I am coming up for breath

It's been rather quiet on this blog for some time – and part of the problem is that I have had too much on my mind and not enough time to do everything I wanted to.

Part of the problem is that old age is catching up with me and during the first three months of 2012 I may well have a cataract removed from my one “good” eye, a kidney stone removed from my bladder, and possibly one other small operation. Having lost nearly 1kg a month throughout most of 2011 I have put some of it back on over Christmas – partly for over eating (see It was a real Aylesbury Duck) and partly because I have not kept up my daily walks. So that is another reason for me to spend more time in a health way - including more walking and swimming - and less time sitting at the terminal nibbling snacks!

The second is that I am no longer as good at multitasking as I was and I have been more involved in family activities – especially around our 50th wedding anniversary at the end of September and other social activities around Christmas and the New Year.

However one of the reason why this blog has been so quiet is that I am enjoying blogging! At first sight this may seem a little perverse but is linked to the fact that I have been running the Genealogy in Hertfordshire web site for over 10 years, and which is approaching a quarter of a million visits a year,. Having got this blog up and running I thought it would be a good idea to switch the Genealogy Newsletter section of the site onto blogging software. The result is the Hertfordshire Genealogy News – and it has taken off like a rocket. Page view totals starting in September are 868, 1358, 1684, 2357 and January is on target to reach 3000. The idea was to save me time – but it is clear that people prefer the modern blogger interface and in fact I have been even busier - and this blog has been neglected.

I decided that for the New Year I would devote some time each day to progressing this blog – and follow up the brainstorms about CODIL and the evolution of the brains internal language – but first I will get into the swing with a few posts relating to the way that we are mentally and physically

TRAPPED BY THE BOX

Did this box mean that Christmas was less painful for you?

My wife has a bad back and regularly takes Paracetamol – and our local supermarket sells a box of 16 tablets (two days supply) for 15p – but will only sell two boxes at once. Around Christmas 2010 the shop ran out for several weeks. OK sometimes shops run out of particular stock items so at first I thought “no great deal”. However a month ago it happened again.

So do the stresses of the Christmas season mean an increase in headaches and other painful discomorts ???

Merry Christmas

Rural Relaxation: A Winter Sunset in Surrey

Sunset seen through a break in the trees
Bookham Common, Surrey

When I am feeling trapped I find that there is no better way to relax than to take a rural walk.

Brain Storms – 8 – Was Douglas Adams right about the Dolphins?

Douglas Adams, in The Hitch Hikers Guide to the Galaxy, suggested that dolphins were more intelligent than humans.

Perhaps his conclusion was based on the finding of a vast conference in with all the animal species that ever lived sent one delegate to decide on which of them had the best brain. This caucus was called because they were all fed up with Humans unilaterally claiming that they were more intelligent than all the other animals – by simply defining intelligence as “those mental activities which humans can do which other animals can't do.”

Continues below the fold

Brain Storms - 7 - Getting rid of those pesky numbers

There has been a break in the brain storming – in part because I have been distracted by other things and in part because my ideas had become stuck in a box – and I hadn't realised the implications.

The box I was stuck in was the one relating to the handling of numbers in conventional computer systems . I had already decided that because hunter-gatherer man would not be doing much, if any, counting – much less arithmetic - I should strip the arithmetic facilities out of the CODIL model if I was to relate it to how the brain works. However when I came to think about mapping onto a neural net there were some problems

Perhaps the easiest way is to relate the problem to CODIL's history. The original ideas developed in a very large commercial data processing department where numbers (quantities, prices, dates, customer identity numbers, etc.) were of paramount importance. It was also concerned with the real world text names of objects such as people, goods for sale, and places. In developing the CODIL paradigm I did many unconventional things but I still kept the equivalent of the conventional computing concept of a data field – which had a name so that the computer could address it and a value which was directly linked to something in the real world. The result was the CODIL item, such as the following examples:

QUANTITY > 27

PRODUCT = Diesel

This structure has been retained in al subsequent developments – when the aim was to design a flexible and user friendly tool and the idea of having a “data base” package that could not handle numbers would have been ridiculous.

... But in modelling the brain I am not building a “user friendly” tool, I am trying to model how the pre-civilization brains worked. I note that there is no difference between Australian Aborigine brains and Western European brains – despite the fact that in evolutionary terms they are at least 50,000 years apart – while modern civilization is no more than 10,000 years old. This means that in developing a brain model anything which could be an artefact resulting from the development of civilization can safely be excluded.

So back to the little example. “PRODUCT” is the name given to a set which includes “Diesel” ... but wait - isn't “Diesel” the name given to a set which includes different grades of diesel oil ... If we get rid of numbers (and also some of the features for manipulating strings of characters) we can redefine the item value as a set name where the set contains a single member – the name of the set being a representation of its value. This could be represented (with trivial changes to the existing software) by representing the item “PRODUCT = Diesel” as:

PRODUCT  DIESEL

However at the paradigm level it is possible to say that an item is just a pair of symbolic set names where one set is a member of the other. What we have done is to simplify the CODIL model by discarding a component (the item value) and made the approach more general.

The implications of this will be discussed in later “Brain Storms” posts.

Earlier Brain Storms

1. Introduction
2. The Black Hole in Brain Research
3. Evolutionary Factors starting on the African Plains
4. Requirements of a target Model
5. Some Factors in choosing a Model
6. CODIL and Natural Language

The "being bullied at school" box

Before I went to Dartington I was bullied a lot at school and the lack of self-confidence this engendered has remained with me for over 60 years. Following the recent school reunion (see Escaping from the Box - The Dartington Experience) I have been following the school site on Facebook and as a result found a collection of interviews "and in 2010 - bullying" of pupils who had suffered bullying before they went to Sands School, Ashburton

My experience at Dartington, from the age of 14, showed that schools could be run without bullying, and the interviews demonstrate that for many of today's pupils things in many schools are little better. Hopefully Sands School (which is the "successor" to Dartington) will help these pupils get over some of the damage they have already suffered - as there is little worse than being a child trapped in a school where you are always fearful of being victimized by other pupils, and sometimes even the teachers.

Are you playing safe and keeping well inside your box? Why not take a risk occasionally

I have just read The Blue Collar Athiest's blog "The Most Dangerous Thing You Can Do: Play Safe".

It made me think about how we often feel safer if we never do anything risky and stay well inside our mental and physical boxes. Clearly this happened to me. Because my research often caused significant criticism I didn't promote it as actively as perhaps I should, and when I was viciously bullied for doing unconventional research which didn't have funding (at a time when I was recovering from the effects of a family suicide) I just gave up the research to do something safer ...

OK about a year ago I decided to stick my head above the parapet and started publicizing my former research - fully aware that because it is unconventional most people will automatically ignore it - and some will be very critical.

So are you stuck in a comfortable box in which you believe that all "significant  research is carried out in prestige institutions and has been published in the last six months? If so you will be in good company - because such an approach avoids thinking outside the box - and will be right for much of the time. But is ignoring ideas which differ from the establishment view good science?

Isn't it about time you took a risk? Why not abandon your "What is good research" box and have a good look at what I am saying on this blog . If you like it say so - and if you don't like it be as rude as you like - as long as you make it clear why you don't agree. If I am prepared to come out of my shell and take a risk, why don't you?