How To Create A Mind Part 1

HOW TO CREATE A MIND.

BY RAY KURZWEIL.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

I'd like to express my grat.i.tude to my wife, Sonya, for her loving patience through the vicissitudes of the creative process; To my children, Ethan and Amy; my daughter-in-law, Rebecca; my sister, Enid; and my new grandson, Leo, for their love and inspiration; To my mother, Hannah, for supporting my early ideas and inventions, which gave me the freedom to experiment at a young age, and for keeping my father alive during his long illness; To my longtime editor at Viking, Rick Kot, for his leadership, steady and insightful guidance, and expert editing; To Loretta Barrett, my literary agent for twenty years, for her astute and enthusiastic guidance; To Aaron Kleiner, my long-term business partner, for his devoted collaboration for the past forty years; To Amara Angelica for her devoted and exceptional research support; To Sarah Black for her outstanding research insights and ideas; To Laksman Frank for his excellent ill.u.s.trations; To Sarah Reed for her enthusiastic organizational support; To Nanda Barker-Hook for her expert organization of my public events on this and other topics; To Amy Kurzweil for her guidance on the craft of writing; To Cindy Mason for her research support and ideas on AI and the mind-body connection; To Dileep George for his discerning ideas and insightful discussions by e-mail and otherwise; To Martine Rothblatt for her dedication to all of the technologies I discuss in the book and for our collaborations in developing technologies in these areas; To the KurzweilAI.net team, who provided significant research and logistical support for this project, including Aaron Kleiner, Amara Angelica, Bob Beal, Casey Beal, Celia Black-Brooks, Cindy Mason, Denise Scutellaro, Joan Walsh, Giulio Prisco, Ken Linde, Laksman Frank, Maria Ellis, Nanda Barker-Hook, Sandi Dube, Sarah Black, Sarah Brangan, and Sarah Reed; To the dedicated team at Viking Penguin for all of their thoughtful expertise, including Clare Ferraro (president), Carolyn Coleburn (director of publicity), Yen Cheong and Langan Kingsley (publicists), Nancy Sheppard (director of marketing), Bruce Giffords (production editor), Kyle Davis (editorial a.s.sistant), Fabiana Van Arsdell (production director), Roland Ottewell (copy editor), Daniel Lagin (designer), and Julia Thomas (jacket designer); To my colleagues at Singularity University for their ideas, enthusiasm, and entrepreneurial energy; To my colleagues who have provided inspired ideas reflected in this volume, including Barry Ptolemy, Ben Goertzel, David Dalrymple, Dileep George, Felicia Ptolemy, Francis Ganong, George Gilder, Larry Janowitch, Laura Deming, Lloyd Watts, Martine Rothblatt, Marvin Minsky, Mickey Singer, Peter Diamandis, Raj Reddy, Terry Grossman, Tomaso Poggio, and Vlad Sejnoha; To my peer expert readers, including Ben Goertzel, David Gamez, Dean Kamen, Dileep George, Douglas Katz, Harry George, Lloyd Watts, Martine Rothblatt, Marvin Minsky, Paul Linsay, Rafael Reif, Raj Reddy, Randal Koene, Dr. Stephen Wolfram, and Tomaso Poggio; To my in-house and lay readers whose names appear above; And, finally, to all of the creative thinkers in the world who inspire me every day.

INTRODUCTION

The Brain-is wider than the Sky-For-put them side by side-The one the other will containWith ease-and You-beside-The Brain is deeper than the sea-For-hold them-Blue to Blue-The one the other will absorb-As Sponges-Buckets-do-The Brain is just the weight of G.o.d-For-Heft them-Pound for Pound-And they will differ-if they do-As Syllable from Sound-Emily d.i.c.kinson

As the most important phenomenon in the universe, intelligence is capable of transcending natural limitations, and of transforming the world in its own image. In human hands, our intelligence has enabled us to overcome the restrictions of our biological heritage and to change ourselves in the process. We are the only species that does this.

The story of human intelligence starts with a universe that is capable of encoding information. This was the enabling factor that allowed evolution to take place. How the universe got to be this way is itself an interesting story. The standard model of physics has dozens of constants that need to be precisely what they are, or atoms would not have been possible, and there would have been no stars, no planets, no brains, and no books on brains. That the laws of physics are so precisely tuned to have allowed the evolution of information appears to be incredibly unlikely. Yet by the anthropic principle, we would not be talking about it if it were not the case. Where some people see a divine hand, others see a multiverse sp.a.w.ning an evolution of universes with the boring (non-information-bearing) ones dying out. But regardless of how our universe got to be the way it is, we can start our story with a world based on information.

The story of evolution unfolds with increasing levels of abstraction. Atoms-especially carbon atoms, which can create rich information structures by linking in four different directions-formed increasingly complex molecules. As a result, physics gave rise to chemistry.

A billion years later, a complex molecule called DNA evolved, which could precisely encode lengthy strings of information and generate organisms described by these "programs." As a result, chemistry gave rise to biology.

