Brouhaha over the "Buddha on the Brain"

The relation between science and religion is always under debate, and this is also the case in the context neuroscience and Buddhist meditation. The Dalai Lama believes (see Wired article ) that Buddhism and science have much in common. Both are investigative traditions that seek to explain reality, albeit in different ways.

The brouhaha started with Wallace's interview with Salon, which opens up all sorts of questions beyond the neuroscience and meditation relation. The 13 pages of letters commenting on the subject is an indication of interest the interview has generated.

To begin with Allan Wallace is an ex-monk, who had practiced meditation for many years under The Dalai Lama. He wrote many books, among them is "Contemplative Science: Where Buddhism and Neuroscience Converge", and now is president of the Santa Barbara Institute for Consciousness Studies.

Here are some of points raised:

1. Is science and religion entirely separate?
2. What happens when science is in contradiction with Buddhism?
3. What is the Buddhist investigative methodology?
4. What is Contemplative Science
5. What is "substrate consciousness"?
6. Is reincarnation testable/proven?
7. Is mind an emergent property of matter?

On item 1, the opinion is practically unanimous, it rejects the separation à la Stephen Jay Gould. Science and religion are not separate, they are not in different hyperplanes, they both address the same reality.

However opinion may differ in point 2. Some say that religion is absolute truth. The view endorsed by the majority of Buddhists, is represented by the Dalai Lama who is willing to jettison Buddhist doctrines if shown to be scientifically false (of course with reasonable care, since scientific truth can change also with time)

The scientific methodology is known, compared to it Buddhist methodology of investigation is experiential and subjective. Some called Buddhist methodology phenomenology, based on the introspection of the mind.

Despite the difference of the two methodologies, Wallace maintains that Contemplative Science, which is his term for rigorous Buddhist methodology is also a science, and it will in fact converge with neuroscience. The critics (Buddhists) in the comments say that Wallace has fallen into intellectualism trap, so abhorred in Zen. Theravadins say that mindfulness should be practiced in everyday life, instead Wallace is trying the outside into our minds.

"Substrate consciousness" is a consciousness which is individual and survives our deaths. It is very near to the soul concept. The comments have pointed out that this is not acceptable to many Buddhists, perhaps the Vajrayana is one of the exceptions. Some prefers agnosticism, since we have not experience death.

The question of reincarnation is closely connected with the previous point. If "Substrate consciousness" is accepted, reincarnation would follow naturally. Many Buddhists believe only in rebirth, not in reincarnation. Here again Wallace seems to be preoccupied with past lives, which he believes have been proven. Some say that this is an influence from Hinduism.

If "substrate consciousness" is accepted, then there is a non-material and material worlds, akin to the mind and matter dualism. Here there are at least two opinions, the first is pure materialism, where mind is an emergent property of matter, some sort of software in a computer. Others rejected this, and believes that the mind harbors all, including the material world.

My conclusions from the discussion is that: Buddhism is "not too far" from science, both being investigative practices based on observations, and both deal with the same reality. There are many schools of Buddhism with different views and beliefs. When it comes to hard questions (eg metaphysics) it is probably best to stay agnostic, too much speculation and intellectualism can be harmful.

Thich Nhat Hanh, The Dalai Lama, terrorism and systems thinking

My previous posts discussed Buddhism and systems thinking. The two subjects come together in the present post on terrorism.

Bart Kosko, the author of "Fuzzy Logic" told us about the application of "Fuzzy Cognitive Map" (FCM), which is a fuzzy logic counterpart of a causal loop diagram, to the apartheid problem in South Africa. (It was at the time when the pro apartheid regime was still in power.) The results of the analysis was not at all intuitive, the FCM simulation showed that isolation of the South African government in international forums, as suggested by many, was counter-productive, instead a "soft" approach would benefit the black community better. There is a difference between a static analysis and a dynamic analysis using simulation of the FCM model. The result could not be seen unless we do a dynamic analysis. This was an example of Real Politik, a cool headed analysis, instead of maintaining a politically correct line of action.

Terrorism has been a subject of many systems thinking articles since 9/11, e.g "Declare War on Escalation, a Systems Perspective on the War on Terrorism" by Andrew Jones and Elizabeth Sawin of the Sustainability Institute, and "Systems Thinking Look at Terrorism" , story of the month (SOTM) published on September 2001 by High Performance Systems, the maker of STELLA and iThink software for systems thinking, right after the 9/11 event.
The second article has a downloadable Exe file containing the terrorism analysis, which you can run on your computer.

SOTM starts with the dominant mental model, as illustrated in the following rhetoric:

"I say bomb the hell out of them. If there's collateral damage, so be it" [Senator Zell Miller, NY Times 9/13/01]

It is based on linear thinking, the number of terrorist acts depend on the number of terrorists, reduce the number of terrorists, by bombing them, and it will reduce the terrorist acts. In this line, Bush would "track down and punish those responsible" and the US would lead "the world to victory in the war against terrorism". It misses the point that indiscriminate US actions would build up the stock of anger against the US, which is exactly what the terrorists wanted. Worse still, it generated a pool of people ready for recruitment to become terrorists.

Next, SOTM considers a two pronged approach, one defensive and the other offensive.
The defensive approach deals with questions such as entry to the US, where the terrorists gain entry to planes, and how they get trained in flying airplanes.

The "offensive" one is the real answer, it does not try to minimize the possibilities of attack, rather, it seeks to eliminate the causes of terrorism in the first place.
It deals with the management of disagreement, your anger from disagreement, our anger from disagreement, your hatred from disagreement, our hatred from disagreement, violent actions from either side, and tolerance in a dynamic systems thinking model.
The model is no longer linear, it is nonlinear in the sense that small changes in some parameters could lead to large effects, ie leverage. Linear thinking has no leverage.

