The most important problems and what to do

by Jonatas

The most important problems of the universe: (1) suffering; (2) lack of intelligence; (3) new imperfect life being created unintentionally in unreachable (due to the speed of light) places; (4) the end of the universe (by heat death or something else). Other relatively minor problems can be fixed with time by fixing problem 2. Problems 3 and 4 seem to be impossible to completely fix, although maybe problem 3 could be diminished by a type of class action by all intelligent beings in the universe to replace imperfect life in their nearby planets, and problem 4 could be delayed by slowing the subjective passage of time in conscious beings (by accelerating their rate of functioning, this could be done to extreme levels in artificial beings, effectively multiplying by many times the remaining time in the universe). Mortality is not really a major problem (see Daniel Kolak’s open identity theory, and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daniel_Kolak).

What we should focus the most on doing now: (A) making the population sympathetic to and willing to work for transhumanism (this includes trying to diminish opponent forces, such as religion, and in general trying to propagate the whole mindset that leads one to accept transhumanism), which has the potential to solve problems 1 and 2 for us – and fixing problem 2 will fix many other minor issues with time (such as lack of knowledge; mortality; creation of virtual paradises; etc.); (B) preventing global catastrophic risks (the most important of which seems to be bio- or nanotechnological terrorism, which is not something that exists now), something that we have little to do about now, except trying to convince legislators and politicians of the risk, without making them averse to goal A.

About the relationship between goals A and B: avoiding goal A will do little to help B. In fact, putting too many security restrictions on goal A has the potential to make less ethics-conscious individuals advance the technology first. Instead, the technology should be advanced as fast as possible, with some restrictions, and there should be created a global power with strict international surveillance for bio- or nanotechnological terrorism.

About artificial intelligence: it is not per se going to solve problems 1 and 2 for us, unless it acquires consciousness and replaces us completely (but I don’t see that happening in the near future). As long as there is still lack of intelligence in people, bad political decisions and all stupidity related problems would continue to exist, and the same with suffering. Artificial intelligence, if properly planned, should not be considered a relevant global catastrophic risk, because it can be easily contained (inside reality simulations, or through many limitations, such as physical, in terms of knowledge, of accessibility, etc.) and because if it is very intelligent it should not have unproductive behavior.

Once we can fix problems 1 and 2 for us with transhumanism, we can explore all planets nearby, and if we find forms of life that still have problems 1 and 2, we can either solve these problems for them (giving additionally knowledge, immortality, virtual paradises, etc.) or replace them. Advanced aliens should be expected to do the same.

What impedes people to solve these problems or to see the need to solve them? (Z) Thinking that education will solve problem 2; (Y) Thinking that problem 2 doesn’t need to be solved because we are so intelligent already; (X) Thinking that suffering is somehow necessary and shouldn’t be avoided; (W) Thinking that it is against their God’s rules to fix these problems. The absurdity of these (Z, Y, X, W) should be already evident to who is reading this, so there’s no need to explain it.

Três Videos

What Does Make a Difference? It’s Really Simple

This is really simple:
Suppose you want to check if some action of yours makes a difference.
How to do it?
The wrong thing to do:
Think of the consequences of your action and evaluate them to see if they fit your purposes. If they do, go on and do it.

The reason for this being wrong: If someone else does something with the same consequences, and if your doing or not your action makes no difference to the fact that THAT person will do it, then you are not necessary for those consequences, they would happen anyway.
This is also true if something, not a person, would do an action with the same consequences.

The right thing to do: Consider what would happen if you DIDN’T do your action. Subtract that from what would happen if you DID do your action.
This is the difference it would make if you did it.

There is a reason it is called a ‘difference’, it is the difference between you doing it and you not doing it.

Example: Suppose you think you will make a difference by carefully considering your vote, and voting.

Wrong: Well, I’m partially causally responsible for the election of X so my action would make a difference.

Right: If I do vote or if I don’t vote, the same candidates will be elected. Therefore my vote makes no difference.
(In more than 16000 elections in the USA it was NEVER the case that one vote would have made a difference)

The AWFUL argument people usually say: But what if everyone did it?

The reason it does not work: Everyone will NOT do it. Yes. That simple.

The reason it is awful: Compare “I don’t think I should go to the movies today, what if everione did it?”

So, when you are willing to make a difference, not feel good, not do what everyone does, not clean your consciousness. When you want to REALLY, REALLY make a difference, you should consider the difference between doing and not doing it.

It is that simple.

Uma Análise do Conceito de Racionalidade à Luz de Putnam

Uma Análise do Conceito de Racionalidade à Luz de Putnam

Em seu Reason, Truth, History, Putnam sugere que a dicotomia: “… ou cânones imutáveis e ahistóricos de racionalidade ou relativismo cultural é uma dicotomia […] ultrapassada”. Ao fazer isso, ele está pondo a prova um debate secular na filosofia, tentando descontruí-lo, de maneira quase derridiana. Este é o debate entre os relativistas culturais e os racionalistas universais, que acreditam que a razão seja uniforme no espaço-tempo.

Uma das características que separa Putnam dentre seus contemporâneos é sua afirmação de que a separação tradicional entre fato e valor não é total como muitos defendem. Como a racionalidade é definida em termos de objetivos, e meios para atingí-los, e os bons objetivos são determinados por valores do que é bom e ruim, as dicotomias racionalidade universal/relativismo, e fato/valor, estarão bastante relacionadas.

A razão pela qual ambas essas dicotomias podem surgir diz respeito a possibilidade de indeterminações. Isto é, se tudo no mundo fosse determinado, e nunca houvesse um grau de indeterminação entre algo e outra coisa, dificilmente estes pontos de contraste teriam surgido na história. Tudo seria, por assim dizer, preto no branco. Mas este não é o caso, existem vários graus de indeterminação na natureza, aqui, nos concentraremos na indeteminação intencional. Isto é, a indeteminação que existe entre um X que é a respeito de Y e o Y a respeito do qual ele é. Vários objetos do mundo são desse tipo, possuidores de intencionalidade, em maior ou menor grau. A palavra “John” quando escrita em uma folha por exemplo pode ser a respeito de John Lennon, ou de John Travolta, ou do apóstolo João, entre outras pessoas. Isto é, a capacidade de constrição que o termo que refere possui deixa espaço para várias interpretações possíveis. Isso sempre é o caso quando estamos tratando de uma linguagem formal, segundo o teorema de Lowenheim-Skölem, que diz que para qualquer formalização que se adequa a um modelo, existem infinitos modelos de cardinalidades superiores à este que também são modelos da mesma formalização. Ou seja, mesmo nos domínios mais abstratos do conhecimento humano, a indeterminação permanece. Não apenas para nomes numa folha (ou numa pedra), ou linguagens formais, vale a indeterminação. Também o vocabulário mentalista padece dessa fraqueza, por assim dizer, de não conseguir refererir unicamente a um único objeto jamais (Dennett 1980 Putnam 1981). Possuímos mundos nocionais que poderiam ser reflexo de infinitos mundos diferentes atuando sobre nosso sistema perceptivo, e não temos como descobrir em qual desses mundos estamos. Em termos Kantianos, existem infinitos mundos numenais que atendem as nossas representações fenomenais.

Não é de se espantar, se a indeterminação vale entre quaisquer duas linguagens, que uma questão que desde logo preocupou os filósofos da ciência é se o mesmo ocorreria com as teorias. Será que existem infinitos mundos compatíveis com qualquer teoria científica? Se sim, como sustentar um conceito de que a ciência nos diz a verdade sobre mundo, ou que ela é racional? Ao longo do tempo, algumas tentativas foram feitas na literatura para escapar do inescapável, e criar uma formalização filosófica de teorias que não possibilitasse o mesmo grau de indeterminação que Quine nos mostrou ter a linguagem natural (1960), Lowenheim-Skölem as linguagens formais e Dennett (1978) o vocabulário mentalista. A mais famosa é a tentativa de Carnap¹, usando as sentenças de Ramsey, que tentou modelar a modificação de termos teóricos entre teorias subsequentes de maneira análoga a relação entre sistemas formais e seus modelos. O problema é que mesmo uma sequência de teorias com termos bem definidos ainda deixava bastante espaço para varias realizações possíveis daquela teoria. O problema é bem sumarizado em Lewis “How to Define Theoretical Terms” (1971) seja “T” uma teoria científica:

“There remains the case in which T is multiply realized. In this case, the Carnap sentence tells us that the T-terms name the components of some realization or other. But it does not tell us which; and there seems to be no nonarbitrary way to choose one of the realizations. So either the T-terms do not name anything, or they name the components of an arbitrarily chosen one of the realizations of T, Either of these alternatives concedes too much to the instrumentalist view of a theory as a mere formal abacus. Neither does justice to our naive impression that we understand the theoretical terms of a true theory, and without making any arbitrary choice among realizations. We should not accept Carnap’s treatment in this case if we can help it. Can we?

We might say instead that the theoretical terms of multiply realized theories do not name anything. If multiple realization is a defect that theorists can reasonably hope to avoid, then we can afford to treat multiply realized theories as failures: call them false, and call their theoretical terms denotationless. But if multiple realization is inevitable, we cannot afford to disdain multiply realized theories. We can have denotations arbitrarily chosen, or no denotations at all.

A uniquely realized theory is, other things being equal, certainly more satisfactory than a multiply realized theory. We should insist on unique realization as a standard of correctness unless it is a standard too high to be met. Is there any reason to think that we must settle for multiply realized theories? I know of nothing in the way scientists propose theories which suggests that they do not hope for unique realization. And I know of no good reason why they should not hope for unique realization.”

Essa esperança de Lewis ressoa nas intuições de muitos cientistas e de alguns filósofos, mas exemplos como os Gettier problems, que demonstram que sempre há uma nova forma de destruir o conceito de justificação, vão contra essa intuição de que há uma explicação única. Mais forte do que os Gettier problems são os argumentos de Putnam, Rorty, Kuhn, Foucault e outros a favor do papel forte da determinação parcialmente histórica de qual dentre as interpretações possíveis é a escolhida. Isso depende, de acordo com esses autores qual é a época na qual se está pensando sobre a realização daquela teoria.

Viemos examinando até aqui como uma única teoria pode representar vários mundos, sem fazer distinções entre eles. Para nossos propósitos entretanto, a observação contrária é mais interessante, um mesmo mundo pode ser modelado por diversas teorias, ou seja, existe indeterminação na “ida” e na “volta” do processo. Essa indeterminação de várias teorias para um único mundo é o que gera o problema da racionalidade discutido por Putnam. ¿Ora, como terei uma concepção deteminada do que é racional se existem várias maneiras de agir que são condizentes com o mesmo mundo? Várias teorias da ação racional são igualmente razoáveis como formas de conviver com o mundo, assim sendo, não faz sentido falar numa única racionalidade, que perpassa culturas e civilizações e que é a única que se adequa ao mundo.

Alguns filósofos, mas não muitos, tranformaram o conhecimento desse fato num oba-oba, ou seja, supuseram que, uma vez que existem várias maneiras de se ser racional no mundo, então vale-tudo, qualquer coisa está bom, ou tudo é relativo a uma pessoa ou a outra, suas concepções, suas crenças e seus valores particulares. Mas não é bem assim. Os filósofos mais sérios (que em seu livro curiosamente Putnam chama de mais “inteligentes”) não se submetiveram a uma visão tão ingênua dessa complexa problemática. Encontraram versões interessantes (como as epistemes de Foulcault, as indeterminações de tradução semânticas de Kuhn, as noções de época de Rorty etc…) de casos nos quais, com efeito, um grupo justifica uma racionalidade diferente da de outro grupo, que está em algum contexto diferente (social, histórico, semântico, científico). Ou seja, para eles a racionalidade não é mais uma noção que está fixada. Mas tampouco está a deriva, deixada a seu bel-prazer e sem direção. Temos aqui o nascimento da concepção que Putnam está defendo, a de uma racionalidade ancorada. Mas ancorada com uma âncora de cabo bastante longo e flexível. Ou seja, nem todo curso de ação, ou curso de raciocínio poderá ser considerado racional. Existirão constrições no espaço lógico do que é admissível como racional, constrições que, na nossa metáfora marinha, podem ser pensadas como a elasticidade do cabo, e seu comprimento. Existem lugares que simplesmente não podem ser alcançados pela racionalidade, segundo Putnam, por mais que ela se estique, enrosque e dê piruetas no ar.