At an increasingly rapid rate, organisms evolved communication and decision networks called nervous systems, which could coordinate the increasingly complex parts of their bodies as well as the behaviors that facilitated their survival. The neurons making up nervous systems aggregated into brains capable of increasingly intelligent behaviors. In this way, biology gave rise to neurology, as brains were now the cutting edge of storing and manipulating information. Thus we went from atoms to molecules to DNA to brains. The next step was uniquely human.

The mammalian brain has a distinct apt.i.tude not found in any other cla.s.s of animal. We are capable of hierarchical hierarchical thinking, of understanding a structure composed of diverse elements arranged in a pattern, representing that arrangement with a symbol, and then using that symbol as an element in a yet more elaborate configuration. This capability takes place in a brain structure called the neocortex, which in humans has achieved a threshold of sophistication and capacity such that we are able to call these patterns thinking, of understanding a structure composed of diverse elements arranged in a pattern, representing that arrangement with a symbol, and then using that symbol as an element in a yet more elaborate configuration. This capability takes place in a brain structure called the neocortex, which in humans has achieved a threshold of sophistication and capacity such that we are able to call these patterns ideas ideas. Through an unending recursive process we are capable of building ideas that are ever more complex. We call this vast array of recursively linked ideas knowledge knowledge. Only h.o.m.o sapiens h.o.m.o sapiens have a knowledge base that itself evolves, grows exponentially, and is pa.s.sed down from one generation to another. have a knowledge base that itself evolves, grows exponentially, and is pa.s.sed down from one generation to another.

Our brains gave rise to yet another level of abstraction, in that we have used the intelligence of our brains plus one other enabling factor, an opposable appendage-the thumb-to manipulate the environment to build tools. These tools represented a new form of evolution, as neurology gave rise to technology. It is only because of our tools that our knowledge base has been able to grow without limit.

Our first invention was the story: spoken language that enabled us to represent ideas with distinct utterances. With the subsequent invention of written language we developed distinct shapes to symbolize our ideas. Libraries of written language vastly extended the ability of our unaided brains to retain and extend our knowledge base of recursively structured ideas.

There is some debate as to whether other species, such as chimpanzees, have the ability to express hierarchical ideas in language. Chimps are capable of learning a limited set of sign language symbols, which they can use to communicate with human trainers. It is clear, however, that there are distinct limits to the complexity of the knowledge structures with which chimps are capable of dealing. The sentences that they can express are limited to specific simple noun-verb sequences and are not capable of the indefinite expansion of complexity characteristic of humans. For an entertaining example of the complexity of human-generated language, just read one of the spectacular multipage-length sentences in a Gabriel Garcia Marquez story or novel-his six-page story "The Last Voyage of the Ghost" is a single sentence and works quite well in both Spanish and the English translation.1 The primary idea in my three previous books on technology (The Age of Intelligent Machines, written in the 1980s and published in 1989; The Age of Spiritual Machines The Age of Spiritual Machines, written in the mid- to late 1990s and published in 1999; and The Singularity Is Near The Singularity Is Near, written in the early 2000s and published in 2005) is that an evolutionary process inherently accelerates (as a result of its increasing levels of abstraction) and that its products grow exponentially in complexity and capability. I call this phenomenon the law of accelerating returns (LOAR), and it pertains to both biological and technological evolution. The most dramatic example of the LOAR is the remarkably predictable exponential growth in the capacity and price/performance of information technologies. The evolutionary process of technology led invariably to the computer, which has in turn enabled a vast expansion of our knowledge base, permitting extensive links from one area of knowledge to another. The Web is itself a powerful and apt example of the ability of a hierarchical system to encompa.s.s a vast array of knowledge while preserving its inherent structure. The world itself is inherently hierarchical-trees contain branches; branches contain leaves; leaves contain veins. Buildings contain floors; floors contain rooms; rooms contain doorways, windows, walls, and floors.

We have also developed tools that are now enabling us to understand our own biology in precise information terms. We are rapidly reverse-engineering the information processes that underlie biology, including that of our brains. We now possess the object code of life in the form of the human genome, an achievement that was itself an outstanding example of exponential growth, in that the amount of genetic data the world has sequenced has approximately doubled every year for the past twenty years.2 We now have the ability to simulate on computers how sequences of base pairs give rise to sequences of amino acids that fold up into three-dimensional proteins, from which all of biology is constructed. The complexity of proteins for which we can simulate protein folding has been steadily increasing as computational resources continue to grow exponentially. We now have the ability to simulate on computers how sequences of base pairs give rise to sequences of amino acids that fold up into three-dimensional proteins, from which all of biology is constructed. The complexity of proteins for which we can simulate protein folding has been steadily increasing as computational resources continue to grow exponentially.3 We can also simulate how proteins interact with one another in an intricate three-dimensional dance of atomic forces. Our growing understanding of biology is one important facet of discovering the intelligent secrets that evolution has bestowed on us and then using these biologically inspired paradigms to create ever more intelligent technology. We can also simulate how proteins interact with one another in an intricate three-dimensional dance of atomic forces. Our growing understanding of biology is one important facet of discovering the intelligent secrets that evolution has bestowed on us and then using these biologically inspired paradigms to create ever more intelligent technology.