"Americans' mental model appears to be that our military and economic superiority will make our violent actions a 'slam dunk'. That is, we will be victorious in our war against terrorism. The 'other side, in turn, is eager to draw us into a holy war that involves all Muslims, (not just the terrorist camp.) Both parties, to borrow a phrase from Bob Dylan, feel that "God is on their side'" SOTM

The analysis leads to questions how hatred got there in the first place and how to reduce hatred.
It concludes with even worse problems when hatred are escalated.
I recommend reading the model yourself to get a better picture.

Now, here is what Thich Nhat Hanh said about terrorism:

""Strike against terror" is a misleading expression. What we are striking against is not the real cause or the root of terror. The object of our strike is still human life. We are sowing seeds of violence as we strike. Striking in this way we will only bring about more hatred and violence into the world. This is exactly what we do not want to do. Terror is in the human heart. We must remove this terror from the heart. Destroying the human heart, both physically and psychologically, is what we must absolutely avoid. The root of terrorism should be identified, so that it can be removed. The root of terrorism is misunderstanding, intolerance, hatred, revenge and hopelessness. This root cannot be located by the military. Bombs and missiles cannot reach it, let alone destroy it. Only with the practice of looking deeply can our insight reveal and identify this root. Only with the practice of deep listening and compassion can it be transformed and removed. Darkness cannot be dissipated with more darkness. More darkness will make darkness thicker. Only light can dissipate darkness. Violence and hatred cannot be removed with violence and hatred. Rather, this will make violence and hatred grow a thousand fold. Only understanding and compassion can dissolve violence and hatred. Hatred, and violence are in the hearts of human beings. A terrorist is a human being with hatred, revenge, violence and misunderstanding in his or her heart. Acting without understanding, acting out of hatred, violence and fear, only helps sow more terror, bringing terror to the homes of others and ultimately bringing terror back to the homes of the attacker. The philosophy of "an eye for an eye," only creates more suffering and bloodshed and more enemies. One of the greatest casualties we may suffer results from this wrong thinking and action. Whole societies are living constantly in fear with their nerves being attacked day and night. Such a state of confusion, fear and anxiety is extremely dangerous. It can bring about another world war, this time extremely destructive in the worst possible way." Thich Nhat Hanh

His conclusions are astonishingly close to the systems thinking analysis.
Similar sentiments were expressed by The Dalai Lama in an interview:

"Just after September 11, some reporter asked me why terrorism happens. I told him that my view is that such acts are not possible unless you have very strong hatred and very strong willpower and determination. That tremendous hatred comes from many reasons. The causes of this hatred may be going back centuries. Some people say that the West has a cruel history. These people also may see the achievements of Western countries—in terms of the economy, education, health and social achievements—as a result of exploitation of poorer countries, including Arab countries." The Dalai Lama

The Yin and Yang of Simplicity and Complexity

The subjects of simplicity and complexity, and how one appears in the other, have always fascinated our minds. In an earlier post, "The mystery of the ubiquity of the power law", we see how the simple power law appears in many complex phenomena. Growth and size of cities is complex, but it obeys the power law. Firm sizes obey power law. The frequencies of words or baby names obey power law. In the stock market, the chance of Google going up 1% is 4 times as much as the a 2% increase, and 16 times as a 4% increase, which shows a power law relation. In all these cases, the underlying phenomena is always complex, the power law is a simple way of understanding, though an incomplete one, of the complex happenings.

Another simple mathematical model is the "iterated prisoner's dilemma (IPD)". Very simple to formulate, but a very complex field of study. Would you believe it that the notion of altruism can be explained using IPD? The variations of IPD has produced an stream of thousands of research papers.

"Everything is simpler than you think and at the same time more complex than you imagine." Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Stephen Wolfram, the inventor of the software Mathematica, wrote a book "A new kind of science", devoted to cellular automata. Cellular automata have simple rules of interaction with their neighbors, where all the rules are local. The choice of initial conditions and rules are the decisive factors for determining whether the configuration is boring, dead, chaotic, or interesting like the "game of life", and "the garden of eden". The latter is self-reproducing, it can generate itself. Wolfram's program is the find a minimal set of rules and initial conditions which can produce all or some of life. It is known that much of physics can be simulated as finite physics using cellular automata.

Other extreme examples of complexity out of simplicity is how all mathematics can be derived from the empty set, or from the natural numbers 1,2,3, etc.

The science of complexity is the study of how complex phenomena (including chaos) arise from the interactions of agents, who themselves have simple behavior. Traditionally, complexity studies are relatively recent, pre-complexity science looked at simple things only, because that's what science could handle at the time. The mathematics of pre-complexity dealt with simple objects like lines and sine waves, simple functions, functionals and integrals. Pre-complexity science followed the mathematics, and when the reality was too complex, they applied simplifying assumptions and approximations. Social sciences followed the physical analogies, like forces, equilibrium, energy, etc.

"Every decade or so, a grandiose theory comes along, bearing similar aspirations and often brandishing an ominous-sounding C-name. In the 1960 it was cybernetics. In the '70s it was catastrophe theory. Then came chaos theory in the '80s and complexity theory in the '90s." Steven Strogatz

These assumptions broke down when systems are not in equilibrium, such as in fluid turbulence, market crashes, phase transitions, heart attacks, tsunamis and earth quakes and general catastrophes. Complexity science look at complex phenomena from the interactions of components which themselves are defined using simple descriptions. The components are sometimes called agents, and the approach is called agent-based simulation. For example, in market studies, the agents have simple buying and selling rules, and their interactions exhibit properties as in real markets.

Returning to the general simplicity and complexity relations, it can be summarized that the interesting parts are always in seeing simplicity in complexity and in generating complexity out of simplicity. Simplicity and complexity interpenetrates like Yin and Yang.

In ordinary life, we have people who look at simple things and see simple things only, they could aptly be called simpletons. Then there are people who get into complexity, but see only perplexity. They are confused people. Interestingly, they fear complexity, and would try to find comfort in superstitions. The third category of people are those which can see simplicity in complex things, they are natural leaders for they have direction, or see the "through the trees". Capablance, the Cuban ex world chess champion, is a good example of a character who sees and follows through fundamental strategies in complex situations. The last category of people, are those who can see complex things in even the most trivial things. They are deep thinkers, innovators. A person who looks at the empty set and can see the whole mathematics developed from it, is one of this type.