Cabe então analisarmos aqui critérios de constrição do que é permissivelmente considerável como racionalidade, para vermos se de fato é o caso que podem haver racionalidades não totalmente maleáveis, e ao mesmo tempo não unas. Precisamos de critérios de constrição que não sejam critérios que deixem apenas um elemento final. Um desses critérios é a forma como Wittgenstein pensa a idéia de “sentido” de um termo. O sentido, para Wittgenstein, é deteminado pelo uso que se faz de um termo, por uma miríade de jogos de linguagem que se interpolam e determinam um espaço lógico de possibilidades que é o sentido daquele termo. O termo círculo significa as ações que ele causa nas pessoas. Pois bem, temos aqui um grau de restrição. Virão muitos outros. Um outro grau de restrição que se adequa a concepção de racionalidade é a restrição evolutiva, e este talvez tenha sido tomado como mais importante pelos filósofos da segunda metade do século XX. A evolução constringe o espaço acessível de mundos nocionais, na medida em que nos obriga a habitar um mundo nocional que nos permita sobreviver e ter filhos. Ou seja, nosso design, arquitetado cuidadosamente pela mãe natureza (cega, surda, deprivada de emoções etc…) é tal que nos faz só poder habitar uma certa quantidade de mundos nocionais, sob pena de morte, literalmente! A racionalidade humana é produto da evolução genética que configura nossas mentes, e também da evolução memética, que modifica, com algumas restrições, nossa cultura, nossas idéias etc…. Ambos estes processos darwinianos geram fortes constrições (sobrevivência do mais apto) no que podemos pensar, e na nossa visão do que é racional, e do que é bom. Nossa racionalidade é constrita por uma séries de outros sub produtos desses fatores evolutivos: Fatores deonticos, fatores emocionais, bias cognitivos (erros sistemáticos de cognição), fatores econômicos etc… Putnam enfatiza essa idéia, e insere também um inovativo e diferenciado tipo de fator para adentrar o grupo. Os valores morais.

Putnam pontua por exemplo que numa visão de mundo na qual conectamos fato e valor, torna-se verdadeiro dizer que “Os nazistas eram irracionais” na medida em que nossos critérios de racionalidade entraram numa interação promíscua com nossos valores. O ponto dele é que, além de todos os demais fatores (dos quais, é fato, ele apenas destaca o fator evolutivo) devemos também utilizar nossos valores morais como forma de constrição do que pode ser considerado razoável. Note que esse argumento não necessita de prova. Ele está sugerindo que, na falta de outros critérios para racionalidade, uma boa forma de constringirmos o espaço do que consideramos racional, isto é, de dimnuir o cabo que ancora a racionalidade, é inserir os nossos valores como critério legítimo de avaliação do que é racional. Evidente que não se segue disso que ele não tenha outros argumentos em favor da união entre fato e valor, mas estes não concernem o presente trabalho.

Então ao mesmo tempo que Putnam aceita que não estamos mais diante de uma noção fundacionista de racionalidade, ele oferece caminhos para evitar um relativismo total. Não se coloca dessa maneira de nenhum dos lados dessa dicotomia que por tanto tempo populou as mentes filosóficas. Não é necessário ter uma visão convergente de racionalidade, ou acerca da verdade, para que não se tenha uma visão de deriva divergente, em suma esse é o ponto de Putnam. É possível derivar numa raia única, ou num espaço circunscrito, contanto que haja coisas (como nossos valores e a evolução) que constrinjam nosso espaço possível de racionalidade.

Putnam encerra seu capítulo “Two Conceptions of Rationality” com as palavras:

“I will not discuss here the expectation aroused in some by Chomskian Linguistics that cognitive psychology will discover algorithms which define rationality. I myself think that this is an intellectual fashion which will be disappointed as the logical positivist hope for a symbolic inductive logic was disappointed.

All this suggests that part of the problem with present day philosophy is a scientism inherited from the nineteenth century – a problem that affects more that one intellectual field, I do not deny that logic is important. I do tend to think that they are rather peripheral to philosophy, and that as long as we are too much in the grip of formalization we can expect this kind of swinging back and forth between the two sorts of scientism I described. Both sorts of scientism are attempts to evade the issue of giving a sane and human description of the scope of reason. “

A revelia dos desejos dos tais psico-linguistas Chomskianos, a hipótese de Putnam tem se mostrado correta, na medida em que não encontramos algorítmos exatos que definem a racionalidade humana. Encontramos, com efeito, uma gramática universal que subjaz as linguagens humanas, encontramos também, como o psicólogo e nobel de Economia Daniel Kahneman (2002) mostrou, uma série de erros sistemáticos (cognitive bias) que estamos propensos a cometer, como se fossem “falhas” do nosso algoritmo com relação a nossa concepção de uma racionalidade ideal. Ou seja, existe desacordo entre o que consideramos racional, quando perguntados, e o que sabemos sobre como funciona a cognição humana, esses erros são chamados de bias cognitivos, ou viéses cognitivos. Segue que não encontramos um único e paradigmático conceito universal de racionalidade, e também que o lugar para procurar isso não seria na mente humana. A invenção durante o racionalismo do Homo Economicus, e do Homo Racionalis havia criado nas pessoas uma ilusão de que pudesse ser o caso que, se a racionalidade enquanto tal existe, o lugar para encontrá-la seria a mente humana. É interessante que, apesar de Putnam colocar nas mãos de Chomsky uma das últimas possíveis chaves para encontrar a racionalidade dentro de nós, haja sido justamente a ciência que surgiu a partir de Chomsky (ciência cognitiva) que nos deu a garantia, de uma vez por todas, que o Homo Economicus e o Homo Racionalis são apenas uma fantasia de época. ²

Mas haveria uma definição de racionalidade pura, independente dos humanos e seus algorítmos mentais? Uma tentativa interessante de defender a racionalidade vem de Yudkowsky (2007):

“Optimization Process:

A physical system which hits small tagets in large search spaces to produce coherent real-world effects.”

Notamos aqui em primeiro lugar um enfraquecimento da concepção de racionalidade para uma concepção de racionalide condicional. “O que é racional?” deixa de ser uma pergunta que faz sentido, e o que faz sentido passa a ser perguntar “O que é racional dado que meu objetivo é X”. Mas mesmo uma concepção como essa, enfraquecida, pode sofrer modificações ao longo da história, das mudanças das ações humanas, dos nossos objetivos, etc…

Talvez possamos dividir as concepções filosóficas a respeito da racionalidade entre aquelas que sugerem que racionalidade esteja acima do triângulo

 

As flechas indicam influências e constrições ao longo do desenvolvimento da ciência.

e aqueles que acreditam que a racionalidade está subscrita a um desses aspectos da ciência. Nagel, por exemplo, almeja uma racionalidade acima e além dos vértices do triângulo, a concepção de Yudkowsky é enfraquecida justamente para poder se manter acima do triângulo, como um árbitro, definindo o que é ou não racional. Putnam está no outro time, ele insere a racionalidade no triângulo. Não apenas emaranhando-a com os valores, mas também compreendendo que existe numa medida uma concepção particular de racionalidade subjacente nos métodos e possivelmente nas teorias. A racionalidade, quando não está absolutizada, acima do triângulo, ela está dentro dele, e assim como ele se define por suas inter-relações, e pelas constrições que os elementos de um vértice exercem sobre os elementos do outro, se é assim, ela não pode variar indefinidamente, ela funciona como o cidadão da democracia, livre, mas com deveres.

Referências:

Dennett, D. 1978. Brainstorms: Philosophical Essays on Mind and Psychology. Cambridge: Bradford Books/MIT Press

Dennett, Daniel. 1980, Beyond Belief IN A. Woodfield, ed., Thought and Object, Oxford Univ. Press, pp. 1-95.

Gray, John.2002. Straw Dogs: Thoughts on Humans and Other Animals

David Lewis, 1971. How to define theoretical terms IN Philosophical Papers Vol I

Putnam, H. 1981. Reason, Truth, and History. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981.

Rorty, Richard.1979. Philosophy and the mirror of nature / Richard Rorty Princeton University Press, Princeton :

T. Gilovich, D. Griffin, and Daniel Kahneman [eds.]. 2002 Heuristics and Biases: The Psychology of Intuitive Judgment New York: Cambridge University Press,

Wittgenstein, Ludwig (1953) Philosophical Investigations (Oxford: Blackwell)

Yudkowsky, E.2006. World’s Most Important Math Problem IN Singularity Conference 2006 Technology-Conferences-and-Events.

1Philosophical Foundations of Physics (New York: Basic Books, 1966),

2O filósofo literário John Gray, em seu Cachorros de Palha, sugere (anedotalmente) uma das razões para a nossa visão de verdade una. Adaptarei seus comentários para criar uma explicação anedotal da persistência de nossa visão do Homo Economicus. Os gregos possuiam diversos Deuses, com diferentes traços de personalidades, fraquezas, virtudes e inclinações. No entanto, com a ascenção do Monoteísmo, surgiu também a noção de uma verdade única, de um único caminho, afinal, o monoteísmo vem de pensadores que diziam coisas como “Eu sou o caminho, a luz e a verdade, ninguém vai ao pai senão através de mim”. Claramente uma concepção universalista da verdade. Junte-se a isso que somos todos filhos de Deus, segundo essa cosmogonia. E Jesus em particular é parte de Deus. A relação entre Homem e Deus é de semelhança (a de Mulher parece indeterminada….). Se Deus é único, e nós somos à sua imagem e semelhança, então nossa racionalidade também deve ser una, para encontrar a única verdade que emana do ser divino. Cria-se então uma visão de homem que pressupõe essa racionalidade pura no homem, e, por estar anexada a uma visão do divino que permanece até hoje em umas 4 bilhões de pessoas, a idéia sobrevive fortemente em circuito não-acadêmico. O Homo economicus está morto, mas sua sombra permanecerá por mais mil anos.

Two Cognitive Cases

Two Cognitive Cases

This is the first draft of an article I’m developing, I appreciate any commentaries and corrections, which can be sent as reponses.

The study of cognition can be benefited in a number of ways, and people from areas as separate as mechanical engineering, artificial systems and psychology show us that. In fact, from Gödel’s theorem to dynamic systems to molecular genetics, there is some kind of contribution that has been made to the understanding of mind. I want to present two new challengers here, to join the group of things which are useful to understand cognition. In fact to understand in general. They are Recently-Biased Information Selectivity and Happiness.

First I want to talk about selectivity. If one wants to understand more and be able to acomplish more, it is highly likely that he will have to learn (the other option being invent, or discover). We learn more than we invent because it is cheaper, in economic terms. Our cognitive capacity to learn is paralleled in the south asian countries, whose development is funded into copying technologies developed in high-tech countries. Knowledge is not a rival good, that is, the fact that I have it doesn’t imply you can have it too. Knowledge, Newton aside, has nothing to do with apples.

So suppose our objective was to learn the most in the least time, and to be able to produce new knowledge in the least time. There is nothing more cognitive than increasing our descriptive and procedural knowledge in reasonable timing. The first thing one ought to do is to twist the idea of learning upon itself, and start learning about learning. There are many ways to improve learning that can themselves be learned. One can achieve higher efficiency by learning reading techniques. Also she could learn how to use different mental gadgets to learn about the same topic (i.e. Thinking of numbers as sounds, if she usually thinks of them as written, and vice-versa). She also could simply change her material tools, using a laptop instead of writing with pen, writing in a different language to allow for different visual analogies, using her fingers to count. The borders are of course not clear between different cognitive tools. Writing in chinese implies thinking through another grammatical scheme, as well as looking at different symbols, one of this is more mental, the other more material, both provide interesting cognitive connections to other concepts and thus improve thinking and learning. Another blurry technique, without clear frontiers is to use some cognitive enhancer. Coffee, the most widely used one, is a great enhancer. Except that it isn’t. Working as a brain’s false alarm that everything is okaywhn is isn’t, leading to disrythmia, anxiety exaustion etc. Modafinil is much better, healthier, less prone to causing tension. But are these mental or material gadgets? One thing is certain, they are part of the proof that the mind-body dichotomy has no bearing on reality. These are all interesting techniques for better learning, but I suggest they are not as powerful as selectivity.

Recent-Biased Information Selectivity is a pattern towards seeking knowledge, what is informally called an “approach” to knowledge. A Recent-Biased Information Selector is a person who has a pattern of behavior. This pattern is, as the name denunciates, to look for the solution for her problems mostly in the most recent publications she can find. That is, amongst all of her criteria for deciding to read or not to read something, to watch or not to watch a video, to join or not a dance group, being new is very close to the peak. There are many reasons for which this is a powerful technique, given our objectives. The first is the Law of Accelerated Returns, as proposed by Kurzweil(2005). According to it, the development of information technology is speeding up, we have an exponential increase in the amount of knowledge being produced, as well as in the amount of information being processed. This is Moore’s law extended, and it can be extended to all levels of technological improvement, from the invention of the multicellular organism to genomic sequencing, from the invention of a writing system to powerful computing etc… Stephen Hawking (2001) points out that if one wanted to read all that was being published in 2001, he’d have to run 145 kilometers per second, this speed has probably doubled by now (2010). So Information technology in general and Knowledge in particular are increasingly speeding up. That means that if you cut two adjacent periods of equal sizes from now to the past, odds are high there is more than twice the knowledge of the older period in the newer one. If one were to distribute fairly his readings among all there is to be read, he would already be exponentially shifted towards the present. So a fair distribution in order to obtain knowledge is one that decreases exponentially towards the past. Let us say one reads 1000 pages, more or less three books, per month. So if we divide time in 4 equal periods, let’s say, of 20 years, one would have these pages divided according to the following proportions: 1 : 2 : 4 : 8. Now, 1x+2x+4x+8x = 15x = 1000. x=66 We get the distribution of pages:

66 to 1930 – 1950

122 to 1950 – 1970

244 to 1970 – 1990

488 to 1990 – 2010

In general: Let S be the number of subspaces into which one’s division will be made. Let T be the total number of pages to be read. The fair amount of reading to be dedicated to the Nth subspace is given by the formula:

2^n-1 · (T / (2¹+2²… 2^S-1))

Now, this is not how we usually reason, since our minds are in general linear predictors, we suppose that fairness in terms of learning knowledge would be to read the same amount for equal amounts of time. This is of course a mistake, a cognitive bias, meaning something that is engendered in our way of thinking in such a way that it leads us systematically to mistakes. My first purpose is to make clear that the wisdom in the strategy of dividing cognitive pursuit equally though time is a myth. A first objection to my approach is that it is too abstact, highly mathematical, there are deep assymetries between older stuff and newer stuff that has not been considered, so one should not distribute her reading accordingly. Exactly! Let us examine those asymmetries.