There is now a grand project under way involving many thousands of scientists and engineers working to understand the best example we have of an intelligent process: the human brain. It is arguably the most important effort in the history of the human-machine civilization. In The Singularity Is Near The Singularity Is Near I made the case that one corollary of the law of accelerating returns is that other intelligent species are likely not to exist. To summarize the argument, if they existed we would have noticed them, given the relatively brief time that elapses between a civilization's possessing crude technology (consider that in 1850 the fastest way to send nationwide information was the Pony Express) to its possessing technology that can transcend its own planet. I made the case that one corollary of the law of accelerating returns is that other intelligent species are likely not to exist. To summarize the argument, if they existed we would have noticed them, given the relatively brief time that elapses between a civilization's possessing crude technology (consider that in 1850 the fastest way to send nationwide information was the Pony Express) to its possessing technology that can transcend its own planet.4 From this perspective, reverse-engineering the human brain may be regarded as the most important project in the universe. From this perspective, reverse-engineering the human brain may be regarded as the most important project in the universe.

The goal of the project is to understand precisely how the human brain works, and then to use these revealed methods to better understand ourselves, to fix the brain when needed, and-most relevant to the subject of this book-to create even more intelligent machines. Keep in mind that greatly amplifying a natural phenomenon is precisely what engineering is capable of doing. As an example, consider the rather subtle phenomenon of Bernoulli's principle, which states that there is slightly less air pressure over a moving curved surface than over a moving flat one. The mathematics of how Bernoulli's principle produces wing lift is still not yet fully settled among scientists, yet engineering has taken this delicate insight, focused its powers, and created the entire world of aviation.

In this book I present a thesis I call the pattern recognition theory of mind (PRTM), which, I argue, describes the basic algorithm of the neocortex (the region of the brain responsible for perception, memory, and critical thinking). In the chapters ahead I describe how recent neuroscience research, as well as our own thought experiments, leads to the inescapable conclusion that this method is used consistently across the neocortex. The implication of the PRTM combined with the LOAR is that we will be able to engineer these principles to vastly extend the powers of our own intelligence.

Indeed this process is already well under way. There are hundreds of tasks and activities formerly the sole province of human intelligence that can now be conducted by computers, usually with greater precision and at a vastly greater scale. Every time you send an e-mail or connect a cell phone call, intelligent algorithms optimally route the information. Obtain an electrocardiogram, and it comes back with a computer diagnosis that rivals that of doctors. The same is true for blood cell images. Intelligent algorithms automatically detect credit card fraud, fly and land airplanes, guide intelligent weapons systems, help design products with intelligent computer-aided design, keep track of just-in-time inventory levels, a.s.semble products in robotic factories, and play games such as chess and even the subtle game of Go at master levels.

Millions of people witnessed the IBM computer named Watson play the natural-language game of Jeopardy! Jeopardy! and obtain a higher score than the best two human players in the world combined. It should be noted that not only did Watson read and "understand" the subtle language in the and obtain a higher score than the best two human players in the world combined. It should be noted that not only did Watson read and "understand" the subtle language in the Jeopardy! Jeopardy! query (which includes such phenomena as puns and metaphors), but it obtained the knowledge it needed to come up with a response from understanding hundreds of millions of pages of natural-language doc.u.ments including Wikipedia and other encyclopedias on its own. It needed to master virtually every area of human intellectual endeavor, including history, science, literature, the arts, culture, and more. IBM is now working with Nuance Speech Technologies (formerly Kurzweil Computer Products, my first company) on a new version of Watson that will read medical literature (essentially all medical journals and leading medical blogs) to become a master diagnostician and medical consultant, using Nuance's clinical languageunderstanding technologies. Some observers have argued that Watson does not really "understand" the query (which includes such phenomena as puns and metaphors), but it obtained the knowledge it needed to come up with a response from understanding hundreds of millions of pages of natural-language doc.u.ments including Wikipedia and other encyclopedias on its own. It needed to master virtually every area of human intellectual endeavor, including history, science, literature, the arts, culture, and more. IBM is now working with Nuance Speech Technologies (formerly Kurzweil Computer Products, my first company) on a new version of Watson that will read medical literature (essentially all medical journals and leading medical blogs) to become a master diagnostician and medical consultant, using Nuance's clinical languageunderstanding technologies. Some observers have argued that Watson does not really "understand" the Jeopardy! Jeopardy! queries or the encyclopedias it has read because it is just engaging in "statistical a.n.a.lysis." A key point I will describe here is that the mathematical techniques that have evolved in the field of artificial intelligence (such as those used in Watson and Siri, the iPhone a.s.sistant) are mathematically very similar to the methods that biology evolved in the form of the neocortex. If understanding language and other phenomena through statistical a.n.a.lysis does not count as true understanding, then humans have no understanding either. queries or the encyclopedias it has read because it is just engaging in "statistical a.n.a.lysis." A key point I will describe here is that the mathematical techniques that have evolved in the field of artificial intelligence (such as those used in Watson and Siri, the iPhone a.s.sistant) are mathematically very similar to the methods that biology evolved in the form of the neocortex. If understanding language and other phenomena through statistical a.n.a.lysis does not count as true understanding, then humans have no understanding either.

Watson's ability to intelligently master the knowledge in natural-language doc.u.ments is coming to a search engine near you, and soon. People are already talking to their phones in natural language (via Siri, for example, which was also contributed to by Nuance). These natural-language a.s.sistants will rapidly become more intelligent as they utilize more of the Watson-like methods and as Watson itself continues to improve.

