Entries from April 2009 ↓

I just uploaded several fractal videos to YouTube on behalf of a colleague who works on OpenCog with me: Linas Vepstas.

The interior measure of the circle map, with the parameters and values as explained here:

Polylogarithm function (more info):

I just uploaded several fractal videos to YouTube on behalf of a colleague who works on OpenCog with me: Linas Vepstas. The interior measure of the circle map, with the parameters and values as explained here: Polylogarithm function (more info):

When we interact with people, our mind models them. Thus, as a consequence we also end up modelling other people’s beliefs, which in turn can potentially affect our beliefs. I don’t believe that the contextual belief systems of humans (self vs. other) is absolutely isolated – if you are surrounded by contrary beliefs long enough, they could slowly seep into your unconsciousness. Which leads me to wonder if this might have some relation to Stockholm Syndrome? With perhaps stress priming the mind to accept new beliefs more fluidly than usual, in order to allow humans to adapt and survive, even in unpleasant scenarios. Peer pressure and conformity bias might be otherways in which other people’s beliefs can unintentionally alter our own. Of particular interest are the experiments where all but one of the participants in a group are told to lie about observing a phenomenon and the the other, whom are making a decision purely on what they see, tend to agree with the rest of the group. Even when they are later asked about their decision, and told that the other participants were told to lie, generally the one will still swear they saw the phenomenon anyway (see the Solomon Asch study of social conformity).

There are lots of self-help articles and books that tell you to surround yourself with inspiring and positive people and avoid people who are stuck in a life of negative thought, or otherwise are poisonous to people’s happiness. And from the above, it makes sense that negativity is actually contagious. Let alone whether we have empathic tendencies, and mirror their feelings, just mirroring their viewpoint of the world would transfer those beliefs. I certainly don’t want to argue we should all become heartless isolationists, because compassion for other people is always important. But in the end, you are responsible for your own happiness over others (although not at the cost of others, through causing unnecessary harm) and to that end, I think it’s important to sometimes check whether the negativity of others is morphing your beliefs and outlook on the world.

This spread of belief occurs for small chunks of knowledge, and through modelling others at a personal level, but also occurs for larger concepts and ideas. Memes are particularly adapted to play to parts of the human condition so that they get actively spread by us. Things like quizzes that tell us how we fit in the world or appeal to our narcissism and ego, telling us we are unique in some way and that help to define our identity, are particularly virulent. Not that there’s anything wrong with them, as I’ve wasted plenty of time finding out I used to have a “pool boy” dating personality, that at some stage I was 45% pure, and that I am simultaneously a dozen historical figures. They also promote participation – which would arguably work better to promote the spread of the meme over a purely academic piece of knowledge or trivia. Tests that are also related in the attention sphere of Pop culture, the contents of which are themselves memes, piggy-back on the success of other ideas and memes.

When we interact with people, our mind models them. Thus, as a consequence we also end up modelling other people's beliefs, which in turn can potentially affect our beliefs. I don't believe that the contextual belief systems of humans (self vs. other) is absolutely isolated - if you are surrounded by contrary beliefs long enough, they could slowly seep into your unconsciousness. Which leads me to wonder if this might have some relation to Stockholm Syndrome? With perhaps stress priming the mind to accept new beliefs more fluidly than usual, in order to allow humans to adapt and survive, even in unpleasant scenarios. Peer pressure and conformity bias might be otherways in which other people's beliefs can unintentionally alter our own. Of particular interest are the experiments where all but one of the participants in a group are told to lie about observing a phenomenon and the the other, whom are making a decision purely on what they see, tend to agree with the rest of the group. Even when they are later asked about their decision, and told that the other participants were told to lie, generally the one will still swear they saw the phenomenon anyway (see the Solomon Asch study of social conformity). There are lots of self-help articles and books that tell you to surround yourself with inspiring and positive people and avoid people who are stuck in a life of negative thought, or otherwise are poisonous to people's happiness. And from the above, it makes sense that negativity is actually contagious. Let alone whether we have empathic tendencies, and mirror their feelings, just mirroring their viewpoint of the world would transfer those beliefs. I certainly don't want to argue we should all become heartless isolationists, because compassion for other people is always important. But in the end, you are responsible for your own happiness over others (although not at the cost of others, through causing unnecessary harm) and to that end, I think it's important to sometimes check whether the negativity of others is morphing your beliefs and outlook on the world. This spread of belief occurs for small chunks of knowledge, and through modelling others at a personal level, but also occurs for larger concepts and ideas. Memes are particularly adapted to play to parts of the human condition so that they get actively spread by us. Things like quizzes that tell us how we fit in the world or appeal to our narcissism and ego, telling us we are unique in some way and that help to define our identity, are particularly virulent. Not that there's anything wrong with them, as I've wasted plenty of time finding out I used to have a "pool boy" dating personality, that at some stage I was 45% pure, and that I am simultaneously a dozen historical figures. They also promote participation - which would arguably work better to promote the spread of the meme over a purely academic piece of knowledge or trivia. Tests that are also related in the attention sphere of Pop culture, the contents of which are themselves memes, piggy-back on the success of other ideas and memes.