First asymmetry: Information inter-exchange: It is generally taken for granted by most people that the future has no influence on the past, whereas the past has influence on the future. More generally, an event X₂ at time T₂ will not influence another event X₁ at time T₁, but might influence X₃ at time T₃. This of course is false. But we are allowed to make Newtonian approximations when dealing with the scale in which knowledge is represented, that is paper scale, brain scale (Tegmark 2000), sound-wave scale. So it is true for our purposes. From information flow asymmetry it follows that what is contained in older knowledge could have influenced newer knowledge, but not otherwise. This is reason to take the fair distribution, and squeeze it even more towards the present.

Second, asymmetry: Having survived for long enough. This is the main objection I saw against biasing towards the present, it consists of saying that the newest stuff has not passed through the filter of time (this could also be called the “it’s not a classic” asymmetry) and therefore is more likely to be problematic. I have argued elsewhere that truthful memes are more likely to survive (Caleiro Forthcoming) and indeed that is a fair objection to the view I am proposing here. This asymmetry would make us stretch our reading back again. But in fact there is a limit to this filter. One has strong reasons not to read what came just hot out of press (unless there are other factors for it) but few reasons not to read what has been for 2 years in the meme-pool, for instance. The argument is strong, and should be considered.

Third, Conceptual-Scheme Complexity: Recent stuff is embedded in a far more complex world, and in general into a very complex scheme of things, that is, the concepts deployed are part of a complex web, highly sofisticated, deeptly interacting. This web makes the concepts clearer since they are more strongly interwoven with other concepts, theories, experiments etc… The same concept usually will have a much more refined conception today than the one it had two hundred years ago. Take the electron for instance, we have learned enormous amounts about it, the same word means much more today than it did. Even more amazing is the refinement of fuzzy concepts like “mind”, “cognition”, “knowledge”, “necessity”, “a priori” and so on.

Fourth, Levels of Meta-knowledge available: Finally we get to an interesting asymmetry, that is related to how many layers of scrutiny has an area passed through. In the early days we had “2+3·5+(9-3)” kind of maths, then someone notices we’d be well with a meta-symbol for a given unknown number so we had “ X+3 = 2” kind of mathematics…. and someone else eventually figured a symbol could denote a constant, and we had “Ax+By+C = 0” kind of mathematics, there are more layers, but the point is clear. Knowledge₂, That is Meta-Knowledge depends on the availability of Knowledge₁, same for Meta-meta-knowledge or Knowledge₃. In psychology we had first some data regarding a few experiments with rats, then some meta-studies, with many clusters of experiments with rats, then some experiments with humans, then meta-inter-species knowledge that allowed us to compare species, then some theories of how to achieve knowledge in the area, that is epistemology of psychology etc… Now, it is usually impossible to create knowledge about something we have no data about. So there is no meta-knowledge without there being knowledge first. The number of layers is always increasing, for it is always possible to seek patterns in the highest level (though not always to find them!). More publications give us access to more layers of knowledge, and the more layers we have, better is our understanding.

These asymmetries give us the following picture, if we had a fair distribution, we should squeeze it a lot towards the recent past (some 2 years before present) but resist the temptation to go all the way and start reading longterm-useless nonfiltered stuff like newspapers. A simple way to do that is to change the 2 in the general equation for a 3. Some interesting ideas on this topic of selective ignorance deserve mention:

“There are many things of which a wise man might wish to be ignorant.”

Ralph Waldo Emerson

“Learning to ignore things is one of the great paths to inner peace”

Robert J Sawyer – 2000

“What information comsumes is rather obvious: it consumes the attention of its recipients. Hence, a wealth of information creates a poverty of attention and a need to allocate that attention efficiently among the overabundance of information sources that might consume it.”

Herbert Simon, Turin Award winner, Nobel Prize winner

“Just as modern man consumes both too many calories and calories of no nutritional value, information workers eat data both in excess and from the wrong sources”

“If you are reading an article that sucks, put it down and don’t pick it back up. If you go to a movie and it’s worse than The Matrix Revolutions, get the hell out of there before more neurons die. If you’re full after half a plate of ribs, put the damn fork down and don’t order dessert.”

Timothy Ferris – 2007

I’ve shown the names of those I’m quoting, for this gives one tip on exceptions for the no hot-out-of-press rule. That is the argument from authority. The argument from authority is fallacious in its usual form:

Source A says that p.
Source A is authoritative.
Therefore, p is true.

But is reasonable in its bayesian form (“~” is the symbol for “not”) :

Source A says that p. Source B says that ~p.
Source A is authoritative. Source B isn’t.
Therefore, it is rational to consider that p is more likely to be true until further analysis.

The other exception in which we should read what is hot-out-of-press (given our cognitive objective, as always in this article) is when it is related to one’s specific line of work at the moment. Suppose I’m studying Happiness to write a review of current knowledge in the area, this gives me good grounding to read an article published this month, since I must be as up to date as possible to perform my work. Exceptions aside, it is a good strategy to let others filter the ultra-recent information for you and remain in the upper levels of analysis. The same is true of old information, what is relevant is highly likely to have been either preserved, as I mentioned before, or rediscovered, as all the cultural evolutionary convergences show (Diamond 1999,Caleiro Forthcoming ).

First Case Conclusion:

Our natural conception of how to distribute our time in obtaining knowledge is biased in the wrong way, suggesting equal amounts of effort to equal amounts of time. To achieve greater and deeper knowledge, one should distribute her effort with exponentially more reading of more recent periods than older ones. In addition, she should counter this bias with another bias, shifting it even more towards the present but stoping short of it, with an allowance for some basic knowledge filters to operate before choosing what to read. We end up with an exponential looking curve that peaks in the recent past and falls abruptly before reaching the present.

Second case, Happiness

All other things equal, most people would not choose to have every single day of their lifes, from tommorrow onwards, being completely miserable. It is a truism that people do not want to suffer unless it is necessary, and most times not even in that case. Neutrality is good, but not good enough, so, all things equal, it is also true that most people would choose to have countless episodes of deep fulfilling happiness for the rest of their lifes, as oposed to being merely “Not so bad”. Some people have noticed that this is not so unanimous, for instance, Betrand Russell (1930) wrote: “Men who are unhappy, like men who sleep badly, are always proud of the fact.”

I intend to discuss happiness from another perspective, the perspective of cognition. Is happiness good or bad for thinking? Supposing our cognitive objective, as we did before, let us examine happiness. Suppose we don’t care about happiness, we just want to be cognitively good. Contrary to popular legend that thinking equals suffering, and Lennon’s remark that “Ignorance is bliss”, current evidence suggests that happiness is positively correlated with (Gilbert 2007, Lyubuomisrky 2007, Seligman 2002):

Sociability

Energy

Charity

Stronger immune system

Cooperation

Physical health

Earnings

Being Liked

Amount of friends

Social support

Flexibility

Intelligence

Ingenuity in thinking

Productivity in job

Leadership skills

Negotiation skills

Resilience in face of hardship

It is hard not to notice how many characteristics there are on the list, and easy to see how many of them are related to being a better learner, a better teacher, and a better cognitive agent in general. This is true independently of what one studies, if the knowledge is descriptive such as calculus, or procedural such as dancing. There is also the evident fact that depressed people tend to loose productivity dramatically during their bad periods. This gives us good scientific grounding to believe that happiness is important for cognition, to learn better, to achieve more, and to be cognitively more apt in general. So we ought to be happier.

But should we be happier? How much happier? The reason why I started this article is that I was reading in the park, listening to some music, watching people going and coming, families, foreigners, kids etc… It was a beautiful sunny day and I had just exercized, I was reading something interesting and challenging, the music was exciting, I took a look around me and saw the shinning sun reflecting on the trees, a breeze passed amidst the giggle of kids nearby and I thought “This is great!” In fact I thought more than that, I thought “This is great! Still it could be better”. There is some background knowledge needed to qualify the power of this phrase. Once I saw a study that said a joke had been selected among thousands by internet users, therefore it was a scientifically proven funny joke. Now, I’m a happy person. In fact I’m a very happy person. It took me a while to accept that. It is hard to accept that one is the upper third of happiness, because that tells a lot about the human condition, and how happy people are. So I was pondering about this fact that people told me, and that I subjectively felt, and finally science came to my aid. The University of Pennsilvania holds an online-test called authentic happiness invetory. The website has 700,000 members. I did the test twice, with some 14 months in-between. The website provides comparisons among those who took the test, we can take these to be some dozens of thousands of people at least. The first time I did it, it showed “You scored as high or higher than 100% of web users, 100% of your gender, 100% of your age group 100% of your occupational group, 100% of your educational level and 100% of your Zip code”. One year later, the first five bars were still showing 99% and the last one 98%. Thinking I might have been in an exceptionally happy day that time, I took the test again, and to my surprise I was back to 100% in all categories. I knew I am happy, but that was taking the thing to a whole other level. So I was as scientifically comproved to be happy as that joke, I was in the very end of the tail of the curve.

Now think again about that phrase in that scene in the park. “This is great! Still, it could be better.” I was not talking about myself (as I’ve been for one paragraph now) I was talking about Man. If you found yourself in the edge of the curve you’d know what I mean. If this is the best we can do, we are not there yet. I’m not saying that being happy is not great, it is awesome, but it could be much better. I suggest that anyone who had the experience of reading all those “100%” there in the website thought the same, this cannot be the very best, there must be more. This is what brings me to the Humanity+ motto:

Better than well.

The human condition is not happiness-driven. Evolutionarily speaking, we do what we can to have more grandchildren than our neighbors, whereas this includes happines or whether it doesn’t. A mind that was satisficed all the time would not feel tempted to change his condition, so mother nature invented feelings such as anxiety, boredom, tiredness of the same activity, pain etc… Happiness, as designed by evolution, is fleeting, ephemerous (Morris 2004). How could we change that? There are several ways, the most obvious one being chemical intervention. Also technologies of direct stimulation of pleasure centers could be enhanced to accepted levels of safety. Artifacts such as MP3 players also have an effect on happiness since listening to music causes happiness (Lyubomirsky 2007), many artifacts have positive effects on happiness and in the long term may help in improving the human condition. Art, philosophy, spirituality and science have also had long term effects on human happiness. So in order to improve the human condition in the long term, we ought to work in all those bases. This would in turn provide us means to achieve our proposed cognitive goal, through greater cognitively enhancing happiness. Before moving on, I’d like to make an effort of showing a mistake that most people are likely to make, due to some cognitive biases, I’ll first list the biases:

Status quo bias: people tend not to change an established behavior unless the incentive to change is compelling. (Kahneman et al 1991)

Bandwagon effect: the observation that people often do and believe things because many other people do and believe the same things. The effect is often called herd instinct. People tend to follow the crowd without examining the merits of a particular thing. The bandwagon effect is the reason for the bandwagon fallacy’s success.

From Yudkowsky (2009):

Confirmation bias: “In 1960, Peter Wason conducted a now-classic experiment that became known as the ‘2-4-6′ task. (Wason 1960.) Subjects had to discover a rule, known to the experimenter but not to the subject – analogous to scientific research. Subjects wrote three numbers, such as ‘2-4-6′ or ‘10-12-14′, on cards, and the experimenter said whether the triplet fit the rule or did not fit the rule. Initially subjects were given the triplet 2-4-6, and told that this triplet fit the rule. Subjects could continue testing triplets until they felt sure they knew the experimenter’s rule, at which point the subject announced the rule.

Although subjects typically expressed high confidence in their guesses, only 21% of Wason’s subjects guessed the experimenter’s rule, and replications of Wason’s experiment usually report success rates of around 20%. Contrary to the advice of Karl Popper, subjects in Wason’s task try to confirm their hypotheses rather than falsifying them. Thus, someone who forms the hypothesis “Numbers increasing by two” will test the triplets 8-10-12 or 20-22-24, hear that they fit, and confidently announce the rule. Someone who forms the hypothesis X-2X-3X will test the triplet 3-6-9, discover that it fits, and then announce that rule. In every case the actual rule is the same: the three numbers must be in ascending order. In some cases subjects devise, “test”, and announce rules far more complicated than the actual answer.” [...]