"Chaos begets complexity, and complexity begets life" John Gribbin

References:

• Wikipedia on complexity
• Santa Fe Institute (SFI)
• Map of complexity and related fields
• Wikipedia on Chaos theory
• The Chaos hyperbook
• Complexity in Business

Systems Thinking meets Traffic Jams

The long title of this post should be "Systems Thinking meets Traffic Jams, or the sad story of how fixes fail, and the truth that there's a sky beyond the sky."

In the last post, I briefly discuss Systems Thinking and System Dynamics. This post is a sort of illustration of Systems Thinking as applied to the problem of traffic congestion, which we all know so well.
Actually, traffic congestion has been a favorite example in Systems Thinking.


Sterman's book, "Business Dynamics: Systems Thinking and Modeling for a Complex World" discusses the problem on page 178 onwards. I recommend you to have a look at the causal loop diagrams there, if you really want to understand the subject.

I will now proceed with the simplest possible settings, and introduce complications one at a time, by extending the boundaries of the system.

Build more road

The first causal link is: congestion, therefore build more roads. This is linear thinking, not systems thinking. In the latter, we have a loop: long travel time ----> pressure to reduce traffic congestion ----> build road -----> increase highway capacity ----> less travel time ----> less pressure to reduce traffic congestion. The loop is balancing, because it leads to some state, where people are satisfied with the travel times, and there is no more pressure to reduce traffic congestion. There is a noticeable delay between building road and the increase in highway capacity, but we will neglect it here.

Attractiveness of driving

We extend the system by introducing a new variable, attractiveness of driving, obviously less travel time ----> increase in attractiveness of driving, but attractiveness to driving ----> increase in traffic volume, which introduces a second loop in the system, because increase in traffic volume ----> increase travel time. The increase in traffic volume comes from people who make more trips, people buying more cars, etc. The net result is that the fix "build more roads" has now failed to relieve of traffic congestion.

Economic expansion

The variable attractiveness to driving has many positive effects for the economy. The automotive industry thrives. As people buy more cars, leasing companies and banks benefited. Further away places can now be more easily reached, and new centers of business and housing emerge. People are more mobile, they can work at places in the city while living in the suburbs. The cities grow into metropolitans, people from the rural areas flock to urban areas.

Pollution, frustration, loss of productivity, road rage

The effects on other side of the coin, is huge.
Sterman mentioned (US 1994 figures):

1. Americans spend 8 billion hours per annum stuck in traffic
2. Estimated loss of productivity $43 to $168 billion
3. Road rage and shootings

We could add:

1. Pollution and global warming
2. Stress and increase health costs (Sterman's point 3)
3. Increase in unsafe traffic practices, erosion of discipline leading to increase in accidents
4. urbanization woes, slums, neglect of rural areas

Comparing the negative effects here with the positive effects in the last paragraph, we can say that, whereas the positive effects are more visible and immediate, the negative effects take a long time to make themselves felt. Some like loss of productivity may not be apparent at all.

We see here that in systems thinking, we always need to define the boundaries of the system, to distinguish between internal and exogenous variables, but as we try to get closer to reality, we need to enlarge the system boundaries again and again. The model we make is never complete, in this sense we say: "There is a sky beyond the sky". There are still other factors that could be considered, such as increase of real estate prices.

Public transportation

This is another variable which we could follow earlier. The adequacy of public transportation ----> lower attractiveness of driving. However public transportation profitability is hard to maintain, because of its fixed cost structure, and sooner or later will lead to deterioration in the quality of services, unless they are subsidized.

Taxation

To reduce the attractiveness of driving, taxation of cars and road users could be introduced. This would certainly meet resistance from the automotive industry and other businesses which benefited from the crowding effect. Furthermore, in many countries, taxation is correlated with corruption of officials.

Conclusions

Studying traffic congestion from the systems thinking point of view help us to get a "holistic" view of the problem. Building more roads is only a very short solution.

Modeling must include more and more variables, and quickly become very complicated, requiring computer aided modeling and decision making.

To make sound decision making, the qualitative arguments need to be reformulated quantitatively, to allow trade-offs of goals and constraints.

Traffic jams is much too important a decision to be left to the road builders and traffic police alone, what is needed is an economic policy to control the size and population of metropolitans, and the number of cars on the road. Other policies on taxation and public transportation will follow from this.

One last remark, is a comment about leverage. Peter Senge said, that leverage, ie small changes that can produce big results are often not obvious. I would suggest looking at discipline, as in discipline in driving, discipline in the enforcement of traffic regulations, population control, emission regulation, taxation, and usage of the road in general as a possible point of leverage. Discipline does not cost much but can bring large benefits, including reducing traffic jams. It works best if it is self-discipline, not something to be enforced from outside all the time. Examples of countries which exhibit good discipline and less traffic problems than similar countries with less discipline are abound.

We have not mentioned the technology factor in the above discussion. Technology could mean very little if it is not integrated with the systems thinking. It could also be a leverage point if used wisely.

Systems Thinking and System Dynamics

Systems (with s) Thinking and System (without s) Dynamics are two terms which are often used interchangeably, but in fact they are different. What is their relation to each other?

Systems thinking is a rather general term used by people in systems studies to denote a belief in systems as a holistic approach, in distinction to a reductionist approach of looking at parts of the system. The catch phrase is that the system is more than the sum of its parts. In particular, the interactions of the parts may cause the emergence of interesting behavior totally unanticipated when we only look at the parts individually.
The key is in the interactions.