Billboard at bus stop: “Smoking causes 5000 deaths a year in New Zealand. Face the facts!”

What about aging – which is currently inescapably and is what really kills most people? Smoking just accelerates the accumulation of cell damage. Why limit ourselves to aging that’s caused by one particular vice? Breathing causes oxidative damage, and caloric restriction increases longevity. Should we also make billboards that say “Hyperventilation and eating more calories than necessary cause X deaths a year. Face the facts!”.

According to Wikipedia, New Zealand has a 7 in 1000 death rate. That’s 0.7 % or just over 30,000 (going by the current population figures as shown on Wikipedia). I find the attribution of 5000 of these being “caused” purely by smoking a slight exaggeration, but without them citing their sources, they could really make up any number they like.

Alternatively, I think it’d be more amusing to have a billboard that said either:

• “Entropy marches relentlessly on! Face the facts!”
• “You’re going to die! Face the facts!”

But y’know, SmokeFree New Zealand would probably change their marketing director if that happened.

Billboard at bus stop: "Smoking causes 5000 deaths a year in New Zealand. Face the facts!" What about aging - which is currently inescapably and is what really kills most people? Smoking just accelerates the accumulation of cell damage. Why limit ourselves to aging that's caused by one particular vice? Breathing causes oxidative damage, and caloric restriction increases longevity. Should we also make billboards that say "Hyperventilation and eating more calories than necessary cause X deaths a year. Face the facts!". According to Wikipedia, New Zealand has a 7 in 1000 death rate. That's 0.7 % or just over 30,000 (going by the current population figures as shown on Wikipedia). I find the attribution of 5000 of these being "caused" purely by smoking a slight exaggeration, but without them citing their sources, they could really make up any number they like. Alternatively, I think it'd be more amusing to have a billboard that said either: "Entropy marches relentlessly on! Face the facts!" "You're going to die! Face the facts!" But y'know, SmokeFree New Zealand would probably change their marketing director if that happened. ;-)

Here’s an adapted extract from part of my original thesis. I removed this in the end, since it wasn’t directly relevant to the spread of invasive species and the thesis was already too long. This text does however link several different fields that are interested in the spread of something, and I find connections across scientific fields interesting because these days they are rife with fertile research directions.

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The seminal works of R. H. Fisher (1937) described the propagation and diffusion of advantageous alleles in a population, and a lot of current theory on spread and dispersal has it’s root in population genetics.

Recent work on the spread of humans, with heredity between individuals, have indicated that certain mutations are either maintained with low frequencies at their origin or are propagated along wave fronts. If these mutations are tracked then it is possible to establish their origin (Ibrahim, 2004).