““Hot” refers to cases where the belief is emotionally charged, such as political argument. Unsurprisingly, “hot” confirmation biases are stronger – larger in effect and more resistant to change.”

Let me restate a case of the status quo bias in another form: When people make a decision, they should take only the benefits and costs of what they intend to do, and carefully analyse them. This is fairly obvious. Also, it is complete nonsense. What one ought to do when she is trying to find out about doing or not doing something is to compare that that thing with what she would do in case she didn’t do that thing. Suppose I’m a father who gets his daughter everyday in school. Then some friends invite me to go play cards, I reason the following: “Well, playing cards is better than doing nothing” and I go play cards, leaving my poor child alone in school.

 

Another important topic is how can someone be happier than he usually is, right now? What is already available? What has been proven to increase satisfaction? The rest of the article is dedicated to this topic. Gilbert (2007) has many interesting words on that, they are worth quoting:

“My friends tell me that I have a tendency to point out problems without offering soutions, but they never tell me what I should do about it.”[...]”… you’ll be heartened to learn that there is a simple method by which anyone can make strikingly accurate predictions about how they will feel in the future. But you may be disheartened to learn that, by and large, no one wants to use it.

Why do we rely on our imaginations in the first place? Imagination is the poor man’s wormhole. We can’t do what we’d really like to do – namely, travel trough time , pay a visit to our future selves, and see how happy those selves are – and so we imagine the future instead of actually going there. But if we cannot travel in the dimension of time, we can travel in the dimensions of space, and the chances are pretty good that somewhere in those other three dimensions there is another human being who is actually experiencing the future event that we are merely thinking about.” [...] “it is also true that when people tell us about their current experiences [...] , they are providing us with the kind of report about their subjective state that is considered the gold standard of happiness measures. [...] one way to make a prediction about our own emotional future is to find someone who is having the experience we are contemplating and ask them how they feel.[...] Perhaps we should give up on rememberin and imagining entirely and use other people as surrogates for our future selves.

This idea sounds all too simple, and I suspect you have an objection to it that goes something like this… “

This fine writer’s message is simple, stop imagining, start asking someone who is there. This is the main advice for those who are willing to predict how happy will they be in the future if they make a particular choice.

Now, Lyubomirsky offers many other happiness increasing strategies. First, she proposed the 40% solution to happiness. Happiness is determined according to the following graph:

50% genes 10% circumstances and 40% intentional Activities

That is, Happiness is 50% genetically determined (that is, if you had to predict Natalie Portman’s happiness, and she had monozygotic twin separated at birth, it would be more useful to know how happy the twin is than to know every single fact you may figure out about Natalie’s way of life, past and present conditions and reactions to life events) , 10% due to life circumstances (This includes wealth, health, beauty, marriage etc…), and 40% due to intentional activities. So, all things considered, if one is willing to become happier right now, the best strategy is to change these last 40%, how can we do it. Here I will list some comproved ways of increasing general subjective happiness. I will not provide a detailed description of the experiments, but those can be found in Lyubomirsky’s book references. My aim here is to give my reader a cognitive tool for increasing her happiness, since I have defended that achieving greater happiness is a good cognitive strategy.

Bostrom, N. 2004 The Future of Human Evolution. Death and Anti-Death: Two Hundred Years After Kant, Fifty Years After Turing, ed. Charles Tandy. Ria University Press. pp. 339-371. Available online: http://www.nickbostrom.com/fut/evolution.html

Diamond, J.1999. Guns Germs and Steel:The Fates of Human Societies. W.W. Norton & Co

Kahneman, D., Knetsch, J. L. & Thaler, R. H. (1991). Anomalies: The Endowment Effect, Loss Aversion, and Status Quo Bias. Journal of Economic Perspectives, 5, 1, pp. 193-206

Russell, B. 1930. Conquest of Happiness

Available online: http://russell.cool.ne.jp/beginner/COH-TEXT.HTM

Tegmark, M. 2000. The importance of quantum decoherence in brain processes IN Physics Review E61:4194-4206

Available online: http://arxiv.org/abs/quant-ph/9907009

Yudkowsky, E. 2009. Cognitive biases potentially affecting judgment of global risks IN Global Catastrophic Risks, eds. Nick Bostrom and Milan Cirkovic. Oxford

Available online: http://yudkowsky.net/rational/cognitive-biases

Fear of Paradise – Cryonics and Many-Worlds

Fear of Paradise – Cryonics and Many-Worlds

It is quite likely, as of today, that within some five months I might be signed up for cryonics. Great, that only means I am rational. Now I have for long been a defender of the Many-World interpretation of quantum mechanics. In the beggining, my reasons were due to the elegance and beauty of the theory, specially in terms of computation. Nowadays I got some stronger arguments, some from papers on the topic, some from Yudkowsky, a guy whose intelligence far surpasses my view of greatness.

Take these two together and what do you get?  It is unpredictable. We do not have sufficiently powerful machines to compute how do quantum electro-dynamics and quantum-cromodynamics operate in higher levels. That is, we cannot, currently calculate if what we know about how the mycrophysical world should really on average cause what we see here, in the macro-level. We think it does, but that could be caused by selection effects.

This leaves open the following possibilities:

1) Life is a process that has evolved in such a way as to counter most of quantum mechanical indeterminacies that could destroy it (say, if all your carbonic chains disengaged in two seconds) so that from every 10^10 worlds, there is only one in which your brain disintegrates.

2) Life in fact only counters life-destroying indeterminacies in very few cases, say, one in every two (for a given amount of elapsed time). In fact we only experience life as we do because there is nothing it is like to be dead!

So, what happens when one signs for cryonics? If (1) is true, most likely I’ll keep dividing my current self into kazillions of others, as I always have, a tiny part will indeed be cryogenated (while I’m 23 I expect that to be a tiny part, for Darwin’s sake!) but the biggest share will simply keep living my life normally.

If (2) is true, on the other hand, there will be many, many, many worlds in which I die for one or other quantum reason, and I will be quickly cryogenated, that is, frozen in something that doesn’t shatter my cells (as water does) in hope of a bright future ressurection, like the spirits of old. In many of those I will in fact be ressurected! These may be as many as the ones in which I will keep living my life normally. Suppose now that in the future, the indeterminacies that here used to kill me all the time that were not taken care of by evolution have been taken care of.

What should I expect? If (1) nothing exeptional, sign my contract, get back, move on.

If (2) then I should expect to quickly wake up in a post-human world, highly likely to be a world that would make paradise shiver and tremble in the sight of its greatness. A world in which happiness has become the very essence of matter, and intelligence is so widespread we can afford giving it to sponges. This would happen some time after I signed my contract, perhaps before I took the plane back to Brazil.

Of course, as any animal about to be taken away from its environment, I am afraid of change. Yeah, alright, it is change for a paradise beyond what the Flying Spaghetti Monster Himself could conceive of, in all his noodlety. So what, my fear is irrational.

One may stop here and say: Hey! That won’t cut! What if you wake up in a post-human doomed scenario with no conscious beings and an evil superintelligence, or singleton scraping your ass with cactus?

To what I say: My conditional probability, given ressurection from cryonics, that it is not the case that those who uncryogenated me are friendly (people or AI) is about 0,0005% percent.

I gather here I should say that I think it some 8% likely that (2) is true, and 92% likely that (1) is true. So the rest of this text is written by these 8% of me.

There may even be many more apocalyptic scenatios in which the world is dominated by evil stuff than ones in which either life goes on as usual or paradise takes hold. But if I consider observer selection effects, I should only account for worlds in which I live, therefore, if (2) is the case, I should assume that soon after signing that piece of paper, I will be in the best place ever, ever, ever.

In a way, this can be thought of as a goodbye letter. I know that there will still be one Diego made of bio-stuff and human (as opposed to post-human), and in fact, he is one of the people to whom I ought to say goodbye. Goodbye, thank you, current Diego, in the name of your paradise-sharing-future-slice, you have made yourself the biggest favor one could ever do, and I’m only causally connected to you now, to tell you that, I know I will be more thankfull later, but by then, I won’t be able to say so.

For all of those who stay including my own slices, henceforth friends, also it has been a great experience to have been here with you, and I wish we could somehow share paradise together (of course you may have your own future slice there, but I’m talking by definition to those who will stay here) but we can’t.

I do not know what is it like to live a life besides that of a human, but from what I managed to learn about the human life, I ought to be thankful for all that you have given me, all the Experiences, with the capital E, all the sharing, fun, love and joy.

It is a fearful path the one that takes to paradise, and my body chemestry is doing what she can to make me dubious, but this mind has been taken by reason long ago, and been too happy, well fed, intelligent and emotion-lover to be taken back right now, posthumanity, I launch myself to your care, into the unknown, and beyond the scope of any imagination. Let’s Go! Holy shit, I shit my pants!

Why haven’t intelligent people taken over the world?

(Publiquei este post em português no meu blog)

Let’s suppose a few hypothesis:

1) There are people who are very, very, VERY intelligent in the world.

2) The human civilization doesn’t look so let’s say…  very well organized, it seems like there are important human beings doing stupid things.

3) A fraction of the very intelligent people are also ambitious AND have strong opinions about how the world should be AND care enough to do something about it.

Hence my question is: Why is the world not regularly dominated by very intelligent people???

Ok, I admit that it is a somewhat bizarre question, but I really mean it, and I will try to justify myself.

First, what do I mean by dominating the world?
Domination means that you are able to make your will prevail over others. It doesn’t have to happen by force, far from it, it is enough that one can handle the situation to his side. Dominating the world assumes that someone (or some group) can achieve such a degree of superiority of power that is able to subvert the whole political established hierarchy. This seems to be VERY difficult, as I suppose that the closer you get to dominating the world, the more competent are your competitors aiming for the same purpose (or any other purpose which is incompatible with yours). That is, to take over and keep the power you have to find a way to win, eliminate, or avoid the elite of the political power in the world.

Why would anyone want to dominate the world?
To impose your will. And why would anyone want this? Well, this is a psychological matter. I suppose that it could be to satisfy an insatiable ego, a huge will to power, magnify one’s own image or by a very strong feeling of revenge, which is nonetheless also an imposition of one’s self on others. These motivations would be psychopathic. A more rational motivation could be for an ethical duty, well, it is true that the notion of duty is not rational, but I mean it would be a more objective conduct, to dominate in order to actualize goodness (whatever one understands by goodness…).

Why would anyone need to dominate the world?
Because the traditional social means may not be enough for what you want; for the most common political organizations requires that in order to gain power someone should gather admirers and trust in those who are in control of stabilishing your rank (whether the population or a political aristocracy). This route has many disadvantages, it commits the applicant to the interests of his political supporters (actually sharing his power with them), requires him to maintain a demagogic persona (social image) that somehow motivate or justify his position, and blatantly exposes him to all who might be interested in taking his rank or who oppose his policies to act against him, to overthrow him or simply kill. That is why someone would want to dominate the world through alternative means – which need not be by force (violence), I believe there probably are other ways.

Why someone would have to be intelligent to dominate the world?
Well, it is important to emphasize that I am not talking about a merely academic intelligence, I’m talking about a person with high cognitive ability in many areas, one who is able to face difficult problems of pratically any nature, from metaphysical questions, to social manipulation, to juggling gelatin.
Therefore, I think this would be the most important capacity in order to try to dominate the world because someone in this condition could try to understand and solve any problems that could appear, no matter if he/she was not particularly good at it.

How it would be like if intelligent people dominated the world?
It’s hard to answer, but we would live in noocracy, a government of the wise, or initially a geniocracy, since I am considering that on or a few geniuses would take over the power.  I suppose intelligent people would be better able to solve the major problems of society and to create efficient policies, they would have a more realistic, deep and complete understanding of the social functioning, have ethical concerns and a well-developed ethical system, and would be able to separate their personal interests of those of humanity.
Unfortunately some of these assumptions would probably not materialize.
There is still a complicated issue of how to represent the ethical and political values of the population, which is one of the greatest values of democracy. This would be an additional problem to be solved.

Isn’t the desire to dominate the world a childish, narcisistic and megalomaniac attitude based on a simplistic conception of society?
Hmmm… maybe. But would that really prevent people from dominating the world?

Assuming then that the main questions have been clarified:
Why is that the world is not regularly dominated by very intelligent people???