Peter Senge made this approach popular in his book "The Fifth Discipline -The Art & Practice of The Learning Organization ",

where he also presented a set of intuitive patterns, called archetypes, of systemic behavior.
Examples of such patterns include "the harder you push, the harder the system pushes back", "the tragedy of the commons",and "eroding goals". These patterns can be understood intuitively without resorting to numeric equations or simulations.

Hence, it is correct to regard systems thinking as some sort of qualitative reasoning, which can be refined to a System Dynamics model.

Senge formulated 11 Laws of the Fifth Discipline as follows:

1. - today's problems come from yesterday's "solutions"
2. - the harder you push, the harder the system pushes back
3. - behavior grows better before it grows worse
4. - the easy way out usually leads back in
5. - the cure can be worse than the disease
6. - faster is slower
7. - cause and effect are not closely related in time and space
8. - small changes can produce big results --but the areas of highest leverage are often the least obvious
9. - you can have your cake and eat it too --but not at once
10. - dividing an elephant in half does not produce two small elephants
11. - there is no blame

One interesting application of Systems Thinking is the analysis of terrorism as an escalation process, see e.g here and "Systems Thinking Look at Terrorism."
The pattern here is "the chicken and egg" pattern, which comes first, the chicken or the egg, the violence or the retaliation?

The term System Dynamics was coined by Jay Forrester of the MIT Sloan School of Management, in his work on Industrial Dynamics, Urban Dynamics and World Dynamics, to describe a modeling methodology for the behavior of complex systems over time. The variables are called stocks(items with inventory levels) and flows (rates of change). The variables are connected using arcs which can form feedback loops.

Mathematically, a System Dynamics model is equivalent to a set of (algebraic, differential and integral) equations, whose solutions describe the time evolution of the system.
These models, particularly negative feedback loops made us acutely aware of growth limits, as put in the
"Limits to Growth" manifesto of the Club of Rome.

Systems Dynamics is again different from dynamical systems, which are systems studied in complexity science, for their limiting behavior such as cycles and other attractors, stability and chaotic behavior. Systems Dynamics is a methodology, dynamical system is a kind of mathematical object. Both however can give rise to nonlinear properties.

Summary of Systems Thinking(ST) and System Dynamics(SD):

• both agree that things are interconnected (in Buddhism: dependent origination)
  
• both use Causal Loop Diagrams to depict systems, SD also refines the model numerically using stocks and flows
  
• ST is qualitative, SD can be numerical which allow simulation and "what-if" experimentation
  
• both have applications in corporate and public management, environment, social sciences, decision making, and nonlinear dynamics
  
• ST has explicit delays, SD has delays within stocks
  
• SD stocks has memory to accumulate past events
  
• both use archetypes or patterns
  
• SD stresses learning by doing via experimentation of the system parameters
  
• both allow emergent properties
  
• both allow chaos to happen
  
• both ST and SD: the difficulty lies in developing models and validating them

References:

• John J. Shibley: "A Primer on Systems Thinking & Organizational Learning"
  
• Systems Thinking
  
• Road Maps: A Guide To Learning System Dynamics
  
• theWayofSystems
  
• MIT OpenCourseWare: System Dynamics for Business Policy
  
• MIT OpenCourseWare: Applications of System Dynamics
  
• systems-thinking.de: Systems thinking links displayed as a network

Software (from Wikipedia)

• Consideo free software combination of different methods, e.g. system dynamics
  
• AnyLogic non-free software, supports system dynamics, agent based and discrete event modeling
  
• Simile non-free System Dynamics software with object-based concepts
  
• Vensim non-free zero-cost software for educational and personal use
  
• MapSys non-free, zero-cost system thinking software
  
• Powersim Commercial system dynamics software
  
• Powersim Solutions internet-based simulation delivery software platform
  
• Forio non-free web-based system dynamics software with a zero cost version
  
• Stella and iThink Commercial system dynamics software

Must we be happy at the cost of the earth?

The british think-thank, New Economics Foundations introduced the Happy Planet Index, a new measure of human well being and environmental impact in July 2006, partly in response of the inadequacies of GDP (gross domestic product) and HDI (human development index) to take environmental factors into account. The results were surprising, to say the least, if not shocking.

The new index, Happy Planet Index (HPI) has 3 important factors, life satisfaction, life expectancy, and ecological footprint, and the magic formula is a simple relation:

HPI = (Life satisfaction x Life expectancy)/ Ecological Footprint

Life satisfaction is obtained from surveys with questions such as:
‘If you consider your life overall, how satisfied would you say you are nowadays?’.
It seems rather subjective, but this single question performs surprisingly well, showing good validity when compared with other national-level statistics.

Life expectancy is the expectancy at birth, obtained statistically from a population.

Some experts believed that the product of Life satisfaction and Life expectancy is a measure which correlates well variables such as affluence, education, political freedom and gender equality, and hence is a good measure of well being.

The third factor, Ecological Footprint, is the most neglected factor in previous studies, and is the main reason for the surprising results of the report. One would think that countries like the US, UK, Germany, France, Japan would do well, but in fact they don't, and the reason is the Ecological Footprint. What is the Ecological Footprint?

It is a measure of a country's consumption and its environmental impact. A country which needs a lot of resources from other countries to sustain its own well being has certainly a bigger big foot print than a self-sufficient country.

A summary of the results:

As already mentioned, G8 countries fare very badly.
The UK comes a disappointing 108 th (out of a total of 178 countries) – with the remainder of the G8 faring little, if at all, better. Italy is 66 th, Germany 81 st, Japan 95 th, Canada 111 th, France 129 th, United States 150 th and Russia 172 nd.

Central America is the region with the highest average score in the Index

Island nations score well above average in the Index

These are the top 10 offenders of ecology:

1. United Arab Emirates 9.9
   
2. United States of America 9.5
   
3. Kuwait 9.5
   
4. Qatar 9.5
   
5. Australia 7.7
   
6. Sweden 7
   
7. Finland 7
   
8. Estonia 6.9
   
9. Bahrain 6.6
   
10. Denmark 6.4

Conclusions:

The above results should make us think, or rather rethink what happiness is.