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Here's an adapted extract from part of my original thesis. I removed this in the end, since it wasn't directly relevant to the spread of invasive species and the thesis was already too long. This text does however link several different fields that are interested in the spread of something, and I find connections across scientific fields interesting because these days they are rife with fertile research directions. -- The seminal works of R. H. Fisher (1937) described the propagation and diffusion of advantageous alleles in a population, and a lot of current theory on spread and dispersal has it's root in population genetics. Recent work on the spread of humans, with heredity between individuals, have indicated that certain mutations are either maintained with low frequencies at their origin or are propagated along wave fronts. If these mutations are tracked then it is possible to establish their origin (Ibrahim, 2004). In the discipline of sociology Hägerstrand (1952) was the first to develop a predictive math model showing how phenomena diffuse in space and time, specifically innovation diffusion, or the speed at which the adoption of new technologies spreads. In mathematics and physics, diffusion specifically concerns change in the density of something due to an random movement of a large number of things. Brownian motion is a frequently assumed category of random particle or individual movement, and results in a Gaussian/Normal distribution for the entire population if individuals or particles are all released from a central point. Diffusion is often equated with dispersal (Pielou 1969, 1977, 1979) particularly in the humanities, such as in economics (e.g. Brown 1981) but also in sciences such as human epidemiology (Cliff 1981). However this is not always true, and in other fields can indicate an intentional or directed movement. Diffusion is often described by the power law: msd(t) ≈ 6Dtα where D is the diffusion coefficient and t is the elapsed time. Typically, in a diffusive process, the mean squared displacement (msd) of a particle is a linear function of time (α = 1). The term anomalous diffusion is used to describe a diffusive process with a non-linear dependence on time. Additionally, if &alpha > 1, the phenomenon is called super-diffusion. In cellular biology, super-diffusion can be the result of active cellular transport processes (Caspi 2002). If &alpha < 1, dispersing particles undergo sub-diffusion. Sub-diffusion has been proposed as a measure of macromolecular crowding in the cytoplasm (Weiss 2004). The spread of cancer occurs as cancerous cells replicate in an uncontrolled manner, resulting in a growing tumour. Metastasis, where cancerous cells break off from the primary tumour and establish elsewhere in the body, is akin to long-distance dispersal of invasive species, accelerating the rate of spread and often becoming the reason for cancer mortality (MacDonald 2002). One subject in which spread models have become particularly advanced is in the prediction of wild fire behaviour. The models take into account wind direction, underlying vegetation, and also include long distance dispersal events which are so influential in invasive species spread. In wild fire spread, these long distance dispersal events are referred to as "spotting" (Xu 1994). Another aspect of human health that involves spread is epidemiology - the study of heath and illness of populations. For example, SARS or Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome spreads by common local transmission but also air passenger travel provided incidental large distance transmission (Bell 2003) again akin long-distance dispersal. Another example related to the impact of increasing travel and trade, shows that the increase in human travel had resulted in population size substituting distance as the most important factor for the spread of cholera in North America (Cliff 1981). These varying subjects approach spread of objects or organisms in different ways, but as discussed seem to often demonstrate dispersal processes occurring at different scales, such as local growth coupled with diffusion and a stochastic long distance dispersal process. In other subjects, Hengeveld (1989) notes that the area encompassed by the dispersal kernel is analogous to the: neighbourhood area - in genetics when dealing with the transfer of genetic information in a population; contact area - in epidemiology, describing the chance of pathogen transfer and spread; information field - in human sociology when concerned with the spread of innovation and ideas. Hagerstand (1968) called this the "information probability field", Brown (1981) called it the "mean information field"; Is it possible to combine these in to a general synthesis of spread? I don't know, but I have attempted to make a generic iterative spread model that can share aspects of each between individual models. The only bias here however is that it's constrained to geographic spread, so trying to model the spread of a 3D process, although possible through 3D raster maps and voxels, is probably a lot more trouble than it's worth (when there are more specific modelling tools out there). References Fisher, R.A. (1937) The wave of advance of advantageous genes. Ann. Eugenics. Ibrahim, K. M. (2004) Simulations of human colonization history. Heredity 93:124-125 Hägerstrand, T. (1952) The propagation of innovation waves Lund, Sweden: Gleerup; Lund Studies in Geography. Pielou, E. C. (1969) An Introduction to Mathematical Ecology. Wiley, New York. Pielou, E. C. (1977) Mathematical Ecology. John WIley & Sons, New York, New York, USA. Pielou, E. C. (1979) Biogeography. John Wiley & Sons, New York. Cliff, A. D., P. Haggett, J. D. Ord & G. R. Versey. (1981) Spatial Diffusion Cambridge University Press, 1981 Brown, L. A. Innovation Diffusion Methuan, London. Caspi, A.; Granek, R. & Elbaum, M. (2002) Diffusion and directed motion in cellular transport. Physical Review E 66 Weiss, M.; Elsner, M.; Kartberg, F. & Nilsson, T. (2004) Anomalous Subdiffusion Is a Measure for Cytoplasmic Crowding in Living Cells. Biophysical Journal 87:3518-3524 MacDonald, I. C.; Groom, A. C. & Chambers, A. F. (2002) Cancer spread and micrometastasis development: quantitative approaches for in vivo models. BioEssays. 24:885-893 Xu, J. (1994) Simulating the spread of wildfires using a geographic information system and remote sensing. PhD thesis. Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey. Bell, D. M. (2003) Public health interventions and SARS spread. Emerging Infectious Diseases. Hengeveld, R. (1989) Dynamics of biological invasions. Chapman & Hall, London. Hägerstand, T. (1968) Innovation Diffusion as a Spatial Process University of Chicago Press, Chicago.