The Google self-driving cars have logged 200,000 miles in the busy cities and towns of California (a figure that will undoubtedly be much higher by the time this book hits the real and virtual shelves). There are many other examples of artificial intelligence in today's world, and a great deal more on the horizon.

As further examples of the LOAR, the spatial resolution of brain scanning and the amount of data we are gathering on the brain are doubling every year. We are also demonstrating that we can turn this data into working models and simulations of brain regions. We have succeeded in reverse-engineering key functions of the auditory cortex, where we process information about sound; the visual cortex, where we process information from our sight; and the cerebellum, where we do a portion of our skill formation (such as catching a fly ball).

The cutting edge of the project to understand, model, and simulate the human brain is to reverse-engineer the cerebral neocortex, where we do our recursive hierarchical thinking. The cerebral cortex, which accounts for 80 percent of the human brain, is composed of a highly repet.i.tive structure, allowing humans to create arbitrarily complex structures of ideas.

In the pattern recognition theory of mind, I describe a model of how the human brain achieves this critical capability using a very clever structure designed by biological evolution. There are details in this cortical mechanism that we do not yet fully understand, but we know enough about the functions it needs to perform that we can nonetheless design algorithms that accomplish the same purpose. By beginning to understand the neocortex, we are now in a position to greatly amplify its powers, just as the world of aviation has vastly amplified the powers of Bernoulli's principle. The operating principle of the neocortex is arguably the most important idea in the world, as it is capable of representing all knowledge and skills as well as creating new knowledge. It is the neocortex, after all, that has been responsible for every novel, every song, every painting, every scientific discovery, and the multifarious other products of human thought.

There is a great need in the field of neuroscience for a theory that ties together the extremely disparate and extensive observations that are being reported on a daily basis. A unified theory is a crucial requirement in every major area of science. In chapter 1 chapter 1 I'll describe how two daydreamers unified biology and physics, fields that had previously seemed hopelessly disordered and varied, and then address how such a theory can be applied to the landscape of the brain. I'll describe how two daydreamers unified biology and physics, fields that had previously seemed hopelessly disordered and varied, and then address how such a theory can be applied to the landscape of the brain.

Today we often encounter great celebrations of the complexity of the human brain. Google returns some 30 million links for a search request for quotations on that topic. (It is impossible to translate this into the number of actual quotations it is returning, however, as some of the Web sites linked have multiple quotes, and some have none.) James D. Watson himself wrote in 1992 that "the brain is the last and grandest biological frontier, the most complex thing we have yet discovered in our universe." He goes on to explain why he believes that "it contains hundreds of billions of cells interlinked through trillions of connections. The brain boggles the mind."5 I agree with Watson's sentiment about the brain's being the grandest biological frontier, but the fact that it contains many billions of cells and trillions of connections does not necessarily make its primary method complex if we can identify readily understandable (and recreatable) patterns in those cells and connections, especially ma.s.sively redundant ones.

Let's think about what it means to be complex. We might ask, is a forest complex? The answer depends on the perspective you choose to take. You could note that there are many thousands of trees in the forest and that each one is different. You could then go on to note that each tree has thousands of branches and that each branch is completely different. Then you could proceed to describe the convoluted vagaries of a single branch. Your conclusion might be that the forest has a complexity beyond our wildest imagination.

But such an approach would literally be a failure to see the forest for the trees. Certainly there is a great deal of fractal variation among trees and branches, but to correctly understand the principles of a forest you would do better to start by identifying the distinct patterns of redundancy with stochastic (that is, random) variation that are found there. It would be fair to say that the concept of a forest is simpler than the concept of a tree.

Thus it is with the brain, which has a similar enormous redundancy, especially in the neocortex. As I will describe in this book, it would be fair to say that there is more complexity in a single neuron than in the overall structure of the neocortex.