We are all connected together, we are in the same boat, called the Earth. It is not possible for someone to say "I have money, I can do what I want, it is none of your business, and you have to respect my freedom to do what I like".

At what cost are we willing to pay for our well-being?

How can we devise schemes so that usage of resources are fair to all, regardless whether they are small or large countries. The US government has refused to sign the Kyoto and the biodiversity conventions, instead they have waged wars, with a very thin moral foundation, and which have devastated large areas for a long time, apart from the brutal killings.

Consciousness about the Ecological Footprint must be stepped up. A quote from the report reads:
"For example, in the United States and Germany people’s sense of life satisfaction is almost identical and life expectancy is broadly similar. Yet Germany’s Ecological Ecological footprint is only about half that of the USA. This means that Germany is around twice as efficient as the USA at generating happy long lives based on the resources that they consume."

In economics, we have often stressed the meaning of productivity, a farmer in Denmark can produce single-handedly much more than a Chinese farmer. It is true, but we must also include the Ecological Footprint factor here, by considering how much machinery is being used, which in turn uses up resources of the earth, and causes pollution.

We need to improve the HPI formula to give a more accurate result. The individual measures of Life satisfaction, Life expectancy, and Ecological Footprint need to be perfected.

References:

• New Economics Foundation web site
  
• Happy Planet Index
  
• Download report
  
• How HPI is calculated
  
• Country rankings

In praise of slowing down

I talked about slowing down in a previous post, as part of a debugging process, whereby we apply bare attention and maintain to be fully present, here and now, to avoid becoming slaves of viruses in our minds.

Kai Romhardt has written a cute little book, titled "Slow Down Your Life", which to the best of my knowledge is only available in German, and which shares some light on what we mean debugging our minds.
Romhardt spent several years at Plum Village and calls Thich Nhat Hanh his teacher.

His book is about deceleration from our hectic lives, it contains the five keys of slowing down:

Kai Romhardt's five keys of slowing down
Here and Now
All is change
There is no beginning nor ending
Growth
Rhythm

The five keys are then applied to four areas: Body, Mind, Activity, and Environment.
Although the book does not use the term debugging, it is actually very close to what I have in mind. It goes into much more detail though.

A very useful feature of the book is the introduction of checkpoints, where one is supposed to apply the brakes to decelerate, and then to reflect the situation. I remember Thich Nhat Hanh said, when the phone rings, we should not rush to pick it up, instead spend a brief moment to compose ourselves, to be mindful, and perhaps wish the caller well, whoever he or she is. We could say "God bless you", or "May all be happy", or "Amituofo" before we pick up the phone.
Romhardt has dozens of similar checkpoints as constant reminders to be mindful. For example, there is a checkpoint when we win big or lose big, when we are with sick or elderly people, when we hear church bells, when we are still in the office at 9 pm, when we eat in front of the television, and many others.
Please note that checkpoints in this sense are exactly the same as checkpoints in the debugging process. They are times to make a brief stop, to review the state of affairs.
Another version of checkpoints is simply the advice, "whenever you go through a door, stop briefly". In the past, this advice could have arisen because we were afraid to get ambushed, but now it means just to be composed and present. If you are present, you will automatically notice the things we normally don't see, such as seeing a possible ambush.
The Thai version is, "whenever you enter or leave a place, pray to the spirits". Substitute "pray to the spirits" with "be mindful", and you have a convenient and easy to remember checkpoint of mindfulness.

Romhardt's first key, "here and now" means a complete acceptance of the present moment. He quotes a motto from the Plum Village: "You have arrived, you are home". Some people hurry from place to place, from activity to activity, from past to future times, somehow they never arrive. It is nowadays popular, to apply visualization, to fantasize about beautiful, and peaceful places. It is possible that such exercises has their usefulness for stress reduction, but they are certainly not a mindfulness practice. Similar thing can be said about hypnosis.

The essence to "here and now" is that we stay embodied all the time. We have to stay relaxed but at the same time alert. Just relaxed may be good by itself, but relaxed by itself is not mindfulness.

The second key is "all is change" or impermanence. Heraclitus said, "you can never enter into the same river twice". The "I", that I know so well, is not something constant, its molecules changes from moment to moment. Meditators feel impermanence naturally, as they watch their breath.

Fritjof Capra, in the book The Tao of Physics, talked about a dynamic equilibrium, which is the result of the forces of Yin and Yang, or the dance of Shiva if you like. A dynamic equilibrium changes all the time, sometimes Yin is above and Yang below, and at other times, the reverse is true.

The third key is "no beginning and ending". This is about the continuity of all things. It may seem contradictory to the birth and death of many things, including ourselves. If we watch our breath, we see that there is a beginning, in-breath, pause, out-breath, ending, and stop, and then a repeat from the beginning again. Each breath is born, and dies later, and then a new breath is born and goes through the same process. Each breath is however different from the previous ones. This is not the meaning of the third key, it says that although each breath has a different identity from the previous ones (i.e. soul does not exist, re-incarnation does not exist), there is continuity physically and mentally. There is biological inheritance and memetic transmission. There is also the extended phenotype, a term used by Dawkins to denote phenotype created in our environment. The result of them all, is that continuity is ensured by the eighth level of consciousness, the consciousness before we were born, which is none other than the store of all causal events or Karma.

The fourth key is Growth or Development, according to which each thing has a unique growth path of its own, until it matures.
Romhardt gives an example from I Ching: growth has different phases, including waiting in patience, doing nothing, getting stuck, step backs and step forwards. It is essential to know or feel the timing of the phases. Getting it wrong, or worse, trying to manipulate time to fit us is a sin against nature. Slowing down means not manipulating time, but to do as nature dictates.

"Nothing else in the world... not all the armies... is so powerful as an idea whose time has come. " Victor Hugo

It used to be very simple, night is night and day is day, each fruit has its season, but now we have the technology, we can change nights into days, and make apples grow in winter. The results are often disappointing. Is it not better, to do like the polar bear, who knows when to sleep and when to hunt? When a Zen master was asked how to be true to oneself, he replied, "If I am hungry, I eat, and if I am sleepy, I sleep." Very wise indeed.