So in the interests of sharing, and keeping a record for future reference, here is my current supplement stack:

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So in the interests of sharing, and keeping a record for future reference, here is my current supplement stack: Number in brackets are for alternation of dosage count. Fish oil for Omega 3 1000 mg (2/1) EPA 180mg DHA 180 mg Lecithin 1200 mg (2/1) CoQ10 150 mg (1/0) Echinacea 500mg (2) St John's Wort 3000mg (equiv. Hypericin 1.65 mg) (1/0) Red Seal Memory Power (2/1) Ginkgo biloba Leaf (extract equiv. to) 1250 mg Gotu Kola (Centella asiatica extract equiv. to) 75 mg Lecithin 125 mg Vitamin E (dl-alpha-Tocopheryl acetate 50 mg) 50 IU Huperzine A (from Huperzia serrata equiv. to 300 mg) 25 mcg Spirulina 500 mg (2) Vitamin C 500 mg (1) Centrum (1/0) Contains lots of various trace elements. Occasionally taken: 5-HTP 50mg Modafinil 100mg (Monday/Wednesday/Thursday) I am considering adding, Aniracetam, Vinpocetine, Hydergine, ACF-228, and Adrafinil (Olmifon), but I'll wait to see how/if the current stack has any unwanted side-effects. Yup, it's a whole bunch of pills, but I'm no where near the obsession of Ray Kurzweil yet, who was quoted as saying "I cut it down. It's like 150 pills a day" when asked about the 250 pills a day he used to take.

Last year I read about the “formula for genius”, by Dr Piotr Wozniak. I found it very interesting and changed my view on the relation between memory and intelligence. In the past I’d written off the memorisation of facts as being relatively unintelligent (not least because it was boring), and with the internet and personal wikis there was no longer any need to remember trivial information. However, if your brain has access internally to a larger amount of knowledge, it’s able to draw more abstractions, generalise better and find new connections. Which makes sense in hind sight, if you don’t have that knowledge in your mind, how are you going to draw comparisons with new knowledge?

I was also intrigued by his learning software SuperMemo, but it looks like it’s become outdated, and more specifically it’s confined to windows and isn’t open source (meaning I can’t easily modify it if it doesn’t work the way that’s right for me). Thus, I went looking for some new learning software and came across JMemorize and Mnemosyne.

Both are based on the Leitner principle (proposed by the German psychologist Sebastian Leitner in the 1970s) which is described on jMemorize’s about page:

“The basic idea is to divide the cards into different decks depending on the difficulty they present to you. This is done by repetitive quizzes in which you try to answer the question out of your mind. Every time you know the correct answer to a card, it is put on the next higher card deck. If you fail at a card, it is put back to the starting deck.”

I ended up using Mnemosyne for the following reasons:

• it is written in gtk
• supports pictures, sounds, and 3 sided cards
• it also is a research project, allowing you to optionally submit your learning to their server (not the content of the cards, just your performance through time).

Plus it’s in ubuntu so you can just type the following to install it:

So far I’ve been using Mnemosyne for 8 or so months. I’ve learnt the periodic table as a test (Ialways found chemistry my downfall in school due to it mostly being memorisation). I’ve also learnt the French words for dates and body parts, and now I’m learning Spanish (in a more concrete way than just random words, including phrases and the various parts of speech). So far there are 2700 facts, which for the most part I can recall relatively easily.

Another method of memorisation specifically for numbers is the Major memory system. There is a perl script for helping using this system here.

