the path to a self

Imagination gives us an ability of seeing ourselves from the outside to realize how we come across to us. If this kind of amazing recursive perception is (possibly) unique to human being, that might be a critical point in evolution of humanoid. Imagine what was it to imagine yourself for the very first time! Now we could imagine ourselves in the past (remember) and then use the past-to present extrapolation to imagine ourselves in the future – first 2st-person (point of view) dreams.

To do that we had to get at the beginning some important abilities – to have first conscious predictions and ability to imagine alternative reality.

When we dream and extrapolate our imaginary future based on memories, our minds build the time-independent (or salable) sampled (in neural system) structure for subset of subjective realities. Essentially from this point we could build new alternative realities. At the very beginning it was only extrapolation of existing reality (to predict and get evolutional competitive advantage), but then the extended deviation in prediction caused outliers – imagination of something totally not related to reality. What was that first time? Maybe two-headed dangerous predator was giving a birth to a fear of imaginary? Maybe the will of getting a mate produced an image of some beautiful creature – first dreams of love ?

These days, the animals “actively recall themselves” and not just respond to a recorded past (“state machine”) as we know it happens in dreams, when they imagine themselves running, they are moving legs.

And so it begins – the path to a self.

Advertisement

Laws are shaped by Monte Carlo distribution of human behavior

Thought during “More Perfect” series   by RadioLab

Skills network

Anything related can be a network. Any network got a hidden magic inside. Building a network is unleashing another part of the beauty of this world. And when you do this, when you find the secret clusters, when you connect the lonely entities of existence – then this magic is flowing though this network, enlightening and reviving nodes, breaking out over the invisible strings into the life, connecting everything and everyone.

Our skills are shaped by the templates of education and jobs, by human behaviors and to get a glimpse of this bias we can do a simple experiment.

Let’s build s crawler that is getting LinkedIn skills from many people, connect those skills based on cross-correlation and build a network that is based on highly correlated skills.

Even small amount of people I took (about 150), is giving a network of over 400 correlated skills, connected by 3500 links and lots of interesting insights.

So… Mainly pics and less words.

Parts of the network, related to declared programming language-based networks (per language). Pay attention on differences:

Design (Since this is a small network, it is biased by my occupation, so the design is mainly represented by word of semiconductors – doing it widely would expose other meanings of design):

Artificial Conductor

Why there is a conductor for orchestra? Actually there are many reasons, even though musicians can play without a conductor (and sometimes they actually do).

Question is – can we make a better conductor by making the artificial system that could answer all the needs and maybe do things that could improve the performance of the orchestra?

Let’s  take several primary reasons and try to refer to each while replacing each functionality by technical capability.

1. Synchronization
   In a large orchestra, the time taken for the sound to travel is long and ear-based feedback of musicians is insufficient (even if heard) and causing the lag.
2. Start/Stop
   Not just for the beginning, but for the resting of musicians. Especially for brass, woodwind and percussion players, there can be considerable stretches of time when they are not required.
3. Make sure that the volume of the instruments balances so nothing is drowned out
   It is very hard to synchronize the volume in large orchestra, so conductor is helping to stabilize it.
4. Phrasing, tempo, bowings and general style
   Those are the elements that conductor shall dictate to the members of the ensemble.
5. And… the Show.

To do this, we can provide the pre-programmed system with distributed audio sensors and visual central and distributed interfaces.

Required features of the system:

1. Conductor display to provide centralized signals such as beginning and stop, including preparation indicator
2. Local displays to be aligned with the instrument, position, adjust to and present a sheet music (it. partitura) and have personal musician’s configuration.
3. Local displays to provide begin signals and preparation
4. Compensation of delays (TDR) and full alignment between all local stations
5. Audio sensors and volume/misalignment feedback to local stations.
6. Gathering of audio data for analysis and post-performance feedback and continuous improvement of the ensemble.
7. The show/experience component might be intensified by leveraging the real-time data and showing some powerful visuals for people in the concert. In addition the system can provide the visual streaming from local stations so people could see the people behind the performance.
8. Visual tempo/phrasing/dynamics conductor display. Something like this (sketch): 

Obviously there is a need in a preparations and this might be just an instrument in the hands of the professionals, but this direction can scale up the use of conducting and maybe even improve it 😉

It is harder to look towards the direction where you have already fallen than to go to direction where you have never been.