The fifth key is related to the fourth, but in regard to rhythms. Everything has its own rhythm. Slowing actually does not always mean slowing, it can also be speeding, but always in tune with the rhythms. The rhythm is sometimes slow, sometimes fast.
The fourth and fifth keys are practically identical to Non-doing or Wu-Wei in Taoism. Go with the flow is the modern expression for this principle.

What then are the benefits of slowing down?

fewer mistakes better concentration more effective better relationship not wasting energy, smaller ecological footprint less stress healthier living can appreciate ordinary things get rid of bad habits to be true to oneself on the path to liberation

The above is my interpretation of Romhardt's book. I apologize if I have misrepresented his ideas, one way or the other.

Cat purrs for bone healing?

The news that cat purrs can heal bones have been circulating on the net for some time.

It started from Elizabeth von Muggenthaler's research, who used accelerometers to measure the frequencies of cat purrs.
Paula Peterson interviewed Elizabeth and wrote about it in her web site Earthcode.
Paula said: "Elizabeth has gone where no man (or woman) has gone before into the mysterious realm of the healing power of a cat's purring, the haunting whale-song of the Sumatran rhino, and about the sounds that we feel but never hear. She is also president of Fauna Communication Research Institute, where amazing breakthroughs are being made that may forever change the way we listen to the animals."

But is it true that cat purrs can heal bone injuries and osteoporosis, or is it just another old wives' tale, like "a cat has nine lives", or more like the folklore taught in veterinary schools: "Put a cat in a room with a bunch of broken bones — the bones will heal" ?

Why do cats purr?
Cats purr when being stroked by humans, leading to the idea they purr because they are content (In English, "purring with content" is a common expression).
But they also purr when in pain or injured. Elizabeth believes that cat purrs must have a survival value for the cats in general.

Cats and dogs
It is a fact that cats suffer much less bone injuries than dogs. Cats have been known to fall from high rise buildings and survived. The record is a fall from the 45 th building level. The average height of cat falls studied is 5.5 floors, and 90% of them survived. (Whitney, W., and Mehlhaff, C., (1987) the Journal of the American Veterinary Medical Association).

Healing frequencies
Various researchers have found that low frequencies at low dB are helpful with regard to pain relief, and the healing of tendons and muscles.

Some of the reported results are:
50 - 150 Hz chronic pain
20 - 50 Hz increase bone density
120 Hz counters muscle atrophy
100 Hz decrease dyspnea in patients with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease


Elizabeth summarizes: "Vibrations between 20-140 Hz are therapeutic for bone growth/fracture healing, pain relief/swelling reduction, wound healing, muscle growth and repair/tendon repair, mobility of joints and the relief of dyspnea".


Cat harmonics
Returning to cat purrs, Elizabeth measures cat purr frequencies, including those of cheetah, puma, serval, ocelot and the domestic house cat.
The dominant frequencies are 25 and 50 Hz, which are the best frequencies for bone growth and fracture healing. The harmonics are close to 120 Hz, found to repair tendons.

Another report by T.F. Cook mentioned: A dying cat who could not breath (they were considering euthanasia), was found to breath normally once it began purring. The purring opened up the cat's airway, and improvement was "remarkable and the next day commenced to eat...." Three species of cats have a strong harmonic at exactly 100 Hz, the vibrational frequency found to relieve dyspnea. One species within 2 Hz and one species within 7 Hz of 100 Hz. It could be that the cat's purr decreases the breathlessness by vibratory stimulation.

Putting two and two together
If we put the above together, about the healing frequencies, and the purr frequencies, can we then say that cat purrs heal bones? There are certainly indications in that directions, but a more thorough research is required. However, if you believe it or want to try it, there are various commercial cat purr CDs being offered, for example here.

I caught myself Selfing

(This was originally posted to "Awakening the Buddha in us". )

Selfing is a relatively new English word, looking up in Google for "define:selfing" gives only selfing as self-fertilization or self-pollination, which are not the meaning we want to use here.
Selfing here has to do with actions and feelings related to our self image, and possessions.

Jon Kabat-Zinn: Wherever You Go, There You Are: Mindfulness Meditation in Everyday Life describes selfing as " the inevitable and incorrigible tendency to construct out of almost everything and every situation an "I," a "me," and a "mine," and then to operate in the world from that limited perspective which is mostly fantasy and defense."

This is a beautiful description, the first part says that selfing is a constant virus of the mind we have to struggle with all the time, and the second part describes the effects of selfing.
Kabat-Zinn attributes his friend Larry Rosenberg for the introduction of the word selfing.

What can we say about selfing?

1. Firstly, selfing is often an unconscious act, we are so used to doing it, so that we don't notice it, and it becomes the normal state of affairs, just like water for a fish, or the air for us
2. It is practically almost impossible to avoid, even when we are aware of it. Perhaps, if you forgive me for twisting the original saying of the Buddha, it can be said that a man can avoid not telling lies for a long time, but we can only be free of selfing for brief moments of time, before we are caught in the act of selfing. Somehow, in the evolution of man, selfing arises from the our needs to communicate (just count how many times I used I in this post), and protect ourselves.
3. Selfing is infectious, e.g. seeing something on TV easily make us want something, to posses, to become, or to boost our self image. The advertising agencies are making good use of this.
4. In selfing, there is an infinite number of varieties of making comparisons: I am better, I am worse, I am as good as, I am the best/worst, I can make a better website, I am taller/richer, cleverer, etc. Comparisons also divide the world into good and bad, us and them, or just indifferent.
5. With possessives like mine, yours, ours, his, hers, etc, we build up our sense of belongings, and our self image. Having a fast car, a beautiful home, etc is considered a status which enhances our self image. Possessions lead to conflicts, greediness, and egoism.
6. Selfing is dangerous, for we then choose our actions so that the result is propping up our image. In groups,other people would act to please us, leading to flattery, bribery and conceit
7. Selfing is the result of Self Delusion, the most dangerous delusion
8. The cure of selfing lies in continuous mindfulness

Surely you can add many more about selfing, but I better stop here, for I have caught myself in the act of selfing, even as I write this post.