Last year I read about the "formula for genius", by Dr Piotr Wozniak. I found it very interesting and changed my view on the relation between memory and intelligence. In the past I'd written off the memorisation of facts as being relatively unintelligent (not least because it was boring), and with the internet and personal wikis there was no longer any need to remember trivial information. However, if your brain has access internally to a larger amount of knowledge, it's able to draw more abstractions, generalise better and find new connections. Which makes sense in hind sight, if you don't have that knowledge in your mind, how are you going to draw comparisons with new knowledge? I was also intrigued by his learning software SuperMemo, but it looks like it's become outdated, and more specifically it's confined to windows and isn't open source (meaning I can't easily modify it if it doesn't work the way that's right for me). Thus, I went looking for some new learning software and came across JMemorize and Mnemosyne. Both are based on the Leitner principle (proposed by the German psychologist Sebastian Leitner in the 1970s) which is described on jMemorize's about page: "The basic idea is to divide the cards into different decks depending on the difficulty they present to you. This is done by repetitive quizzes in which you try to answer the question out of your mind. Every time you know the correct answer to a card, it is put on the next higher card deck. If you fail at a card, it is put back to the starting deck." I ended up using Mnemosyne for the following reasons: it is written in gtk supports pictures, sounds, and 3 sided cards it also is a research project, allowing you to optionally submit your learning to their server (not the content of the cards, just your performance through time). Plus it's in ubuntu so you can just type the following to install it: sudo apt-get install mnemosyne So far I've been using Mnemosyne for 8 or so months. I've learnt the periodic table as a test (Ialways found chemistry my downfall in school due to it mostly being memorisation). I've also learnt the French words for dates and body parts, and now I'm learning Spanish (in a more concrete way than just random words, including phrases and the various parts of speech). So far there are 2700 facts, which for the most part I can recall relatively easily. Another method of memorisation specifically for numbers is the Major memory system. There is a perl script for helping using this system here.

I’ve going back through some draft posts which I never published. Here’s one from way back last year some time. I should note that I don’t really believe I have Asperger’s or anything like that. I also now believe that “breadth of ideas” is a natural consequence of the parallel nature of the brain. But, being the hoarder and preservationist of digital information that I am, I couldn’t just delete this… so here it is.

…

In the past I’ve read about aspects of Asperger’s syndrome and in the past have wondered if I’ve got some small inclination towards it. I function reasonably well now though, but this is only through years of practice and working on the things the are traditionally deficient in someone with the syndrome. On deeper reading of the wikipedia article, it’s more likely that they are simply surface similarities. I certainly learnt a lot from being in intimate relationships and am constantly trying to improve (and maintain) my social abilities, but the fact is that I taught myself to look people in the eye while holding a conversation, to exhibit confidence instead of trepidation and to use my empathy to feel what others feel (instead of shutting it out of my head due to it being overwhelming).
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I've going back through some draft posts which I never published. Here's one from way back last year some time. I should note that I don't really believe I have Asperger's or anything like that. I also now believe that "breadth of ideas" is a natural consequence of the parallel nature of the brain. But, being the hoarder and preservationist of digital information that I am, I couldn't just delete this... so here it is. ... In the past I've read about aspects of Asperger's syndrome and in the past have wondered if I've got some small inclination towards it. I function reasonably well now though, but this is only through years of practice and working on the things the are traditionally deficient in someone with the syndrome. On deeper reading of the wikipedia article, it's more likely that they are simply surface similarities. I certainly learnt a lot from being in intimate relationships and am constantly trying to improve (and maintain) my social abilities, but the fact is that I taught myself to look people in the eye while holding a conversation, to exhibit confidence instead of trepidation and to use my empathy to feel what others feel (instead of shutting it out of my head due to it being overwhelming). Certain characteristics I've noticed... and that others have commented on in the past, that match what I've heard people talking about Autism being similar to, is a high sensitivity to stimulus and being unusually observant. People have discussed the idea that Autism isn't an inability to interact or perceive the world, but that it's the mind shutting down interaction channels due to an Autistic persons perception of the world being extremely intense. More than the mind can handle. I find that in social situations of more than a couple of people draining after a while. I have difficulty in public speaking, not because I'm particular fearful of public speaking, but because I'm trying to process the entire crowds reaction. I get caught up in every subtle nuance of peoples motion and expression, and when you're trying to track 200 people's expressions, it's hard to keep your mind focussed on what your talking about. This inability to focus, or the high sensitivity to distraction, becomes a burden when trying to work on projects. Instead of a depth first search and actually getting to the end of chain of reasoning or the total completion of a concept, my mind will do a breadth first search. Scanning multiple possibilities, inundating me with numerous possibilities, and sticking me in a frozen position where I find it difficult to move forward (although perhaps it's just that spreading attention over 100 different ideas makes it look like no progress is being made!). In some sense, this might be why I'm in research and seem to be doing pretty well at it, I can see the different possibilities (my thesis had to be chopped back a fair amount because there was a lot of POTENTIAL ideas in it, that although interesting, were distractions from the actual real experimental work I did). In the past I've found the use of of stimulants such as caffeine to be beneficial in making my focus narrower. Such that the thinking is better for getting work done once an idea exists, rather than for creating novel thought. Another substance which is mostly for promoting wakefulness and combating narcolepsy is Modafinil, which also has the ability to cause me to be more motivated to make progress but doesn't make that focus quite as narrow. Ironically, I'm working on attention allocation in the open-source artificial intelligence system OpenCog, so perhaps we should have a caffeine mode in the attention allocation system (this is doable, in a narrowing of focus sense, since the attentional focus boundary is an adjustable level that indicates the cutoff for when items are in the attentional focus of the digital mind).