My goal in this book is definitely not to add another quotation to the millions that already exist attesting to how complex the brain is, but rather to impress you with the power of its simplicity. I will do so by describing how a basic ingenious mechanism for recognizing, remembering, and predicting a pattern, repeated in the neocortex hundreds of millions of times, accounts for the great diversity of our thinking. Just as an astonishing diversity of organisms arises from the different combinations of the values of the genetic code found in nuclear and mitochondrial DNA, so too does an astounding array of ideas, thoughts, and skills form based on the values of the patterns (of connections and synaptic strengths) found in and between our neocortical pattern recognizers. As MIT neuroscientist Sebastian Seung says, "Ident.i.ty lies not in our genes, but in the connections between our brain cells."6 We need to distinguish between true complexity of design and apparent complexity. Consider the famous Mandelbrot set, the image of which has long been a symbol of complexity. To appreciate its apparent complication, it is useful to zoom in on its image (which you can access via the links in this endnote).7 There is endless intricacy within intricacy, and they are always different. Yet the design-the formula-for the Mandelbrot set couldn't be simpler. It is six characters long: There is endless intricacy within intricacy, and they are always different. Yet the design-the formula-for the Mandelbrot set couldn't be simpler. It is six characters long: Z Z = = Z Z2 + + C C, in which Z Z is a "complex" number (meaning a pair of numbers) and is a "complex" number (meaning a pair of numbers) and C C is a constant. It is not necessary to fully understand the Mandelbrot function to see that it is simple. This formula is applied iteratively and at every level of a hierarchy. The same is true of the brain. Its repeating structure is not as simple as that of the six-character formula of the Mandelbrot set, but it is not nearly as complex as the millions of quotations on the brain's complexity would suggest. This neocortical design is repeated over and over at every level of the conceptual hierarchy represented by the neocortex. Einstein articulated my goals in this book well when he said that "any intelligent fool can make things bigger and more complex...but it takes...a lot of courage to move in the opposite direction." is a constant. It is not necessary to fully understand the Mandelbrot function to see that it is simple. This formula is applied iteratively and at every level of a hierarchy. The same is true of the brain. Its repeating structure is not as simple as that of the six-character formula of the Mandelbrot set, but it is not nearly as complex as the millions of quotations on the brain's complexity would suggest. This neocortical design is repeated over and over at every level of the conceptual hierarchy represented by the neocortex. Einstein articulated my goals in this book well when he said that "any intelligent fool can make things bigger and more complex...but it takes...a lot of courage to move in the opposite direction."

One view of the display of the Mandelbrot set, a simple formula that is iteratively applied. As one zooms in on the display, the images constantly change in apparently complex ways.

So far I have been talking about the brain. But what about the mind? For example, how does a problem-solving neocortex attain consciousness? And while we're on the subject, just how many conscious minds do we have in our brain? There is evidence that suggests there may be more than one.

Another pertinent question about the mind is, what is free will, and do we have it? There are experiments that appear to show that we start implementing our decisions before we are even aware that we have made them. Does that imply that free will is an illusion?

Finally, what attributes of our brain are responsible for forming our ident.i.ty? Am I the same person I was six months ago? Clearly I am not exactly the same as I was then, but do I have the same ident.i.ty?

We'll review what the pattern recognition theory of mind implies about these age-old questions.

CHAPTER 1

THOUGHT EXPERIMENTS ON THE WORLD

Darwin's theory of natural selection came very late in the history of thought.Was it delayed because it opposed revealed truth, because it was an entirely new subject in the history of science, because it was characteristic only of living things, or because it dealt with purpose and final causes without postulating an act of creation? I think not. Darwin simply discovered the role of selection, a kind of causality very different from the push-pull mechanisms of science up to that time. The origin of a fantastic variety of living things could be explained by the contribution of which novel features, possibly of random provenance, made it to survival. There was little or nothing in physical or biological science that foreshadowed selection as a causal principle.-B. F. Skinner Nothing is at last sacred but the integrity of your own mind.-Ralph Waldo Emerson

A Metaphor from Geology

In the early nineteenth century geologists pondered a fundamental question. Great caverns and canyons such as the Grand Canyon in the United States and Vikos Gorge in Greece (reportedly the deepest canyon in the world) existed all across the globe. How did these majestic formations get there?

Invariably there was a stream of water that appeared to take advantage of the opportunity to course through these natural structures, but prior to the mid-nineteenth century, it had seemed absurd that these gentle flows could be the creator of such huge valleys and cliffs. British geologist Charles Lyell (17971875), however, proposed that it was indeed the movement of water that had carved out these major geological modifications over great periods of time, essentially one grain of rock at a time. This proposal was initially met with ridicule, but within two decades Lyell's thesis achieved mainstream acceptance.

One person who was carefully watching the response of the scientific community to Lyell's radical thesis was English naturalist Charles Darwin (18091882). Consider the situation in biology around 1850. The field was endlessly complex, faced with countless species of animals and plants, any one of which presented great intricacy. If anything, most scientists resisted any attempt to provide a unifying theory of nature's dazzling variation. This diversity served as a testament to the glory of G.o.d's creation, not to mention to the intelligence of the scientists who were capable of mastering it.

Darwin approached the problem of devising a general theory of species by making an a.n.a.logy with Lyell's thesis to account for the gradual changes in the features of species over many generations. He combined this insight with his own thought experiments and observations in his famous Voyage of the Beagle Voyage of the Beagle. Darwin argued that in each generation the individuals that could best survive in their ecological niche would be the individuals to create the next generation.

On November 22, 1859, Darwin's book On On the Origin of Species the Origin of Species went on sale, and in it he made clear his debt to Lyell: went on sale, and in it he made clear his debt to Lyell: I am well aware that this doctrine of natural selection, exemplified in the above imaginary instances, is open to the same objections which were at first urged against Sir Charles Lyell's n.o.ble views on "the modern changes of the earth, as ill.u.s.trative of geology"; but we now very seldom hear the action, for instance, of the coast-waves called a trifling and insignificant cause, when applied to the excavation of gigantic valleys or to the formation of the longest lines of inland cliffs. Natural selection can act only by the preservation and acc.u.mulation of infinitesimally small inherited modifications, each profitable to the preserved being; and as modern geology has almost banished such views as the excavation of a great valley by a single diluvial wave, so will natural selection, if it be a true principle, banish the belief of the continued creation of new organic beings, or of any great and sudden modification in their structure.1Charles Darwin, author of On the Origin of Species On the Origin of Species, which established the idea of biological evolution.