Meditation increases grey matter in right hemisphere of the brain

The following is a collection of pointers about meditation: what benefits derived from it, the areas of the brain affected, types of meditation and tools used in the research.
A summary of the findings:

• Benefits and other effects:
  • moderates heart and breathing rates and integrates cognition, emotions and physiology
  • slow age-related thinning of the prefrontal cortex
  • restores energy
  • less sleep
  • better attention/concentration
  • loss of sense of space
  • loss of sense of self
  • boosts immune system (?)
• Areas affected:right-side insula, small section of the prefrontal cortex, expansion of blood vessels
• Meditation practices mentioned: Mindfulness, Tibetan, Vipassana(Insight meditation), Yoga
• Tools: Magnetic resonance imaging (MRI)
• Criticisms

At the end of this post, I have included links to a BBC article on meditation, and about meditation in prisons. Other benefits of meditation not discussed here are the use of it to rid of our mental viruses

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Courant: Meditating May Keep Brain Sharp
In the study, published in the current issue of NeuroReport, the researchers found four areas of meditators' brains to be thicker than those of non-meditators, and two were of particular interest: the right-side insula, which is part of the brain's cerebral cortex, and a small section of the prefrontal cortex.
The insula is "a wonderful area of the brain," said Sara Lazar, a research neuroscientist at Mass General, lead author of the study and an experienced meditator. She described it as a kind of central switchboard that "connects the reptilian brain with higher-order cortical areas." It moderates heart and breathing rates and integrates cognition, emotions and physiology.
The prefrontal cortex governs decision-making and working memory. The thickness of this brain area decreases with age, which, according to Lazar "contributes to why we forget where we left our keys. " Lazar and her colleagues observed that this brain shrinkage was less pronounced in older meditators than in older non-meditators, suggesting that meditation may slow age-related thinning of the prefrontal cortex.
The meditators in the study practice a form of Buddhist meditation called insight meditation, which is based on paying close attention to sensations and thoughts as they come and go each passing moment. Those included in the study meditated at least once a day for about 40 minutes, and each of the meditation-group subjects had participated in at least one weeklong retreat.
The brain-thickening phenomenon could be related to any or all of the following: the growth and branching of nerves in the area, an increase in the number of glial, or support cells, and an expansion of blood vessels in the region, according to Jeremy Gray, an assistant professor of psychology at Yale and a co-author.

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New Scientist:Meditation builds up the brain
Meditating does more than just feel good and calm you down, it makes you perform better – and alters the structure of your brain, researchers have found.
People who meditate say the practice restores their energy, and some claim they need less sleep as a result. Many studies have reported that the brain works differently during meditation – brainwave patterns change and neuronal firing patterns synchronise. But whether meditation actually brings any of the restorative benefits of sleep has remained largely unexplored.
What effect meditating has on the structure of the brain has also been a matter of some debate. Now Sara Lazar at the Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston, US, and colleagues have used MRI to compare 15 meditators, with experience ranging from 1 to 30 years, and 15 non-meditators.
They found that meditating actually increases the thickness of the cortex in areas involved in attention and sensory processing, such as the prefrontal cortex and the right anterior insula.
“You are exercising it while you meditate, and it gets bigger,” she says. The finding is in line with studies showing that accomplished musicians, athletes and linguists all have thickening in relevant areas of the cortex. It is further evidence, says Lazar, that yogis “aren’t just sitting there doing nothing".
The growth of the cortex is not due to the growth of new neurons, she points out, but results from wider blood vessels, more supporting structures such as glia and astrocytes, and increased branching and connections.

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Medical News Today: Meditation associated with increased grey matter in the brain
"What is most fascinating to me is the suggestion that meditation practice can change anyone's grey matter," Gray said. "The study participants were people with jobs and families. They just meditated on average 40 minutes each day, you don't have to be a monk."
Magnetic resonance imaging showed that regular practice of meditation is associated with increased thickness in a subset of cortical regions related to sensory, auditory, visual and internal perception, such as heart rate or breathing. The researchers also found that regular meditation practice may slow age-related thinning of the frontal cortex. "Most of the regions identified in this study were found in the right hemisphere," the researchers said. "The right hemisphere is essential for sustaining attention, which is a central practice of Insight meditation."

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BBC: Meditation mapped in monks
During meditation, people often feel a sense of no space Scientists investigating the effect of the meditative state on Buddhist monk's brains have found that portions of the organ previously active become quiet, whilst pacified areas become stimulated. Using a brain imaging technique, Newberg and his team studied a group of Tibetan Buddhist monks as they meditated for approximately one hour. The scans provided remarkable clues about what goes on in the brain during meditation.
"There was an increase in activity in the front part of the brain, the area that is activated when anyone focuses attention on a particular task," Dr Newberg explained.
In addition, a notable decrease in activity in the back part of the brain, or parietal lobe, recognised as the area responsible for orientation, reinforced the general suggestion that meditation leads to a lack of spatial awareness. Scientific study of both the physical world and the inner world of human experiences are, according to Dr Newberg, equally beneficial.
"When someone has a mystical experience, they perceive that sense of reality to be far greater and far clearer than our usual everyday sense of reality," he said.
He added: "Since the sense of spiritual reality is more powerful and clear, perhaps that sense of reality is more accurate than our scientific everyday sense of reality."
Dr Newberg explained: "During meditation, people have a loss of the sense of self and frequently experience a sense of no space and time and that was exactly what we saw."