My friend Seth just bought me the domain ferrouswheel.com as a belated birthday present. Which is awesome, but is actually more than that, because once ferrouswheel.com came up I was offered the domain from Digital Caucus Inc for $US 99 a few weeks ago – a lot more than a normal registration. Although I’d heard about Domain Tasting and Kiting, I didn’t put 2+2 together because I was just excited about the potential of getting the domain (yeah, I’m a geek!). Seth, however, is far more on to it and he checked the domain out to find out that the domain was actually free now and registered it for me. Thank you!

And as a karmic return, I suggest you check out his company’s Firefox plugin Interclue. It’s been featured on the Firefox recommended plugins page and gives you a preview of links before you decide to click on them. It’s alot better than those web based pop-ups that try and preview pages for you.

My friend Seth just bought me the domain ferrouswheel.com as a belated birthday present. Which is awesome, but is actually more than that, because once ferrouswheel.com came up I was offered the domain from Digital Caucus Inc for $US 99 a few weeks ago - a lot more than a normal registration. Although I'd heard about Domain Tasting and Kiting, I didn't put 2+2 together because I was just excited about the potential of getting the domain (yeah, I'm a geek!). Seth, however, is far more on to it and he checked the domain out to find out that the domain was actually free now and registered it for me. Thank you! And as a karmic return, I suggest you check out his company's Firefox plugin Interclue. It's been featured on the Firefox recommended plugins page and gives you a preview of links before you decide to click on them. It's alot better than those web based pop-ups that try and preview pages for you.

As a kid, and even in the first few years of University, I used to have trouble understanding why things needed to be explained in detail. Essays were difficult because I’d take the point I was trying to make and think of it like a logic problem:

This interesting fact and this analysis, thus this is the point.

Except that made for very short essays that were no where near the word limit.