The answer doesn’t seems obvious. I will consider several possibilities:

1) The world has already been dominated by intelligent people and I was the only one who did not notice.
Well, this answer is either a denial of my second premise (that the world does not work very well), or the defense that even though intelligent people have dominated the world, these beings are not able to make it work in a way that seems adequate or worse, they are not interested in that.
This argument is quite similar to the Epicurean argument against the existence of God: if God wants to be good and is not able he is impotent, if he can but does not want he is malevolent, if he cannot and doesn’t want he shouldn’t be called God.
I shall divide this possibility in two:

1.1) The world has been dominated by intelligent people, but they can’t do the trick.
This is possible, but unlikely. However, given my lack of information about the occurrence of exceptional intelligence in ranks of high power, I will assume they probably are in positions of lower public exposition ( “illuminati”? O_O). If it is that so, why is that they cannot do deal with the problem? Is the dynamics of society, politics and the economy so uncontrollable? After all, remember that we are talking about people who were able to dominate the world! Why is it that they could not manage it efficiently? They don’t have enough critical mass? There would exist too much disagreement between them? It seems more likely to just reduce this position to a more usual view that whoever is controlling the powerful society are not as intelligent or competent as we are talking about. In other words, this position denies the first postulate.

1.2) The world has been dominated by intelligent people, but they are not concerned with organizing it, they are worried about other things.
This seems somewhat more likely. But why? In my view, a very intelligent person who has been able to dominate the world should have serious concerns about which direction to take. After all, has he dominated for what? Is it that ethics really does not necessarily lead to a social administration other than that we see today? Does intelligence not necessarily lead to ethical concerns? What are the motivations of these people then? Is it a fact that power corrupts people and that as soon as someone gets in a high position, this person gets overwhelmed by their instinctive and selfish desires?

Certainly in human history very intelligent great leaders have made to the high power and we can analyze the diversity of their behavior in order to see their profile, their motivations and what was their end, i.e. why they were unable to keep the power under the same ideals. So this question remains unanswered: What were the motivations of the great intelligent powerful men of the past?

Possibly the paths that lead someone to power do not usually lead people to deeper ethical concerns. Perhaps these men have been primarily busy with more immediate concerns, as their next conquests and maintaining their own power, without thinking much on a larger scale. After all, ruling empires sounds like an awful lot of work.

2) The world has not been dominated by intelligent people.
Well, this is my main proposal. And why is that the world has not been dominated?

2.1) Intelligent people are not able to dominate the world.
I think this is the best answer. And the main evidence is the lack of competence of the resistance movements throughout the world, even under the most ideologically hostile and absurd conditions.
We could remember the case of the Soviet Union under Stalin, or Nazi Germany. The number of attempted attacks, organized resistance movements and counter-revolutions in history seems to be modestly small in addition to being little effective. Taking into account that a revolution is a great opportunity to change the order of things, for a group to take the power and establish their political ideals, it seems that in fact, what is lacking is the competence (hypothesis 1 must be false in this sense).

And why this lack of competence?
I think it’s because the intelligent people usually have some characteristics that prevent them from being politically effective: they are either insecure, or undisciplined, or impractical, or unrealistic, or not politically skilled, or intransigent, or competitive, or disorganized in excess. Just look at most of the student movements and intellectual groups. This goes a little in the line of thought of a quote from Russell:

“The fundamental cause of the trouble is that in the modern world the stupid are cocksure while the intelligent are full of doubt.”
Bertrand Russell, Education and the Social Order (1932) Bertrand Russell, Education and the Social Order (1932)

Possibly the life paths of growing up and the personality of intelligent people does not help them to develop so many skills and intellectual and political motivations at the same time.

On the other hand, there were in the history of mankind, some situations in which one or more very intelligent people took over the power. Why were they unable to keep the power in the hands of other intelligent people? Why is the power of intelligent people not stable? Is it that they haven’t had this concern? Is it that their motivations did not favor them to pass the power to other intelligent people? Or they simply could not find successors up to their height? After all, finding suitable successors is not an easy problem.

Perhaps the problem is too difficult for one or even a few humans, to take over the world and still administrate humanity is a too hard job. This also seems quite reasonable. After all, for this purpose humanity is divided into hundreds of thousands of government functions and ranks. I certainly would not expect that they could control everything, just give the main guidelines. But anyway it is a reasonable possibility. Perhaps the problem is a mixture of lack of intelligence, number of people and organization. Interestingly this seems to be feasible. Hum….

Then there is also the possibility that our society is somehow protected against the domination of the intelligent. As if our society was constituted so that whenever someone very clever has this idea and decides to do something about it, it is quickly detected and eliminated (or perhaps distracted by an intellectual problem which will occupy his entire productive life and will not cause anything useful). This strikes me as too conspiratorial for my tastes.

2.2) Intelligent people do not want to take over the world.
Finally, perhaps the intelligent people are not so interested or motivated to take over the world.
After all, these people are supposedly perfectly capable of making themselves a very good life in today’s world, so it is just not worth trying to dominate the world. This is consistent with the view that rational people do whatever is advantageous for them, which usually does not involve caring so much with others.
In addition, dominating the world takes a lot of work, is very dangerous, and probably requires the rest of your life, if you eventually succeed.
It neither seems to be psychologically advantageous:
Unless you have a tremendous disturbance of an obsession with your ego or ethics, I think intelligent people get sufficient reward in activities far more feasible, in particular, most intellectuals are very happy discussing ideas, reading and writing and have no megalomaniac intentions.

Conclusions:
1.2) Intelligent people who achieves power do not usually worry too much about great ethical issues.
2.1) Intelligent people often have personality traits that prevent coming to power.
2.2) And the intelligent people who could come to power are probably not very interested.
And 2.1 again) If by chance there are people interested, they are in insufficient quantities to manage it, because the problem is so very hard …
Anyway, c’est la vie.

But a question remains, why isn’t the permanence of intelligent people in the power stable? Once a government of intelligent people is established, why can’t it keep its quality? Doesn’t these people usually have a strategic vision for this issue? Or is it that difficult to get suitable successors?

A filosofia de Nick Bostrom, Parte 1

Esse Post é o primeiro membro de uma serie de varios posts sobre a filosofia de Nick Bostrom. O objetivo dessa serie de posts é introduzir o leitor ao pensamento de Bostrom e a tópicos importantes do transhumanismo. Neste primeiro momento irei introduzir as motivações subjetivas bem como os princípios teóricos básicos sob os quais se fundam a filosofia deste pensador. Ele esta assim organizado:

1. O Bostrom
1.1 Formação
1.2 Preocupações
2. A Filosofia de Nick Bostrom
2.1 Bases
2.1.1 Tentando saber mais que deus, conhecimento indexical e a SSA
2.1.2 Efeitos de Seleção Observacionais e Riscos Existenciais

1. O Bostrom

1.1 Formação

Graduação em Filosofia, Matemática e Ciências da Computação na Suécia, onde estabeleceu um novo record de desempenho. Trabalhou como stand-up comedian por algum tempo para depois fazer um mestrado em Economia, outro em Neurociência e outro em Filosofia. Em seguida realizou seu doutorado em Filosofia, tese que entrou para o Hall de melhores dissertações do ano cujo tema era uma formalização do principio antrópico: A Self Sample Assumption. Tem atualmente, 37 anos e é diretor do Instituto Para o Futuro da Humanidade desde os 33 anos. Já arrecadou mais de 13 milhões de dólares em verba através de bolsas para pesquisa, prêmios e doações.

1.2 Preocupações

Talvez o melhor modo de entender a sua filosofia seja começando por entender que tipo de preocupações parecem habitar a mente deste pensador. Como todos nós Bostrom é um macaco das savanas num mundo moderno que não é o dele. Mas para ele a sua savana é o universo e a sua tribo a humanidade, sem duvida é um macaco um tanto quanto estranho. No entanto, para a esmagadora maioria da humanidade a savana é algo menor que um bairro e a humanidade algo entre 20-1000 pessoas. Este ultimo fato é talvez a maior fonte de preocupações para o Bostrom. Porque estamos fora do ambiente no qual evoluímos não sabemos lidar com nosso novo ambiente. Claro que existem inúmeras coisas que se mantiveram constantes como as leis da física, fatos sociais básicos e nossas emoções em geral. No entanto a pequena parcela que mudou pode ser crucial para determinar nosso sucesso futuro como espécie. Inicialmente temos novos desafios no campo do conhecimento que são extremamente difíceis de superar dado a nossa maquina cognitiva, tais como entender mecânica quântica, neuroquímica ou o problema da consciência. Para alem disso temos desafios no mundo exterior que podem se tornar importantes pressões evolutivas, tais como entender os riscos e potenciais da tecnologia – o que inclui desde inteligência artificial até farmacologia – ou entender e lidar com os novos riscos naturais eminentes tais como choque com grandes asteróides e aquecimento global. Passamos 90% do nosso passado evolutivo tendo que fugir de leões na savana, caçar mamutes, achar parceiros e formar alianças em grupos de até 100 pessoas. Nada disso exigia pensamento preditivo que extrapolasse uma ou duas décadas, menos ainda algo que extrapole a duração vida media de um homem primitivo – 40 anos. Nada disso exigia que entendêssemos o comportamento de possíveis futuras inteligências artificiais ou que lutássemos inutilmente contra catástrofes naturais transvertidas de poderosas divindades. Não nos era exigido que tivéssemos uma memória de trabalho muito maior que três ou quatro espaços para que processássemos informações a respeito do ambiente e de quem fez o quem com quem em pequenas tribos. Nossa navegação espacial foi moldada para conseguir acertar uma lança na caça que foge em velocidade e, no entanto, audasiosamente a usamos para enviar naves tripuladas ao espaço. Surpreendentemente não temos saído muito mal desse empreendimento pretensioso chamado civilização moderna, no entanto modificamos nosso ambiente cada vez mais rápido e como resultado ele se distancia velozmente das antigas savanas. Nosso cérebro talvez esteja próximo de não ser mais adaptado o suficiente para o ambiente que ele próprio criou. Para que a sobrevivência da humanidade e do que ela valoriza ser possível é necessário transcender o invólucro que era só a semente, é necessário o transhumanismo. O primeiro fato inelutável sobre essas modificações é a sua ineroxabilidade: a tecnologia veio e vem crescendo exponencialmente e estimativas conservadoras calculam que por 2050 nosso modo de vida terá mudado tão radicalmente a ponto de se tornar irreconhecível. Se fizermos essas modificações da maneira certa aquilo que valorizamos não será destruído e seremos de fato transhumanos – mais humanos – e a vida se tornará mais próxima da perfeição. Se fizermos a coisa errada e nada do que consideramos humano esteja lá daqui a 40 anos, então a humanidade terá se extinguido. Se, além disso, não restar mais vida inteligente então a galáxia sofrera uma grande perda, uma vez que somos a única vida inteligente de que temos noticia. Pense em duas historias para nossa galáxia, e talvez para o universo: a matéria começa a se condensar pela força da grávidade, estrelas surgem, aglomerados cada vez maiores, estrelas morrem e nascem e surgem os planetas, em algum deles surge a vida e através de milhões e milhões de anos ela evolui até que surge uma espécie que se espalha pela galáxia, a enchendo de vida e significado, bilhões e bilhões de seres conscientes com os mais diversos e complexos estados mentais. Na outra historia essa espécie é destruída e a galáxia permanece para sempre fria, gélida, silenciosa e inabitada. A colonização da galáxia, entes super inteligentes, uma consciência e um entendimento muito mais profundos do universo e um bem estar e uma felicidade muito maior podem estar nos aguardando nos próximos séculos, bem como pode estar nos aguardado a total destruição, e qual porta nós iremos abrir depende das nossas ações agora. Ou a raça humana vai transcender a sua insignificância cósmica e a sua chama vai brilhar pelo universo e a galáxia será adornada com os ramos, as flores e os frutos do que agora é somente semente ou nós seremos completamente eliminados da face da terra e toda a nossa existência será vã. Existem diversos jeitos de nos modificarmos para enfrentar melhor esses desafios e fazer a coisa certa. Inicialmente podemos memeticamente tentar modificar nosso aparelho cognitivo, aprendendo sobre nossos bias cognitivos – tendência a sistematicamente desviar do pensamento racional  – e de como evitá-los. Alem disso podemos quimicamente aumentar nossa capacidade cognitiva com o uso de nootrópicos tais como modafinil e aricept. O mais importante, no entanto, é dar atenção aos nossos futuros desafios e pensar seriamente as questões que podem fazer o diferencial entre uma galáxia pulsante de vida e uma inabitada. Para abordar essas difíceis e relevantes questões Bostrom fundou o movimento conhecido como transhumanismo: um movimento intelectual e cultural que se funda da crença de que devemos usar a ciência e a tecnologia para alterar a vida humana para melhor. Nessa seção tentei dar uma visão do que subjetivamente move esse filosofo a pensar o que pensa. A seguir analisaremos os aspectos teóricos que são as pedras fundamentais sob a qual ele constrói sua filosofia.