There are always multiple reasons why big new ideas are resisted, and it is not hard to identify them in Darwin's case. That we were descended not from G.o.d but from monkeys, and before that, worms, did not sit well with many commentators. The implication that our pet dog was our cousin, as was the caterpillar, not to mention the plant it walked on (a millionth or billionth cousin, perhaps, but still related), seemed a blasphemy to many.

But the idea quickly caught on because it brought coherence to what had previously been a plethora of apparently unrelated observations. By 1872, with the publication of the sixth edition of On the Origin of Species On the Origin of Species, Darwin added this pa.s.sage: "As a record of a former state of things, I have retained in the foregoing paragraphs...several sentences which imply that naturalists believe in the separate creation of each species; and I have been much censured for having thus expressed myself. But undoubtedly this was the general belief when the first edition of the present work appeared.... Now things are wholly changed, and almost every naturalist admits the great principle of evolution."2 Over the next century Darwin's unifying idea deepened. In 1869, only a decade after the original publication of On the Origin of Species On the Origin of Species, Swiss physician Friedrich Miescher (18441895) discovered a substance he called "nuclein" in the cell nucleus, which turned out to be DNA.3 In 1927 Russian biologist Nikolai Koltsov (18721940) described what he called a "giant hereditary molecule," which he said was composed of "two mirror strands that would replicate in a semi-conservative fashion using each strand as a template." His finding was also condemned by many. The communists considered it to be fascist propaganda, and his sudden, unexpected death has been attributed to the secret police of the Soviet Union. In 1927 Russian biologist Nikolai Koltsov (18721940) described what he called a "giant hereditary molecule," which he said was composed of "two mirror strands that would replicate in a semi-conservative fashion using each strand as a template." His finding was also condemned by many. The communists considered it to be fascist propaganda, and his sudden, unexpected death has been attributed to the secret police of the Soviet Union.4 In 1953, nearly a century after the publication of Darwin's seminal book, American biologist James D. Watson (born in 1928) and English biologist Francis Crick (19162004) provided the first accurate characterization of the structure of DNA, describing it as a double helix of two long twisting molecules. In 1953, nearly a century after the publication of Darwin's seminal book, American biologist James D. Watson (born in 1928) and English biologist Francis Crick (19162004) provided the first accurate characterization of the structure of DNA, describing it as a double helix of two long twisting molecules.5 It is worth pointing out that their finding was based on what is now known as "photo 51," taken by their colleague Rosalind Franklin using X-ray crystallography, which was the first representation that showed the double helix. Given the insights derived from Franklin's image, there have been suggestions that she should have shared in Watson and Crick's n.o.bel Prize. It is worth pointing out that their finding was based on what is now known as "photo 51," taken by their colleague Rosalind Franklin using X-ray crystallography, which was the first representation that showed the double helix. Given the insights derived from Franklin's image, there have been suggestions that she should have shared in Watson and Crick's n.o.bel Prize.6 Rosalind Franklin took the critical picture of DNA (using X-ray crystallography) that enabled Watson and Crick to accurately describe the structure of DNA for the first time.

With the description of a molecule that could code the program of biology, a unifying theory of biology was now firmly in place. It provided a simple and elegant foundation to all of life. Depending only on the values of the base pairs that make up the DNA strands in the nucleus (and to a lesser degree the mitochondria), an organism would mature into a blade of gra.s.s or a human being. This insight did not eliminate the delightful diversity of nature, but we now understand that the extraordinary diversity of nature stems from the great a.s.sortment of structures that can be coded on this universal molecule.

Riding on a Light Beam

At the beginning of the twentieth century the world of physics was upended through another series of thought experiments. In 1879 a boy was born to a German engineer and a housewife. He didn't start to talk until the age of three and was reported to have had problems in school at the age of nine. At sixteen he was daydreaming about riding on a moonbeam.

This young boy was aware of English mathematician Thomas Young's (17731829) experiment in 1803 that established that light is composed of waves. The conclusion at that time was that light waves must be traveling through some sort of medium; after all, ocean waves traveled through water and sound waves traveled through air and other materials. Scientists called the medium through which light waves travel the "ether." The boy was also aware of the 1887 experiment by American scientists Albert Michelson (18521931) and Edward Morley (18381923) that attempted to confirm the existence of the ether. That experiment was based on the a.n.a.logy of traveling in a rowboat up- and downstream in a river. If you are paddling at a fixed speed, then your speed as measured from the sh.o.r.e will be faster if you are paddling with the stream as opposed to going against it. Michelson and Morley a.s.sumed that light would travel through the ether at a constant speed (that is, at the speed of light). They reasoned that the speed of sunlight when Earth is traveling toward the sun in its...o...b..t (as measured from our vantage point on Earth) versus its apparent speed when Earth is traveling away from the sun must be different (by twice the speed of Earth). Proving that would confirm the existence of the ether. However, what they discovered was that there was no difference in the speed of the sunlight pa.s.sing Earth regardless of where Earth was in its...o...b..t. Their findings disproved the idea of the "ether," but what was really going on? This remained a mystery for almost two decades.