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BBC: Meditation 'good for brain'
Scientists say they have found evidence that meditation has a biological effect on the body. A small-scale study suggests it could boost parts of the brain and the immune system.
Caution: A British expert says the results - published in the journal Psychosomatic Medicine - are interesting but need further scrutiny. "There is increasing evidence that meditation is a useful and, for some people, a powerful therapy," said Dr Adrian White of the department of Complementary Medicine at the University of Exeter. "But we still need more information to determine who it helps and precisely what its benefits are."

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BBC: Meditation 'brain training' clues
The researchers studied Tibetan Buddhist monks Meditating monks are giving clues about how the brain's basic responses can be overridden, researchers say. Australian scientists gave Buddhist monks vision tests, where each eye was concurrently shown a different image. Most people's attention would automatically fluctuate - but the monks were able to focus on just one image. Writing in Current Biology, the scientists say their ability to override this basic mental response indicates how the brain can be trained. Meditation is a way of tapping into a process of manipulating brain activity

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BBC:Prisoners benefit from meditation
The technique, known as Vipassana Meditation, has been offered in several prisons in India, the US and New Zealand.

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BBC:Meditation in Buddhism

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Other links: Sara Lazar's web
Sara Lazar publications
Science Heros on Sara Lazar

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Criticisms:
Mindhacks:
one of the criticisms was that the study simply compared meditators to non-meditators without following them up to actually see if the cortex did change over time. It could be argued that people with more grey matter are simply more likely to meditate, rather than the act of meditation having any direct effect on grey matter.
Interview with Sara Lazar:
reply to criticsm

The incredible artificial creative machines: How they work

Genetic Programming (GP) is a variant of Genetic Algorithm (GA), using trees as individuals in a population.
If you are new to GP and GA, you can read the tutorials, the GP flowchart, and a sample run

The algorithm requires the following set of data to start:

a set of primitives for the trees, terminals for end nodes, and operators(or functions, not the genetic operations which are tree manipulations) for the other nodes, each operator has an arity (number of variables) between 1 and n a fitness function applicable to individuals This function can be externaly defined, or internally by giving samples individuals with their fitness values parameters for controlling the algorithm, including the termination condition. The probablity frequencies of each genetic operation is defined here

Pseudo code of the algorithm:

create random initial population (generation 0) evaluate fitness of population select one or two (depending on the genetic operation) individuals from the population. Probability of selection is given by their fitness values execute genetic operations: reproduction, crossover, mutation, and architecture-altering. The probability of genetic operation selection is set in the parameters. This results in a new generation. if the termination condition is satified, stop, else repeat from step 2

The algorithm is not guaranteed to find a global optimum if one exists, it could get stuck in a local optimum.
The number of generations is one of the important parameter of the algorithm.

The original code in LISP from Koza's book can be found here.
Please note that the code is only royalty free for academic use.

Quote: "Please be advised that this software is copyrighted and is the subject of my United States patents 4,935,877 5,136,686, and 5,148,513, foreign counterparts, and other patents pending. IF YOU WISH TO USE THIS SOFTWARE, you may have a royalty-free, non-exclusive license under these proprietary rights, without the right of sublicense, to use (but not to make or sell) the software for academic purposes only and only then if you receive no money or other valuable consideration as a result of its use."

The incredible artificial creative machines of John Koza

"John Koza Has Built an Invention Machine. Its creations earn patents, outperform humans, and will soon fly to space. All it needs now is a few worthy challenges" is the title of a Popular Science article in April 2006.
It summarizes very well what I want to say here.

As mentioned in an earlier post, Genetic programming (GP) is a further development and improvement over the original genetic algorithm (GA).
The basic difference is the use of tree structures instead of strings. The trees are LISP expressions, and they can be used to represent formula, rules, statements and programs in general.
Trees are strings of variable length, so GP can be seen as an extension of GA.

Another way of looking at GP is as a program generating program, sometimes called automatic programming. Compilers for example are automatic programs, but GP is an evolutionary program generating program. It runs by itself once the basic setup of symbols and operators are given.

The evolutionary model of GP is basically the same as in GA, they both use genetic operations such as selection, mutation, and crossover.

The inner workings of GP will be covered in later post: "The incredible artificial creative machines: How they work".

GP has flourished greatly, Koza himself has written four books on GP, they are all very big and heavy books:

• Genetic Programming: On the Programming of Computers by Means of Natural Selection, 1992
• Genetic Programming II: Automatic Discovery of Reusable Programs, 1994
• Genetic Programming III: Darwinian Invention and Problem Solving, 1999
• Genetic Programming IV: Routine Human-Competitive Machine Intelligence, 2003

As for results, the most astonishing are the re-invention of previously patented inventions by humans, and the invention of new patented applications. These include "Synthesis of a NAND circuit", "Creation of a cellular automata rule for the majority classification problem that is better than the Gacs-Kurdyumov-Levin (GKL) rule and all other known rules written by humans", "Creation of a novel variant of quantum dense coding", "Creation of a sorting network for seven items using only 16 steps" and "Creation of a soccer-playing program that ranked in the middle of the field of 34 human-written programs in the Robo Cup 1998 competition".

A quote from 36 Human-Competitive Results Produced by Genetic Programming:

"There are now 36 instances where genetic programming has produced a human-competitive result.
Click here for the 8 criteria defining “human-competitive” These human-competitive results include 15 instances where genetic programming has created an entity that either infringes or duplicates the functionality of a previously patented 20 th-century invention, 6 instances where genetic programming has done the same with respect to a 21 st-century invention, and 2 instances where genetic programming has created a patentable new invention.
These human-competitive results come from the fields of computational molecular biology, cellular automata, sorting networks, and the synthesis of the design of both the topology and component sizing for complex structures, such as analog electrical circuits, controllers, and antenna."

Resources:

• List of books by Koza
• Genetic Programming FAQ
• Wikipedia on Genetic Programming
• Genetic Programming Homepage
• GP software in various programming languages
  
• GA and GP in Java, open source
• GP Bibliography
• Software that writes software, Salon article