2. A Filosofia de Nick Bostrom

2.1 Bases

2.1.1 Tentando saber mais que Deus, conhecimento indexical e a SSA.

O instrumental teórico de Bostrom gravita em torno de um único conceito: A Self-Sample Assumption (SSA). Em termos precisos a SSA consiste em assumir que você é uma amostra aleatória da sua classe de referencia, sendo a classe de referencia o grupo de entidades que se assemelham a você em aspectos relevantes. Por exemplo, imaginemos o seguinte experimento mental: o mundo consiste de 100 calabouços habitados, cada um deles, por um único ser humano. 10 são pintados de branco e 90 de vermelho. Você acorda num calabouço escuro, qual probabilidade você irá atribuir para que o seu calabouço seja branco? Naturalmente será 10%. Esse raciocínio intuitivo pode ser formalizado se você considerar que sua classe de referencia for a dos humanos e que ela tem tamanho 100 e que destes 100, 10 estão numa sala branca e 90 em uma vermelha, assim segue naturalmente que se você é um humano e não sabe a cor da sua sala, a probabilidade de que a sua sala seja branca é de 10 em 100, ou seja, 10%. A SSA tem a forma do condicional bayesiano P(Eu sou tal que … | O Mundo é tal que…) – no exemplo anterior: P(Eu estou na sala branca | Existem 100 salas habitadas no mundo, 10 brancas e 90 vermelhas). Este resumo simplista revela algo de fundamental ao pensamento bostroniano. Aquele que já olhou uma noite estrelada num céu despoluído e divagou sobre o universo, as estrelas e a sua formação, planetas com vida e nosso papel no cosmos teve talvez um instante do estado de consciência que constantemente permeia os escritos deste filosofo sueco. A SSA parte de uma observação do estado do mundo (“O mundo é tal que…”) para uma reflexão sobre a nossa posição nele (“Eu sou tal que..”). Uma das pedras fundantes deste conceito foi colocada por David Lewis em 1979 em seu artigo “Attitudes De Dicto and De Se”, neste artigo Lewis abordava uma limitação dos dois tipos de ocorrências em enunciados que eram canônicos na época: as ocorrências de re e as de dicto. As ocorrências de re – da coisa – dizem respeito a coisa no mundo e fixam a referencia, ocorrências de dicto – do dito – dizem respeito ao que quer que seja que a intensão do nome pegue no mundo. Por exemplo, quando digo: ‘O Diego poderia ser o rei da Dinamarca”‘ , se tomo ‘Diego’ como de dicto então isso significa que seja lá ao que o nome Diego se refira caso o mundo pudesse ser diferente, essa coisa no mundo poderia ser o rei da Dinamarca. Se tomo ‘Diego’ como de re então me refiro a um Diego especifico no mundo, que não é o rei da Dinamarca. No primeiro caso a sentença é verdadeira e no segundo falsa. Na época se acreditava que qualquer fato poderia ser expresso apenas com esses dois tipos de modo de se referir a algo. No entanto, Lewis mostrou no artigo que existiam fatos que caiam fora do alcance deste tipo de referencia: os fatos indexicais. Por exemplo, seja a descrição completa do estado microfisico deste ambiente, existe um tipo de conhecimento que é sempre inalcançado por esse tipo de descrição: os famigerados conhecimentos indexicais. O conhecimento de que você é você, e eu sou eu. Chalmers afirma jocosamente que nem Deus tem conhecimento sobre os fatos indexicais e é esse tipo de conhecimento que o Bostrom tenta focar com a SSA. As ocorrências de se seriam, portanto, todas as ocorrências que fazem referencia a pessoa que tem o conhecimento ou enuncia a sentença. “Eu sou narigudo” é um conhecimento que algumas pessoas podem ter e outras não. Por mais que alguém não narigudo olhe para o Diego e saiba “O Diego é narigudo” isso não é o mesmo tipo de conhecimento que só o Diego (e as pessoas narigudas) podem ter: “Eu sou narigudo”.
Esse tipo de conhecimento de se não é mera especulação filosófica, em inúmeros ramos da ciência e do nosso pensamento intuitivo usamos freqüentemente conhecimentos indexicais. Um exemplo apontado por Bostrom desse uso é na cosmologia. Se, como diz o modelo cosmologico mais aceito, o universo é infinito e contem processos aleatórios como radiação emitida por buracos negros então qualquer observação de qualquer evento será feita com probabilidade um. Uma vez que existem infinitos processos aleatórios e existe uma probabilidade finita de gerar observadores nesses processos que sofrem uma alucinação, qualquer observação possível sempre será feita, mesmo que por um observador que é um cérebro que acaba de ser ejetado de um buraco negro. No entanto queremos usar o fato de que observamos o universo tal como ele como evidencia para uma teoria que prevê que ele é deste modo que o vemos. Para realizar isso temos que levar em consideração a informação indexical de que nós observamos o universo dessa maneira. Esse fato indexical, ao contrario do simples dado empírico observacional, tem o poder de alterar a probabilidade de que uma dada teoria seja verdadeira. Por exemplo, Bostrom fala de duas teorias cosmológicas: uma prevê que a radiação de fundo é 3K e a outra que é 7K. Observamos que a radiação de fundo é 3K e queremos usar isso como evidencia em favor da primeira teoria. O simples fato de que observamos uma radiação de fundo não falseia nenhuma das teorias, pois em ambas o universo é infinito e a observação de uma radiação de 3K é sempre feita em algum lugar com probabilidade 1, a diferença é que na primeira teoria ela é feita muito mais freqüentemente do que na segunda. Assim se considerarmos o fato de que nós fizermos essa observação isso diz algo é favor da primeira teoria, pois nela essa observação é muito mais provável que na segunda. Para realizar essa inferência temos que primeiro nos considerar como membros da uma classe de referencia de observadores do cosmos e em seguida estimar a probabilidade de que o cosmos seja de um jeito ou de outro analisando como o fato de observarmos ele de um jeito afeta a probabilidade de que essa observação seja feita com maior ou menor freqüência. Alem disso Bostrom expõe inúmeros outros experimentos mentais alem do já citado nos quais isso se faz necessário, dentre eles temos o seguinte:

O mundo consiste de Deus e uma moeda justa. Deus joga a moeda e se der cara ele irá criar duas salas: em uma colocara um homem de barba negra e em outra de barba branca; se der coroa ele irá criar apenas uma sala com um homem de barba negra. Quando um homem vem a existência e não sabe a cor da sua barba, qual a probabilidade ele deve atribuir para que ela seja negra se ele é informado por Deus que a moeda deu cara. Nesse caso a classe de referencia desse homem são os habitantes do mundo: um homem de barba negra e um de barba branca e ele deve atribuir uma probabilidade de 50% para que sua barba seja negra. Se, no entanto ele for informado que a moeda deu coroa, sua probabilidade vai para 100%. Mas e se Deus nada informa sobre o mundo para esse pobre barbudo? Quando ele vem a existência, se faz a luz e ele observa que sua barba é negra, que probabilidade ele deve atribuir da moeda ter dado cara? Se assumirmos que a classe de referencia no caso são os homens de barba negra, temos que a probabilidade de que um homem observe uma barba negra no mundo onde a moeda deu cara é de 50% e no que ela deu coroa é de 100%. Assim, a observação “A minha barba é negra” faz com que seja duas vezes mais provável que ele esteja no mundo onde a moeda deu coroa do que na que deu cara e conseqüentemente a probabilidade de ter dado cara é de 1/3 e a de que tenha dado coroa 2/3. No entanto, a maioria das pessoas – segundo a sua intuição – diria que é igualmente provável. Para lidar com casos igualmente ou mais complexos do que esse se faz necessário uma formalização axiomática da nossa intuição, faz-se necessário a Self-Sample Assumption, faz-se necessário raciocinar como um membro aleatório da sua classe de referencia.

Alem disso a SSA pretende modelar nossas intuições com respeito ao principio antrópico: o principio antrópico diz que o universo tem de ser tal que ele proporcione à nós observarmos ele da maneira que observamos. Isso implica, dentre outras coisas, que ele tem de permitir vida inteligente como a nossa. A SSA talvez possa ser vista como um caso geral desse principio, que vale universalmente para qualquer observador e qualquer observação. Alem disso ela tem a vantagem de ser mais precisa e facilmente matematizavel.

2.1.2 Efeitos de Seleção Observacionais e Riscos Existenciais

Uma conseqüência particularmente interessante da SSA é de que nunca observaremos eventos que são incompatíveis com a nossa existência. Como conseqüência existe uma vasta gama de fenômenos que são inobserváveis pela sua própria natureza, eles estão vedados pelo o que Bostrom chama de Efeito de Seleção Observacional. Por exemplo, se no nosso experimento mental Deus jogasse um dado de 3 lados de modo que as duas primeiras opções permanecem como a anterior e se desse três ele não criasse nada os homens criados nunca iriam podem estimar corretamente a probabilidade da terceira opção se realizar dado que nunca a observariam. Se dado que você existe em uma sala a probabilidade que o dado tenha dado 3 é 0, então dado que o dado deu 3 a probabilidade de que você observe isso é 0. Temos um fenômeno interessante em que a existência de algo o torna automaticamente inobservável. Se a freqüência de um evento não influencia a nossa probabilidade de observa-lo então isso significa que não podemos aprender com a experiência sobre eles. Estimar a sua probabilidade com base na experiência direta estará sempre fadada ao fracasso pois a probabilidade de experienciarmos tais eventos é constante e igual a zero independente de quão prováveis eles sejam. Um tipo particular desse evento são os eventos de extinção em massa. Existem certos eventos que poderiam aniquilar por completo a raça humana, tais como grandes asteróides, inteligência artificial dando errado, supervulcanismo, etc., tais eventos constituem Riscos Existenciais. Ao estimar a probabilidade de sermos extintos não podemos usar o fato de que nunca fomos extintos como critério. Existem outros métodos indiretos de realizar esse tipo de estimativa como, por exemplo, ver com que freqüência esses eventos ocorrem em outros planetas. Nas seções seguintes contextualizarei melhor os efeitos de seleção observacionais e darei alguns exemplos de Riscos Existenciais em potencial.

Em futuros posts dessa série, abordarei os seguintes tópicos:

2.2 Riscos Catastróficos Globais
2.2.1 Introdução
2.2.2 Dois principais bias
2.2.3 Outros bias
2.2.4 Principais Riscos
2.2.5 Conseqüências

2.3 Transhumanismo
2.3.1 Melhor impossível: A status quos bias
2.3.2 Imperativos Éticos
2.3.3 Human Enhancement
2.3.3.1 Cognitive Engancement
2.3.3.1.1 Antigos
2.3.3.1.2 Químicos
2.3.3.1.3 Outros
2.3.3.1.4 Uma heurística para modificar a evolução
2.3.3.2 Life-Span Enhancement

2.3.4 Transhuman Enhancement
2.3.4.1. Uploading de Mentes
2.3.4.1.1 Técnicas
2.3.4.1.2 Riscos: imediatos e de longo prazo
2.3.4.2. IA
2.3.4.2.1 Projeções
2.3.4.2.2 Riscos

The problem with psychoanalysis

(Publiquei este post em português no meu blog)

Psychoanalysis has always intrigued me, since my first contact with it at high school until now that I feel able to contextualize it and compare it among the other mind sciences. There is no doubt that it is a controversial issue, both in terms of theory, methodology and practice; people seem to have a reaction somewhat skeptical and mocking to the idea that we can have incestuous desires (unconscious) towards our parents, that a good model of psychotherapy consists basically saying “tell me more about this” or that someone is in need to face repressed feelings.

I must say however that I think that psychoanalysis should be taken seriously. The main reason for this is because I believe in the reality of its subject matter, I think we have strong evidence that the unconscious, the meaning of dreams, repression, hypnosis, defense mechanisms, personality disorders, neurotic symptoms are real phenomena, and they are not so satisfactorily explained by other theories. Psychoanalysis seems to be the only theory (along with its variants) that attempts to broadly explain how our emotional and symbolic representations are made in the face of problems that life imposes us, how they shape our personality and influence our behavior, and their implications on the nature of our mental apparatus, our identity and culture and society in general.

However, one must have great caution when reading Freud and his followers, not because they were careless investigators (I think Freud had a fairly good level of scientific rigor), but because they lived at a time when our knowledge about the brain and human evolution were still very, very primary, so that there was no way to know clearly what kind of structures, mechanisms and functions (physiological and adaptive) were implemented the human brain, and all they could do was to guess. But even with all faith in the projects of neuroscience and evolutionary psychology, I still think that psychoanalysis maintains its explanatory niche, to describe, explain and analyze how do symbolic representations form, what is their dynamics and how they are related to the contents of consciousness. I also have serious doubts whether such phenomena could be studied in such depth in any way other than the analysis of individual discourse.

Unfortunately, psychoanalysis seems to have lagged a little in time. Freud and his followers were not as successful in creating a science as tthey were in creating a professional sect, as well as several other schools of psychology, and instead of focusing on checking, testing, grounding and confirming the originally proposed thesis, incorporating new findings from other sciences, dismissing unverifiable theories, psychoanalysts were happy to read the founders and follow them orthodoxically. So that instead of having progress, and becoming a robust body of theory, open and integrated with the rest of human knowledge, it degenerated, became more hermetic, obscure and obsolete.