As this German teenager imagined riding alongside a light wave, he reasoned that he should be seeing the light waves frozen, in the same way that a train would appear not to be moving if you rode alongside it at the same speed as the train. Yet he realized that this was impossible, because the speed of light is supposed to be constant regardless of your own movement. So he imagined instead riding alongside the light beam but at a somewhat slower speed. What if he traveled at 90 percent of the speed of light? If light beams are like trains, he reasoned, then he should see the light beam traveling ahead of him at 10 percent of the speed of light. Indeed, that would have to be what observers on Earth would see. But we know that the speed of light is a constant, as the Michelson-Morley experiment had shown. Thus he would necessarily see the light beam traveling ahead of him at the full speed of light. This seemed like a contradiction-how could it be possible?

The answer became evident to the German boy, whose name, incidentally, was Albert Einstein (18791955), by the time he turned twenty-six. Obviously-to young Master Einstein-time itself must have slowed down for him. He explains his reasoning in a paper published in 1905.7 If observers on Earth were to look at the young man's watch they would see it ticking ten times slower. Indeed, when he got back to Earth, his watch would show that only 10 percent as much time had pa.s.sed (ignoring, for the moment, acceleration and deceleration). From his perspective, however, his watch was ticking normally and the light beam next to him was traveling at the speed of light. The ten-times slowdown in the speed of time itself (relative to clocks on Earth) fully explains the apparent discrepancies in perspective. In the extreme, the slowdown in the pa.s.sage of time would reach zero once the speed of travel reached the speed of light; hence it was impossible to ride along with the light beam. Although it was impossible to travel at the speed of light, it turned out not to be theoretically impossible to move If observers on Earth were to look at the young man's watch they would see it ticking ten times slower. Indeed, when he got back to Earth, his watch would show that only 10 percent as much time had pa.s.sed (ignoring, for the moment, acceleration and deceleration). From his perspective, however, his watch was ticking normally and the light beam next to him was traveling at the speed of light. The ten-times slowdown in the speed of time itself (relative to clocks on Earth) fully explains the apparent discrepancies in perspective. In the extreme, the slowdown in the pa.s.sage of time would reach zero once the speed of travel reached the speed of light; hence it was impossible to ride along with the light beam. Although it was impossible to travel at the speed of light, it turned out not to be theoretically impossible to move faster faster than the light beam. Time would then move backward. than the light beam. Time would then move backward.

This resolution seemed absurd to many early critics. How could time itself slow down, based only on someone's speed of movement? Indeed, for eighteen years (from the time of the Michelson-Morley experiment), other thinkers had been unable to see a conclusion that was so obvious to Master Einstein. The many others who had considered this problem through the latter part of the nineteenth century had essentially "fallen off the horse" in terms of following through on the implications of a principle, sticking instead to their preconceived notions of how reality must work. (I should probably change that metaphor to "fallen off the light beam.") Einstein's second mind experiment was to consider himself and his brother flying through s.p.a.ce. They are 186,000 miles apart. Einstein wants to move faster but he also desires to keep the distance between them the same. So he signals his brother with a flashlight each time he wants to accelerate. Since he knows that it will take one second for the signal to reach his brother, he waits a second (after sending the signal) to initiate his own acceleration. Each time the brother receives the signal he immediately accelerates. In this way the two brothers accelerate at exactly the same time and therefore remain a constant distance apart.

But now consider what we would see if we were standing on Earth. If the brothers were moving away from us (with Albert in the lead), it would appear to take less than a second for the light to reach the brother, because he is traveling toward the light. Also we would see Albert's brother's clock as slowing down (as his speed increases as he is closer to us). For both of these reasons we would see the two brothers getting closer and closer and eventually colliding. Yet from the perspective of the two brothers, they remain a constant 186,000 miles apart.

How can this be? The answer-obviously-is that distances contract parallel to the motion (but not perpendicular to it). So the two Einstein brothers are getting shorter (a.s.suming they are flying headfirst) as they get faster. This bizarre conclusion probably lost Einstein more early fans than the difference in the pa.s.sage of time.

During the same year, Einstein considered the relationship of matter and energy with yet another mind experiment. Scottish physicist James Clerk Maxwell had shown in the 1850s that particles of light called photons had no ma.s.s but nonetheless carried momentum. As a child I had a device called a Crookes radiometer,8 which consisted of an airtight gla.s.s bulb that contained a partial vacuum and a set of four vanes that rotated on a spindle. The vanes were white on one side and black on the other. The white side of each vane reflected light, and the black side absorbed light. (That's why it is cooler to wear a white T-shirt on a hot day than a black one.) When a light was shined on the device, the vanes rotated, with the dark sides moving away from the light. This is a direct demonstration that photons carry enough momentum to actually cause the vanes of the radiometer to move. which consisted of an airtight gla.s.s bulb that contained a partial vacuum and a set of four vanes that rotated on a spindle. The vanes were white on one side and black on the other. The white side of each vane reflected light, and the black side absorbed light. (That's why it is cooler to wear a white T-shirt on a hot day than a black one.) When a light was shined on the device, the vanes rotated, with the dark sides moving away from the light. This is a direct demonstration that photons carry enough momentum to actually cause the vanes of the radiometer to move.9 The issue that Einstein struggled with is that momentum is a function of ma.s.s: Momentum is equal to ma.s.s times velocity. Thus a locomotive traveling at 30 miles per hour has a lot more momentum than, say, an insect traveling at the same speed. How, then, could there be positive momentum for a particle with zero ma.s.s?

