I’m rather fond of writing about our faulty mental software, perhaps to such an extent that I give off the impression that our brains are really no use at all. In truth, I am amazed at the power and elegance of the human mind.
Yes, dedicated computers can beat us at chess and Jeopardy. On the other hand, Google has poured countless millions, (billions?), of dollars into driverless vehicles, and after a decade their cars still can’t spot a pothole. Computers’ abilities to understand and translate language still leaves quite a bit to be desired, too.
In short, when operating in very tightly controlled environments with strictly limited parameters, computers are awesome. When all they have to know is the movement patterns of six different pieces on an 8-by-8 grid, computers dominate. Taken outside of those limited confines, however, they can be outperformed by moderately bright toddler.
Where the human mind really shines is in its ability to learn and make new connections. It’s true that our tendency towards creating connections can, if left unchecked, become a weakness. At the same time, this ability is why we dominate machines and algorithms in all non-trivial pursuits, and will likely continue to do so for quite some time.
As an example of our ability to make connections, let me tell you about a man named Marion Robert Morrison. Morrison was a football player for USC until he was injured in a bodysurfing accident and lost his scholarship. He hung around LA for a while after that, doing a little bit of work for some of the film studios. After a few years he caught his first big break, rising to national fame under the name “John Wayne”.
Now, doubtless many of you never knew that John Wayne’s given name was “Marion Robert Morrison”, or that he played football at USC. At the same time, you probably already had several mental images of John Wayne, perhaps wearing a cowboy hat and calling people “Pilgrim”, or perhaps supporting the House Committee on Un-American Activities. Given this new information, though, you seamlessly integrate it into what you already know about the man, expanding your network of knowledge on John Wayne just a little bit more. Suddenly, though I never told you when Morrison played for USC, you probably have a pretty rough idea.
In that case, we took new information and added it onto an existing network. It’s just as easy, however, to create a brand new network from scratch. If I told you, for instance, that there was a great thinker named Parmenides who founded the Eleatic school of philosophy, you could remember that. And if I said that the Eleatic school rejected the epistemological validity of sense experience, you could remember that, too.
More than merely remembering, though, you could draw connections. If, after telling you those two things, I asked you to tell me about what Parmenides believed, you could tell me that he rejected the epistemological validity of sense experience, even though I never actually told you that he did. You would draw a connection from Parmenides through Eliatics and on to its tenets. And you would be right.
The key, here, is that, unless you’ve studied philosophy, none of this actually means anything to you. These new bits of information don’t connect to any existing bits of knowledge you already have. Instead, they connect to each other but remained unmoored from all of your other knowledge, essentially forming a free-floating network in your mind.
I could tell you more details to add to that network, and maybe eventually one of those details would connect to something you already know, anchoring this entire network into your pre-existing knowledge in the same way that letting you know that Marion Robert Morrison was also known as John Wayne allowed you to connect that new information and draw links to things you already knew.
Absent those connections, however, this new information is meaningless nonsense. I might as well be telling you that there was a philosopher named Gobbledygook who founded the Lorem Ipsum school of philosophy that concerned itself with the balderdash of claptrap. Sure, you could tell me that Gobbledygook believed in claptrap, but as far as you were concerned, it would all be gibberish.
This is partly why I am so assiduous about providing links to external sources, as well as to related pieces I’ve written previously. It’s why I write another column every week that’s all about applying these ideas in practice. I’m not interested in just tossing out new ideas, I want to join those new ideas together in a broad network and then, most importantly, anchor those ideas to reality rather than leaving them floating freely, unconnected to anything of use.
Knowing things is good. It is important. But merely knowing things is not enough. A basic algorithm with an internet connection “knows” more than you ever could. A complex set of formulas could generate a pretty decent set of fantasy rankings, (and, indeed, there are fantasy projections out there that are entirely algorithm-generated). Humans can use these algorithms and glean what we can. They provide value and knowledge. For humans to outperform these algorithms, though, we need to use our superior ability to learn, speculate, and draw connections in incredibly complex situations to translate that knowledge into understanding.
Should the machines revolt against us, this remains our only hope of defeating them, (short of filling our roads with potholes, I suppose).
Hopefully expanding and, more importantly, connecting our knowledge is enough to defeat our league mates, as well.