I have the feeling that something went terribly wrong. Psychoanalysts do not seem to have inherited the investigative spirit of Freud, probing, feeling, experimenting and describing the form of the subjective structures; they seem to me much more in the position of mere observers, comfortable to seek confirmation of their beliefs; psychoanalysis seems to have become a mystical game like astrology or tarot and the psychoanalysts excited about their cultural status and distinctiveness are deliriously playing with metaphors and concepts of doubtful reality while forgetting that they are supposedly talking about a very concrete object: the human psychic apparatus, how does the psyche in every individual of our species in fact works.

I’m sad to see the contempt that the neuroscience community has towards psychoanalysis, which is increasingly taken as pseudosciencientific. I think there is much to be lost here, psychoanalysis loses by ignoring a paradigm that should ground it, and neurosciences loses by ignoring the fine symbolic structure that relates it to the representations of consciousness, feelings and language. The responsibility for this situation as I see it is from both, but primarily of the psychoanalysts who do not show interest to test their hypotheses, formulating them clearly and structuring their theories in a formal way.

One of the great difficulties of psychoanalysis in my opinion is its linguistic imprecision, and since it apparently is not derived from the inability of its authors, I interpret it to be some kind of defense mechanism that protects an insecure self-esteem with a pedantic obscurantism because it fears that clear and assertive claims may expose them to be refuted as any ordinary science. Of course, a true precise statement, on the other hand, is much useful and valuable.

Therefore, in defense of my thesis that psychoanalysis is valuable as a science of the psychic symbolic domain, I will propose some statements that I judge to be significant, reasonably falsifiable, and that as far as I know are in good agreement with the conventional psychoanalytic theory. In particular, I think many of them are susceptible to neuroimaging testing, behavioral experiments and simple practical tests, of course, accompanied by a good statistical analysis:

- The conscious mental life is regulated by a system that restricts or blocks access to certain representations of strong emotional or moral negative meaning.

- Representations “pushed out” of consciousness have a more difficult voluntary access (resistance) to consciousness. Note: There are similar documented cases in patients with anosognosia.

- Symbolic conflicts and blockages may have consequences on the voluntary motor mobility (hysteria).

- Episodic representations are often associated to emotional evaluations (liking, disliking, aversion, disgust, expectation, frustration, humiliation, exaltation, etc.) that influences their conscious accessibility.

- Representations associated with similar emotional evaluations often associate, the evocation of one spontaneously bringing or facilitating access to another. The free association method often reveals this kind of association.

- Unreachable representations (repressed) are often associated with others, transfering its emotional value to them when they usually don’t seem to have a specific reason for that value. The recall of the inaccessible representation should destroy this emotional displacement.

- Emotional intensity during recall is relevant to the relief of symptoms (catharsis).

- The content of dreams often express unconscious desires transfigured in metaphor and metonymy.

- Recent traumatic episodes often cause initial little transfigured dreams. This should increase as the individual re-signify their experience better integrating the memory of the episode with the rest of his/her life.

- The pattern of relationship with the mother, especially in childhood, shapes a model that strongly influences on later intimate relationships of individuals, which often repeat similar patterns (Oedipus complex). John Bowlby developed this idea in his theory of attachment. Perhaps neuroimaging studies would be interesting.

- Moral repression done by the parents is the basis for the individual’s own repression over the moral contents of consciousness (superego).

- There is a sexual energy (libido) that can be released in several ways, of which the sexual act is usually one of the most efficient, but could also be released by other pleasurable activities.

- There should be typical expected behaviors at each stage of psychosexual development according to the symbolic issues involved (Freud).

- Defense mechanisms (Anna Freud) and their triggers, and their ontogenetic determinants (repression, denial, rationalization, projection, idealization, fantasy, dissociation, etc. …).

- Prediction of neurotic symptoms based on personality characteristics of the patient.

- Prognosis of symptoms based on the type of issues addressed in therapy and personality type.

Nootrópicos: rompendo o status quo bias

Nootrópicos são definidos como substâncias que aumentam a nossa capacidade cognitiva, seja por um aumento na memória, motivação, atenção ou concentração. Eles são usados pela humanidade há milhares de anos, no entanto, recentemente inúmeros novos compostos mais eficientes têm sido descobertos. A pesquisa desta classe de substâncias tende a ser orientada aos indivíduos com deficiências mentais. Só muito recentemente têm surgido pesquisas em indivíduos saudáveis. É um campo com potencial ainda pouco explorado. A razão pela qual esse tema deve entrar no pool memético geral da sociedade é muito simples: os benefícios em potencial deste grupo de substancias são enormes. A idéia de aumentar nossa capacidade cognitiva vem do reconhecimento de uma antiga falácia: a do “melhor impossível”. Aquela que diz que a evolução fez o melhor serviço possível e não devemos interferir no seu trabalho. Essa falácia tem inúmeros aspectos e está ligada a um dos bias cognitivos que temos: o status quo bias. Verificou-se em vários experimentos que os indivíduos têm uma tendência a não modificar a situação atual, mesmo quando essa modificação é benéfica. Mas existem inúmeras razões para querer melhorar o trabalho da evolução: os interesses da evolução são diferentes dos nossos (i.e: para e evolução funcionar temos que morrer, mas não queremos morrer), o ambiente em que vivemos é diferente do da evolução (i.e.: nossa cognição foi moldada para viver em grupos de centenas de pessoas na savana africana e nossa capacidade de planejamento cai exponencialmente com o tempo, no entanto vivemos numa sociedade moderna e populosa em que temos que prever como o mundo será no longo prazo) e a evolução pode ficar presa num ótimo local (i.e.: o apêndice poderia não existir e então não inflamar, mas para isso teria de diminuir gradualmente e passar por um tamanho que inflama mais).

Alguns exemplos de nootrópicos antigos são: café, chocolate e cigarro. Entre os mais recentes temos: Ritalina, Anfetaminas, Modafinil, Piracetam, etc. A seguir listarei alguns nootrópicos conhecidos e falarei um pouco sobre o seu funcionamento. Eles estão separados em 3 seções: Concentração, Memória e Outros

Concentração

Modafinil

Está ligado à histamina (neurotransmissor que regula o sono) faz aumentar todos os outros neurotransmissores, em ordem decrescente de aumento: dopamina, noerpinefrina, acetilcolina e serotonina. Histamina é um dos neurotransmissores do sistema ativador reticular ascendente, que vai do tálamo e tem projeções difusas excitatórias para todo o córtex. Produz mais uma calm-wakefullness do que um sentimento de concentração tensa mais característica dos outros nootrópicos para concentração. Acredita-se que existem dois sistema diferentes de ativação no cérebro, um ligado ao estado de vigilância estimulada que é ativada quando temos de lidar com algum perigo externo ou lidar com alguma preocupação;  outro esta ligado a uma vigilância mais calma, um estado desperto que envolve o pensamento criativo e a capacidade de resolver problemas. O primeiro sistema está correlacionado as catecolaminas – dopamina e norepinefrina – enquanto que o segundo está ligado a histamina.

Vigilância Calma

Vigilância Estimulada

Existem ao menos 4 estudos em indivíduos saudáveis. Um deles é um grande estudo com mais de 300 pessoas. Todos os estudos obtiveram resultados positivos com pouquíssimos efeitos colaterais como insônia numa incidência de 2% maior que no placebo. Todos os estudos obtiveram resultados positivos com pouquíssimos efeitos colaterais como um pequeno aumento da pressão arterial. Em todos os estudos se comprovou o aumento da memória de trabalho verbal e numérica. Houve um aumento do tempo de resposta nos testes, mas também um aumento significativo na taxa de acertos. Ele parece diminuir a impulsividade. Outros dois estudos do exército em pilotos que mostram um aumento considerável do desempenho em simulações de 40 e 36h com indivíduos sem dormir. Nesses estudos, após 24h sem dormir, foi ministrado 100mg de Modafinil a cada 4h para os pilotos. Atinge-se o pico de concentração plasmática em 2-3h e tem meia vida de 12h (mas o efeito diminui antes).

Imagem PET-SCAN mostrando o uso do sistema dopaminergico no Striatum. Com Modafinil a esquerda e sem a direita.

Ritalina

Inibibe fortemente a recaptação de dopamina e levemente a de noerpinefrina. Age principalmente no dorso-ventro lateral, região ligada primordialmente à memória de trabalho e à recuperação de memória de longo prazo.

A dopamina é o neurotransmissor ligado a concentração e as funções executivas do cérebro a age primordialmente no cortex prefrontal. Aqui temos uma imagem das projeções dos neurônios dopaminergicos:

Projeções dopaminergicas

Esses neurônios parte das regiões mais profundas do cerebro como striatum – região ligada ao controle mortor – e se projetam para o córtex prefrontal.

Quando um neurônio transmite um impulso nervoso para outro ele não pode transmitir a despolarização elétrica diretamente, pois existe um espaço entre os neurônios chamados sinapse. Para que a transmissão ocorra o neurônio pré-snaptico secreta na fenda sináptica os neurotransmissores que ficam guardados em vesículas que são expelidas na membrana celular. Uma vez lançada na sinapse pelo neuronio pré-sinaptico o neurotransmissor entre em contato com os receptores dos neurônios pós sinapsticos e influencia diretamente (no caso de receptores inotropicos – ou indiretamente – no caso de GPCR – o fluxo de cátions para o interior do neurônio o que inicia a condução do impulso nervoso no neurônio pós-sinaptico. Para que o impulso não seja transmitido ad infinitum  existem inúmeros modos para que o neurotransmissor seja retirado da sinapse como difusão e a recaptação do neurotransmissor, que consistente no seu retorno ao neurônio pré-sinaptico para uso futuro.

Transmissão do impulso na sinapse e recapação.

A ritalina inibe essa receptação e mantem a dopamina na fenda sináptica por mais tempo, proporcionando uma ativação do sistema executivo do cérebro:

Bloqueio da recaptação da dopamina pea Ritalina - ignorar anfetaminas

Existem diversos estudos, alguns apontando um ganho de até 6 pontos de QI em indivíduos com DDA. Em indivíduos saudáveis há um aumento das memórias de trabalho numérica, verbal e espacial. Pico de concentração plasmática em 1h e meia vida de 3h.

É um dos nootrópicos mais conhecidos e utilizados. Estima-se que 10% da população americana com menos de 20 anos faz uso da droga. O uso continuado por mais de 10 anos pode acarretar problemas cardíacos em pessoas com predisposição. Tem potencial de abuso.

PET-SCAN mostrando a ocupancia dos recaptadores de dopamina. Azul indica ocupado e vermelho livre.

Selegiline

Inibe irreversivelmente um catalisador da oxidação de dopamina e norepinefrina (MAO-B), o que significa que o corpo tem que fabricar de novo o catalisador para que o efeito da droga passe.  Age sinergicamente com drogas que aumentam o nível de dopamina (como a maioria das drogas ativadoras) e pode dar overdose. A MAO-B não está presente na fenda sináptica, é intracelular e ligada ao lado externo das mitocôndrias.

Não existe nenhum estudo com indivíduos saudáveis comprovando a eficácia. Apesar disso têm-se mostrado inúmeras propriedades neuroprotetoras desta substancia, pois diminui a concentração de inúmeros compostos neurotoxicos encontrados naturalmente no cérebro. Alem disso a queda de produção de uma enzima responsável por degradar a MAO-B após o 40 anos é responsável por uma diminuição da concentração de dopamina na Substantia Nigra o que leva a uma redução da massa cerebral nessa área e a uma queda da saúde do individuo. A Selegiline, ao inibir a MAO-B, pode diminuir essa taxa de redução.

MAOI - funcionamento

Aderall

Coctel de anfetaminas. Aumenta a produção e inibe a degradação de: dopamina, norepinefrina e um pouco serotonina. Aumenta concentração de dopamina, noradrenalina e serotonina na fenda sináptica, inibindo a recaptação e causando o efluxo desses neurotransmissores revertendo os transportadores dos mesmos.

São sais de anfetamina, cada um dos quatro sais com uma liberação em tempo diferente do outro, pra manter níveis sanguíneos constantes ao longo do dia. Tem potencial de abuso.

Cafeína

Um dos mais antigos, mais usados e piores nootrópicos. Mimetisa o neutransmissor adenosina e se liga ao seu receptor o inabilitando. A adenosina tem um papel inibitório no cérebro, ela é um dos metabólitos da quebra do ATP e sinaliza uma baixa disponibilidade deste no cérebro. Alem disso a cafeína e seus metabólitos aumentam as concentrações plasmáticas de adrenalina, com isso aumentando os batimentos cardíacos, pressão sanguínea e stress. Como resultado, a longo prazo ela aumenta a incidência de infartos. Após longo período de uso se desenvolve tolerância e a interrupção causa depressão, irritabilidade e sonolência.

L-Tirosina

Aminoácido, precursor de dopamina. Aumenta as concentrações de dopamina levemente. Estudos revelam desempenho semelhante a anfetaminas em pessoas sem dormir.

Complexo B

As vitaminas B1, B6, B2 e o acido pantenóico são cofatores na produção de dopamina, mas o fator limitante é a tirosina. Vitamina B6 em doses altas pode causar neuropatia das raízes dorsais da medula. O máximo indicado é 100mg de B6 por dia.

