We feel happy when we guess a pattern, and especially when a long anticipated prediction is confirmed. We identify patterns in sounds and drawings too, so this is why we like music and other arts. Even literature, builds on our predictions and anticipation. During anticipation, the brain produces the drugs that will make us happy. Building anticipation and suspense is the craft of accumulating this happiness in the consumer of one's art.

We are surprised when we make predictions which we consider safe, and turn out to be wrong. Sometimes, the anticipation accumulates the feel-good drug, and the surprise makes it explode. So this is how we laugh. Jokes are just clever ways to manipulate us into making predictions that turn out to be wrong in an unexpected and usually harmless way.

OK, so evolution explains all these as perversions of our mind, as byproducts. However, we know that science helped us to survive better. As a result of science and of its progeny, technology, we live longer, in better conditions, we find and produce food easier, we can take care better of our children and it also helps the children of our children.

So, science really helps the replication of the selfish gene.

I can't help but asking, did the selfish gene have a secret plan all this time?

Black holes can't keep secrets

At first, math seemed to show that anything that enters a black hole, is lost forever. Later, it seemed that black holes evaporate, but the secrets remain lost. But maybe it is not so.

My new video at the FQXi contest is called Can a black hole keep a secret?, and can be seen and rated at http://fqxi.org/community/forum/topic/2205:

To rate my video or those of my competitors, click "rate this video". You will be required to enter an email address to avoid duplicate votes. Then press "go" and vote.

You can check and rate other videos at FQXi Video Contest - Spring, 2014. You can submit your own video until August 22.

In the previous post, named The puzzle of quantum reality, in theaters near you, and at FQXi, I mentioned my other video, and my son's.

On youtube, my videos can be watched with subtitles, in English or in Romanian:
The puzzle of quantum reality
Can a black hole keep a secret?

The puzzle of quantum reality, in theaters near you, and at FQXi

I made a 7 minutes video introducing some puzzling aspects of quantum mechanics to a general audience. At the end it contains a proposed view which, at least to me, makes the things clearer, so I hope it can help others too.

My video, named The puzzle of quantum reality, can be seen and rated at http://fqxi.org/community/forum/topic/2183:

To rate my video or those of my competitors, click "rate this video". You will be required to enter an email address to avoid duplicate votes.

I also compete against my son, whose video is at http://fqxi.org/community/forum/topic/2176:

You can check and rate other videos, ranging from fun to informative, at FQXi Video Contest - Spring, 2014. You can submit your own video until August 22.

A confused sleeping beauty 2

This post contains a small twist of the original experiment discussed in the previous post, A confused sleeping beauty. The new version doesn't require putting anyone to sleep and removing her memories, because we replace memory removal with lack of information.

Confusing Sleeping Beauty without erasing her memory

Sleeping Beauty is no longer required to sleep, but she may still need to sleep, to remain beautiful.

Consider the following settings:

- We toss a fair coin.

- If it lands heads, we will ask once Sleeping Beauty her belief for the proposition that the question landed heads.

- If the coin lands tail, we ask her twice.

This is similar to the original experiment, but instead of erasing her memory, we just do the following:

- Before asking her any question, we toss the coin a large number of times.

- Then we ask Beauty, but not in the same order in which we tossed. For example, when we toss a coin, if it landed heads, we write down a question and don't ask it yet. If it landed tails, we write down two questions, and don't ask them yet. Then we shuffle the questions and we ask Beauty one at a time. We take care to keep track for each question to which toss is connected.

To prevent the possibility that she adjust her estimates by counting counting the number of heads and tails about which she was already asked, we don't tell her whether she guessed or not, until the end of the experiment.

We see that the most rational answer she can give is 1/3. On the other hand, of course she knows that the probability that when the coin was tossed it landed heads is 1/2.

A confused sleeping beauty

The Sleeping Beauty problem

 A recent post by Sean Carroll reignited a debate about the "Sleeping beauty problem".

This is a simple problem of probabilities, involving tossing a coin. But for some reason, it seems to be no agreement about its solution.

Consider the following experiment:

- On Sunday, put Sleeping Beauty to sleep.

- Toss a fair coin.

- We are interested to ask Sleeping Beauty the question 

Q. What is your belief now for the proposition that the coin landed heads?

- If the coin comes up heads, wake up Sleeping Beauty on Monday and ask her the question. Then drug her to forget that awakening.

- If the coin comes up tails, wake up Sleeping Beauty both on Monday and Tuesday and ask her the question. Each time drug her to forget that awakening.

- In both cases, don't forget to wake her on Wednesday and end the experiment.

If you have trouble convincing a Beauty to let you put her to sleep and drug her, you can try your luck with people who already have very short memory, like Lucy Whitmore from "50 First Dates", Leonard from "Memento", Allie from The Notebook, or Dory from "Finding Nemo". Or you can make the experiment with Dory from "Finding Nemo". 

You can also perform the experiment with Dory from "Finding Nemo".

Those thinking they know the answer are mainly in one of two camps: halfers, who think she should answer 1/2, and thirdirs, who think she should answer 1/3. Thirdirs say that when Beauty is waken and interviewed, she thinks she can be in one of three situations. Since only in one of the cases the coin turned up heads, the answer must be 1/3. Halfers say that this answer is wrong, being probably caused by drug abuse, and since the coin is fair, the answer should be 1/2. There is nothing that can provide new information to Sleeping Beauty, so this answer should remain 1/2.

I will not detail here the debates still ongoing on the net, and the articles which are written about this. I just want to explain why I think that this debate is based on different understandings of the question.

Another experiment

Consider the following experiment.

- Prepare a large box, in which you can put apples and oranges, without seeing its content.

- Toss a fair coin.

- If the coin comes up heads, put one orange in the box.

- If the coin comes up tails, put two apples in the box.

- Repeat this many times.

- At the end, randomly extract a fruit from the box. Unless the experiment took too long, the fruits are not yet rotten, so you can extract a fruit.

- Then answer the following questions:

1. What is the probability that the fruit you will extract was introduced after the coin landed heads?

2. What fraction of the total times the coin was tossed, it landed heads?

The answer to question 1 is of course 1/3, because 1/3 of the fruits are oranges, and oranges were placed in the box when the coin landed heads.

The answer to question 2 is of course 1/2, because the coin is supposed to be fair.

My claim is that thirdirs were actually answering question 1, and halfers were answering question 2.

The question Sleeping Beauty was asked can be seen as equivalent to both question 1 and question 2.

To see how it can be seen as equivalent to question 1, consider a combination of the two experiments. Say that Sleeping Beauty is not only asked the question, but also it is given a fruit to put in the box. If the coin landed heads, she will receive an orange, and if it landed tails, she will receive an apple. She will put them in the box, then she will be put to sleep and forget about the awakening. Say the experiment is ran a large number of times. At the end, she can just count the fruits, and she will find that 1/3 of them are indeed oranges, so she will know that indeed the answer to the question is 1/3. Asking her about her belief that the coin landed heads that time is the same as asking her about her belief that she will receive an orange.

It is true that for every time the coin landed tails, she gets two apples, while every time it landed heads, she gets only one orange. This is why some tend to understand the question as being actually question 2.

Removing the confusion

So the dispute between thirdirs and halfers is due to the fact that they interpreted the question differently, and consequently answered different questions.

Instead of asking Sleeping Beauty the question as originally stated, we could just ask her two questions:

Q1. What is your belief that this awakening occurred following an event in which the coin landed heads?

Q2. What is your belief that when the coin was tossed, it landed heads?