Einstein's mind experiment consisted of a box floating in s.p.a.ce. A photon is emitted inside the box from the left toward the right side. The total momentum of the system needs to be conserved, so the box would have to recoil to the left when the photon was emitted. After a certain amount of time, the photon collides with the right side of the box, transferring its momentum back to the box. The total momentum of the system is again conserved, so the box now stops moving.

A Crookes radiometer-the vane with four wings rotates when light shines on it.

So far so good. But consider the perspective from the vantage point of Mr. Einstein, who is watching the box from the outside. He does not see any outside influence on the box: No particles-with or without ma.s.s-hit it, and nothing leaves it. Yet Mr. Einstein, according to the scenario above, sees the box move temporarily to the left and then stop. According to our a.n.a.lysis, each photon should permanently move the box to the left. Since there have been no external effects on the box or from the box, its center of ma.s.s must remain in the same place. Yet the photon inside the box, which moves from left to right, cannot change the center of ma.s.s, because it has no ma.s.s.

Or does it? Einstein's conclusion was that since the photon clearly has energy, and has momentum, it must also have a ma.s.s equivalent. The energy of the moving photon is entirely equivalent to a moving ma.s.s. We can compute what that equivalence is by recognizing that the center of ma.s.s of the system must remain stationary during the movement of the photon. Working out the math, Einstein showed that ma.s.s and energy are equivalent and are related by a simple constant. However, there was a catch: The constant might be simple, but it turned out to be enormous; it was the speed of light squared (about 1.7 1017 meters meters2 per second per second2-that is, 17 followed by 16 zeroes). Hence we get Einstein's famous E E = = mc mc2.10 Thus one ounce (28 grams) of ma.s.s is equivalent to 600,000 tons of TNT. Einstein's letter of August 2, 1939, to President Roosevelt informing him of the potential for an atomic bomb based on this formula ushered in the atomic age. Thus one ounce (28 grams) of ma.s.s is equivalent to 600,000 tons of TNT. Einstein's letter of August 2, 1939, to President Roosevelt informing him of the potential for an atomic bomb based on this formula ushered in the atomic age.11 You might think that this should have been obvious earlier, given that experimenters had noticed that the ma.s.s of radioactive substances decreased as a result of radiation over time. It was a.s.sumed, however, that radioactive substances contained a special high-energy fuel of some sort that was burning off. That a.s.sumption is not all wrong; it's just that the fuel that was being "burned off" was simply ma.s.s.

There are several reasons why I have opened this book with Darwin's and Einstein's mind experiments. First of all, they show the extraordinary power of the human brain. Without any equipment at all other than a pen and paper to draw the stick figures in these simple mind experiments and to write down the fairly simple equations that result from them, Einstein was able to overthrow the understanding of the physical world that dated back two centuries, deeply influence the course of history (including World War II), and usher in the nuclear age.

It is true that Einstein relied on a few experimental findings of the nineteenth century, although these experiments also did not use sophisticated equipment. It is also true that subsequent experimental validation of Einstein's theories has used advanced technologies, and if these had not been developed we would not have the validation that we possess today that Einstein's ideas are authentic and significant. However, such factors do not detract from the fact that these famous thought experiments reveal the power of human thinking at its finest.

Einstein is widely regarded as the leading scientist of the twentieth century (and Darwin would be a good contender for that honor in the nineteenth century), yet the mathematics underlying his theories is ultimately not very complicated. The thought experiments themselves were straightforward. We might wonder, then, in what respect could Einstein be considered particularly smart. We'll discuss later exactly what it was that he was doing with his brain when he came up with his theories, and where that quality resides.

Conversely, this history also demonstrates the limitations of human thinking. Einstein was able to ride his light beam without falling off (albeit he concluded that it was impossible to actually ride a light beam), but how many thousands of other observers and thinkers were completely unable to think through these remarkably uncomplicated exercises? One common failure is the difficulty that most people have in discarding and transcending the ideas and perspectives of their peers. There are other inadequacies as well, which we will discuss in more detail after we have examined how the neocortex works.

A Unified Model of the Neocortex

The most important reason I am sharing what are perhaps the most famous thought experiments in history is as an introduction to using the same approach with respect to the brain. As you will see, we can get remarkably far in figuring out how human intelligence works through some simple mind experiments of our own. Considering the subject matter involved, mind experiments should be a very appropriate approach.

If a young man's idle thoughts and the use of no equipment other than pen and paper were sufficient to revolutionize our understanding of physics, then we should be able to make reasonable progress with a phenomenon with which we are much more familiar. After all, we experience our thinking every moment of our waking lives-and our dreaming lives as well.

After we construct a model of how thinking works through this process of self-reflection, we'll examine to what extent we can confirm it through the latest observations of actual brains and the state of the art in re-creating these processes in machines.

CHAPTER 2

THOUGHT EXPERIMENTS ON THINKING