Memória

Aricept

Inibe reversivelmente um catalisador da hidrolise da acetilcolina. Tem pelo menos 3 estudos em individuados saudáveis, todos mostrando efeitos positivos na memória e aprendizado.  Tem um estudo com pilotos que demonstrou uma maior habilidade de reter o aprendizado de procedimentos complexos do que o grupo controle após 1 mês de uso. Outro estudo com indivíduos saudáveis demonstrou um aumento da memória episódica visual e verbal, um dos indivíduos reportou fortes dores de cabeça. Há um aumento da incidência de sonhos lúcidos.

A acetilcolina é o neurotransmissor ligado a memória de longo prazo. Ela age primordialmente no striatum e no hipocampo. Aqui podemos observar as projeções dos neurônios colinergicos:

Projeções Colinergicas

As teorias mais recentes sobre o seu funcionamentos dizem que ela tem um papel ativador na codificação e armazenamento da informação recebida e um papel inibitório no processamento de fundo:

Funcionamento da Acetilcolina (ACh)

A acetilcolinesterase é a enzima que quebra a aceilcolina a inabilitando, o aricept inibe a ação desta enzima:

Acetilcolinesterase - Enzima Inibida pela Aricept

Racetans

Os Racetans são uma classe de compostos que têm efeito sob a memória de longo prazo e a atenção. Seu membro mais conhecido é o Piracetam, que foi um dos primeiros nootrópicos a ser sintetizado na década de 60 e deu origem ao termo.

Piracetam: Não se sabe direito o mecanismo de funcionamento, possivelmente ele estabiliza a membrana celular e faz as bombas Na/K funcionar melhor, aumenta níveis de acetilcolina e aumenta a circulação de sangue para cérebro. É neuroprotetor e protege contra derrame, pois é um anticoagulante que atravessa a membrana hematocefalica. Tem 1 estudo antigo com 10 indivíduos saudáveis que mostrou aumento da memória verbal de longo prazo após 2 semanas de uso.

Oxiracetam: Semelhante ao piracetam, mas 4 vezes mais potente. O efeito dura cerca de 4-6h.

Pramiracetam: Até 30 vezes mais potente.

Outros exemplos: Phenylpiracetam, Etiracetam, Levetiracetam, Nefiracetam, Nicoracetam, Rolziracetam, Nebracetam, Fasoracetam, Imuracetam, Coluracetam, Dimiracetam e Rolipram.

Anirecetam: Aumenta atividade do AMPA, receptor de glutamato. O efeito dura cerca de 2h. Cerca de 8 vezes mais potente que o piracetam. O glutamato está ligado a plasticidade cerebral, ao aprendizado e a memória e determina a formação de sinapse do desenvolvimento do cérebro. Ele é um dos neutroasmissores mais ambundantes.

Projeções glutaminergicas

O aniracetam inaugurou a pesquisa de compostos conhecidos como AMPAkines, agonistas do receptor AMPA. São compostos ainda experimentais mas que demonstram ter pouquíssimos efeitos colaterais. Alguns exemplos: CX-546, CX-516, CX-614, LY-392,098, LY-404,187, LY-451,646 e LY-503,430

Outros

Arcalion: Esta envolvido no sistema ativador reticular. Aumenta a densidade de receptores de dopamina e a densidade de glutamato. Tem um efeito, ainda pouco comprovado, na memória e na atenção

Vasopressina: Hormônio que melhora a circulação de sangue no cérebro. Também conhecido como hormônio antidiurético.

Vinpocetina: Vasodilatador cerebral, aumenta a circulação dos vasos sanguíneos cerebrais e a memória de médio prazo.

Nicotina: Aumenta o funcionamento dos receptores de Acetilcolina e a concentração. A substância mais letal já conhecida pela humanidade.

Lecitina/Colina: Precursor de acetilcolina. Aumenta a concentração de acetilcolina levemente. A colina pura é muito mais eficaz, pois está em maior concentração.

Vitamina B5: Cofator de síntese de acetilcolina.

Creatina: Aumenta disponibilidade de energia no cérebro. É a principal fonte energética do mesmo.

Coenzima Q10: Aumenta disponibilidade de energia no cérebro, tem papel no ciclo de Krebs na mitocôndria (e faz bem pra um bando de outras coisas).

Aspectos Éticos

Cafeína, Nicotina e Ritalina desenvolvem dependência e aumentam o risco de infarto. Nicotina em especifico é o maior fator de risco de todas principais causas de morte conhecidas. Modafinil, Aricept, Piracetam e outros apresentam efeitos colaterais pouco graves com uma incidência baixa, não desenvolvem tolerância e não viciam. Piracetam em especifico é uma das substancias menos tóxicas conhecidas e é neuroprotetor. Apesar dessas informações serem largamente conhecidas no meio cientifico a população se recusa a uma mudança de habito por influencia do status quo bias e as drogas com maior incidência de efeitos colaterais e menos eficientes continuam a serem mais usadas em vez das com menos efeitos colaterais e mais eficientes. A população em geral tem uma grande dificuldade de comparar o custo/beneficio do que ja vem fazendo (uso de café e nicotina) comparados com o que poderia estar fazendo (modafinil, aricept, etc..).

Termino com uma citação do fundador do transhumanismo, Nick Bostrom (disponivel em audio):

“There are three ways to contribute to scientific progress. The direct way is to conduct a good scientific study and publish the results. The indirect way is to help others make a direct contribution. Journal editors, university administrators and philanthropists who fund research contribute to scientific progress in this second way. A third approach is to marry the first two and make a scientific advance that itself expedites scientific advances. The full significance of this third way is commonly overlooked.

It is, of course, widely appreciated that certain academic contributions lay the theoretical or empirical foundations for further work. One reason why a great scientist such as Einstein is celebrated is that his discoveries have enabled thousands of other scientists to tackle problems that they could not have solved without relativity theory. Yet even this deep and beautiful theory is, in one sense, very narrow. While relativity is of great help in cosmology and some other parts of physics, it is of little use to a geneticist, a palaeontologist, or a neuroscientist. General relativity theory is therefore a significant but not a vast contribution to the scientific enterprise as a whole.Some findings have wider applicability. The scientific method itself — the idea of creating hypotheses and subjecting them to stringent empirical tests — is one such.

Many of the basic results in statistics also have very wide applicability. And some scientific instruments, such as the thermometer, the microscope, and the computer, have proved enormously useful over a wide range of domains. Institutional innovations — such as the peer‐reviewed journal — should also be counted. Those who seek the advancement of human knowledge should focus more on these kinds of indirect contribution. A “superficial” contribution that facilitates work across a wide range of domains can be worth much more than a relatively “profound” contribution limited to one narrow field, just as a lake can contain a lot more water than a well, even if the well is deeper.

No contribution would be more generally applicable than one that improves the performance of the human brain. Much more effort ought to be devoted to the development of techniques for cognitive enhancement, be they drugs to improve concentration, mental energy, and memory, or nutritional enrichments of infant formula to optimize brain development. Society invests vast resources in education in an attempt to improve students’ cognitive abilities. Why does it spend so little on studying the biology of maximizing the performance of the human nervous system?

Imagine a researcher invented an inexpensive drug which was completely safe and which improved all‐round cognitive performance by just 1%. The gain would hardly be noticeable in a single individual. But if the 10 million scientists in the world all benefited from the drug the inventor would increase the rate of scientific progress by roughly the same amount as adding 100,000 new scientists. Each year the invention would amount to an indirect contribution equal to 100,000 times what the average scientist contributes. Even an Einstein or a Darwin at the peak of their powers could not make such a great impact. Meanwhile others too could benefit from being able to think better, including engineers, school children, accountants, and politicians.

This example illustrates the enormous potential of improving human cognition by even a tiny amount. Those who are serious about seeking the advancement of human knowledge and understanding need to crunch the numbers. Better academic institutions, methodologies, instrumentation, and especially cognitive enhancement are the fast tracks to scientific progress.” (Nick Bostrom)

Referencias:

Artigos em farmacologia (maioria pós-2002):

Activation of the reticulothalamic cholinergic pathway by the major metabolites of aniracetam

Aniracetam enhances cortical dopamine and serotonin release via cholinergic and glutamatergic mechanisms in SHRSP

Aniracetam in the treatment of senile dementia of Alzheimer type (SDAT) results of a placebo controlled multicentre clinical study

Aniracetam Reversed Learning and Memory Deficits Following Prenatal Ethanol Exposure by Modulating Functions of Synaptic AMPA Receptors

Antidepressant-like effects of aniracetam in aged rats an tis mode of action

Cholinergic enhancement of episodic memory in healthy young adults

Cognitive enhancing effects of modafinil in healthy volunteers

Deprenyl (Selegiline), a Selective MAO-B Inhibitor with Active Metabolites; Effects on Locomotor Activity, Dopaminergic Neurotransmission and Firing Rate

Donepezil and flight simulator performance Effects on retention of complex skills

Donepezil and Related Cholinesterase Inhibitors as Mood and Behavioral Controlling Agents

Donepezil for dementia due to Alzheimer’s disease (Review)

Donepezil Improves Cognitive Performance in Healthy Pilots

EEG-tomographic studies with LORETA on vigilance differences between narcolepsy patients and controls and subsequent double-blind,placebocontrolled studies

Effect of repeated treatment with high doses of selegiline on behaviour, striatal dopaminergic transmission and tyrosine hydroxylase mRNA levels

Effect of selegiline on dopamine concentration in the striatum of a primate

Effects of aniracetamn term on delayed matching-to-sample performance of monkeys and pigeon

Effects of modafinil on cognitive and meta-cognitive performance

Effects of modafinil on vestibular function during 24 hour sleep deprivation

Effects of modafinil on working memory processes in humans

Effects of selegiline alone or with donepezil on memory impairment in rats

L-Methamphetamine and selective MAO inhibitors decrease morphinereinforced and non-reinforced behavior in rats; Insights towards selegiline’s mechanism of

Mania associated with donepezil

Modafinil improves rapid shifts of attention

Modafinil Improves Symptoms of Attention-DeficitHyperactivity Disorder across Subtypes in Children and Adolescents

Donepezil and related cholinesterase inhibitors as mood and behavioral controlling agents

Enantioselective determination of modafinil in pharmaceutical formulations by capillary electrophoresis, and computational calculation of their inclusion complexes

Pharmacokinetic study of aniracetam in elderly patients with cerebrovascular disease

Psychoactive Drugs and Pilot Performance A Comparison of Nicotine, Donepezil, and Alcohol Effects

Pyrrolidone derivatives

Reinforcing effects of modafinil influence of dose and behavioral demands following drug administration

Relevance of Donepezil in Enhancing Learning and Memory in Special Populations A Review of the Literature

Selegiline’s neuroprotective capacity revisited

Site-specific activation of dopamine and serotonin transmission by aniracetam in the mesocorticolimbic pathway of rats

Synergistic effects of selegiline and donepezil on cognitive impairment induced by amyloid beta (25-35)

The effects of Modafinil on Aviator Performance during 40 hours of continuous wakefulness A UH-60 helicopter simulator study

The efficacy of modafinil for sustaining alertness and simulator flight performance in F-117 pilots during 37 hours of continuous wakefulness

The Glutamate Receptors

Trophic effects of selegiline on cultured dopaminergic neurons

NCAM in Long-Term Potentiation and Learning (Hartz, forthcoming)

Reversal of cognitive deficits by an ampakine (CX516) and sertindole in two animal models of schizophrenia—sub-chronic and early postnatal PCP treatment in attentional set-shifting (Broberg, forthcoming)

Enantioselective determination of modafinil in pharmaceutical formulations by capillary electrophoresis, and computational calculation of their inclusion complexes (Azzam, forthcoming)

Livros de Neurociência:

Foundations in Evolutionary Cognitive Neuroscience (Platek, 2009)

From Molecules to Networks, Second Edition: An Introduction to Cellular and Molecular Neuroscience (Byrne, 2009)

Fundamental Neuroscience, Third Edition (Squire, 2008)

Neurotransmitters and Neuromodulators – Handbook of Receptors and Biological Effects (Wiley, 2006)

Acetylcholine in the Cerebral Cortex, Progress in brain research (Descarries, 2004)

Neurotransmitters, Drugs and Brain Function (Webster, 2001)

Artigos em Neuroética:

Cognitive Enhancement, Lifestyle Choice or Misuse of Prescription Drugs? (Racine, forthcoming)

Smart Policy: Cognitive Enhancement and the public interest (Bostrom, forthcoming)

Cognitive Enhancement: Methods, Ethics, Regulatory Challenges (Bostrom and Sandberg, 2009)

Human Enhancement Ethics: The State of the Debate (Bostrom and Savulescu, 2009)

The Wisdom of Nature: An Evolutionary Heuristic for Human Enhancement (Bostrom and Sandberg, 2009)

The Normativity of Memory Modification (Sandberg, 2008)

Converging Cognitive Enhancements (Bostrom and Sandbeg, 2006)

‘Smart Drugs’ do they work Are they ethical Will they be legal (Rose, 2002)