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As a kid, and even in the first few years of University, I used to have trouble understanding why things needed to be explained in detail. Essays were difficult because I'd take the point I was trying to make and think of it like a logic problem: This interesting fact and this analysis, thus this is the point. Except that made for very short essays that were no where near the word limit. Part of that was because I was used to maths, physics, and computer science problems. These fields don't tend to push students to writing supposition about theory, at least not at the University I went to, and it's usually pretty concrete for the level taught to undergraduates. Then midway through my study I switched tracks into Biology and flailed around for a while. They expected you to write more than a paragraph at a time, and form coherent arguments in exams without the benefit of cut-and-paste! The horror. After while I got over my initial shock, and actually got reasonably good at writing (my recent resurgence of posts on this blog is an attempt to practice those skills which are getting rusty from too much code and analysis of experimental results). Even though I managed to get pretty good, I still didn't quite understand. I thought it was a waste of time when I could construct the argument for my 2000 word essay in a paragraph. I got over that though. I saw that one has to also explain their reasoning, because any conclusions about the real world based on science usually contain assumptions. It's important to not only be explicit about these assumptions, but to also explain why these are the assumptions chosen. Even more recently, I've worked on economic attention allocation (ECAN) in OpenCog, which controls the flow of attention within an artificial mind. Why is this necessary? Because the mind's resources are finite - based on the computers available memory and processing ability, and we obviously also have a finite capacity for focussed thought too (well, yes, it's finite because we only have so many neurons, but I'm referring more to the limited number of concepts and relations we can consciously work with at any one time). Much of how the attention allocation works in OpenCog is based on importance diffusion between close concepts, but the concepts also need to be primed with importance in some way. If diffusion was the only process that moved attentional importance, you'd eventually end up with a homogeneous soup where everything was equally important! The way this happens is somewhat complicated in OpenCog, and not immediately relevant to the point, but one thing to note is that external stimulus excites contextually relevant information. What that means is, if OpenCog sees that a cat walked past... then knowledge about cats (they are furry 4 legged felines) and perhaps locomotion/kinematics is stimulated (if the cat keeps walking in that direction it will fall off that balcony and fall due to gravity... okay, so maybe that's more about prediction, but general knowledge about walking would be available in order to be used to make that prediction). By stimulating this knowledge, it's made more important in the systems mind. Beyond the cat example[1] the same goes for reading someone's ideas. If someone just tells you "the sky is green, purple and sparkly" and leaves it at that, you'd probably just think they were taking some particular effective hallucinogenics... especially if you were inside, at a conference about refrigerators (if it was a metereological conference, you might be willing to concede that they were right, because they are an expert in the field and have a reason for believing as such). But if the the refrigerator conference attendee first prefixed their statement with "Y'know, I was just holidaying in Alaska, and I saw the Northern lights, up there... ", then assuming you vaguely knew about auroras changing the colour of the sky, then you'd be able to believe the refrigeration expert. Or at least believe they weren't in the habit of attending refrigeration events under the influence of mind-altering substances. [1] It's okay, the cat didn't actually fall off the balcony.

There’s currently a billboard up around the Basin Reserve that says “Vacant”, indicating that it’s for hire. It also has a picture of Paris Hilton, which I find mildly discomforting. It’s all very well having trashy magazines with Celebrity slander, even if it’s just fostering unhealthy human behaviour (where the only option for people envious of others lifestyles is to pick them apart so that they can say those celebrities don’t have it so great after all… instead of actually going out and doing something about changing their lives). It’s another thing to plaster a giant billboard with a celebrity face and suggestively indicate there is nothing going on in their head.

As much as some people might not like it, Paris Hilton is actually pretty intelligent with an IQ in the upper quartile from the last I read – although I’m missing references for it – she’s fostered the ditzy blond image because it caters to a greater section of society, and thus the better to sell her brand. People in general don’t like to feel inferior or dumb (see the above paragraph about picking apart celebrity lives) so why would Paris try to convince people otherwise? I wouldn’t be surprised if the billboard company was paying her to put her image on the billboard (otherwise that Wellington company is potentially in for a world of hurt). I’m not saying I’d personally sell my identity as stupid so that I could make money, but you’ve got to give it to the girl for convincing most the world of her visage of stupidity… so much so that she’s associated with the word “vacant” on billboards half way around the world.

There's currently a billboard up around the Basin Reserve that says "Vacant", indicating that it's for hire. It also has a picture of Paris Hilton, which I find mildly discomforting. It's all very well having trashy magazines with Celebrity slander, even if it's just fostering unhealthy human behaviour (where the only option for people envious of others lifestyles is to pick them apart so that they can say those celebrities don't have it so great after all... instead of actually going out and doing something about changing their lives). It's another thing to plaster a giant billboard with a celebrity face and suggestively indicate there is nothing going on in their head. As much as some people might not like it, Paris Hilton is actually pretty intelligent with an IQ in the upper quartile from the last I read - although I'm missing references for it - she's fostered the ditzy blond image because it caters to a greater section of society, and thus the better to sell her brand. People in general don't like to feel inferior or dumb (see the above paragraph about picking apart celebrity lives) so why would Paris try to convince people otherwise? I wouldn't be surprised if the billboard company was paying her to put her image on the billboard (otherwise that Wellington company is potentially in for a world of hurt). I'm not saying I'd personally sell my identity as stupid so that I could make money, but you've got to give it to the girl for convincing most the world of her visage of stupidity... so much so that she's associated with the word "vacant" on billboards half way around the world.