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The Human Mind is on a Collision Course with the Computer Processor

You are either in one of three buckets when you read the title of this post. You’re intrigued because you find the idea of artificial intelligence interesting and you believe that one day we’ll be able to create robots that can actually think. Or maybe your frightened because you think if computers get too smart they will take over the world and exterminate human beings. Or maybe you just think I’m crazy. In any case let me explain what I mean.

I believe the human mind is just like a computer processor except that it’s entirely organic and is far more evolved. Whether you agree with this or not, most people would say the human mind is exponentially more intelligent than even the most sophisticated computer processor. Ironically I think the human mind is inferior to the computer processor in some ways. When it comes to processing our waking thought, human beings actually move at snail’s pace relative to a computer processor. Think about it. When presented with a mathematical problem it takes noticeable time to process and come up with an answer. Whereas presented similar questions, a computer processor can calculate the answer nearly instantaneously. Even a $1.99 calculator demonstrates this power, but computers can only do this in a binary fashion. By this I mean they cannot make “reasonable decisions” based on inputs, they can only process ones and zeroes to get to a binary decision; essentially answering yes or no based on rules. There is no wavering from that. That’s the goal of artificial intelligence, to take a binary decision and empower the processor to do some reasoning. So the processor is faster, but the human mind is much more dynamic and sophisticated.

Ok, so how the heck are they intersecting. Well, like this. As computers get smarter and we figure out how to enable them to learn and reason they will start to get closer to the capabilities of the human mind. Of course you need to take a leap of faith that this is even possible, but who would have thought we could build airplanes and travel to the moon a thousand years ago. The mind on the other hand is getting faster. I always loved the old wives tale about how we only use 10% of brains. Well this has largely been disproved, but I like to think that the truth is we use our brains only 5% at the potential efficiency level. That means we can become exponentially more efficient, that’s processing. So as the human mind begins to process information faster and the computer starts to reason and think through problems they two technologies start to intersect.

Ok, now take this in. As this starts to occur I believe that at one instant in time, just like the ping pong ball experiment that demonstrates a nuclear reaction, the human mind and the computer processor will become one; literally one living, breathing, organic and man-made being. Humans will not be taken over by computers, they will become them and vice versa, computers won’t become the rulers of the universe they will evolve into them. It’s out there, and maybe I can’t fully explain it, but I just believe it. That’s what this blog is about so it doesn’t matter how out there it is.

Content provided by Pitashi, Jeff Solomon’s Guide to Everything.

Anything is Possible

I’m pretty sure I’ve blogged about this story I heard about Steven Spielberg’s childhood. One night when Steven was a young boy his father came home abruptly from work and hustled his mother and sister into the car. It was dusk as they drove off into the unknown. His father hadn’t told them where they were going. Of course Steven had mixed emotion I’m sure. In part he was probably a little afraid but he also must have been excited and in wonderment of where his father was taking them. After all, he trusted his father and until then believed that he could do no wrong.

After while, the family arrived in a big open field with no trees and a perfect view of the summer night sky; there were many other people there, on blankets, seemingly with their families. Steven must have felt a calm sense of safety seeing others there, and his excitement and wonder surely grew into a fever. His father put out a big blanket and the family sat down in the nearly pitch black field. The moon was nowhere in sight that night, but when they leaned back and looked up they must have been astonished by the sight of a perfectly marvelous meteor shower. To Steven it must have looked like the stars were dancing just for him. To Steven the whole universe opened up and said one thing, anything is possible.

That experience not only stuck with Steven Spielberg, but it literally defined him from that point on. He had been imprinted with an extraordinary cosmic event at that perfect age where the most significant events are burned into our subconscious as more than just experiences; they become fundamental organizing principles that drive everything we do and how we perceive the world. You don’t have to see more than one of his movies to know that Steven Spielberg is driven by the organizing principle that anything’s possible.

I think in my heart I’ve always felt this way. But I know that many of my defining experiences have told me the exact opposite. For some reason the events that made me who I am today said something I’ve been fighting from the inside out for my entire life. It said something to the effect of, hey, most things are possible, but you should keep it to yourself or you might freak people out. That just sucks. That’s my organizing principle, you can think anything’s possible, but just don’t say or do anything about it.

Now, organizing principle can be pretty powerful. In fact, they’re like your subconscious, it’s pretty much uncontrollable. On top of that, I believe that human beings are part of a greater system, an energy that everything in the universe is part of. Pretty much every religion has some concept of that type. That system is designed to work like an equation, both sides are equal and if you have organizing principles that have you thinking and acting positively, then the universe wants to respond with the same. This concept of like attracts like is age old and most recently publicized in the book The Secret. The really sad thing is that if you have organizing principles that have you thinking or acting negatively, well, that’s what you get. People, places and things in your world will naturally fall into place that supports your organizing principles. Yeah, that can be a great thing if you’re Steven Spielberg and you think and act like anything is possible, but it sucks if your natural state is that you think everything has been done and there is little more out there. Of course I don’t believe or act like that, but I’m caught somewhere in the middle. My heart is dying to explore, but my mind wants to do everything to hold me back. What is that? Is God ironic?

In a lot of ways I’ve built up a community of people places and things that keep me stuck. The older I get, the more I feel like one day I’m going to wake up and realize that I’ve just got too much stuff blocking the door and too many people holding it shut. What am I supposed to do?

I recently spent a day in New York and met up with some old high school buddies. In fact, only now did I stop to realize that these two guys we the best two friends I ever had in my life. I was best friends with one and best friends with the other, and the two of them were good friends, not best, with each other. It was an interesting dynamic. Growing up I actually had a few different types of good friends that naturally wouldn’t have been friends with each other, but I created, not intentionally, several intersecting circles of people. I was the common denominator that connected everyone. Of course each of those friends had some things in common with the others, but they individually had more in common with me. I’m a bit of a connecter, but in high school I never realized it. So my trip to New York, and meeting with these guys was really quite incredible, fascinating really. First I met up with one friend, we spent time hanging out in the city, at lunch, walked around, caught up and enjoyed each other’s company. After a few hours, my other friend met up with us. The three of us talked, laughed, and everyone had a great time together. We went to dinner, walked on the pier, and had a blast. Then the first friend had to go home, leaving me with the second friend, and he and I spent another several hours together. From start to end of the day, the conversation transformed as I transitioned from one friend to both to the other one. It was really amazing to see. I know it was me that enabled that, and I know both friends left feeling inspired, motivated, excited, and maybe even a little bit of that sense that anything is possible. God, what if everyone believed that?

Content provided by Pitashi, Jeff Solomon’s Guide to Everything.

Do We Only Use 10% of Our Brain?

There is much evidence to refute that idea, as seen here and here. But most of that data refutes the idea that we physically use only 10% rather than the idea that we do indeed use 100% of our brain, but that the brain has the potential to be 90% more efficient and effective. Do we have a way to accurately measure how certain brain activity is more effective? Which is faster or more efficient? Which can process more concepts, ideas and calculations simultaneously? I think the answer is no. So what if the real way to think about it is not percentage of usage, but percentage of effectiveness.

Think about using your brain during a tough work day. You’ve got a lot on your mind, your processing numerous task and thinking through a handful concepts. You can only do so much. So what if you could do more, faster and simultaneously. I like to think of it more like a computer microprocessor. Comparing the early processors to the ones commonly found in personal computers these days is like comparing apples to motorcycles. They couldn’t be more different. The processors today are exponentially faster and capable of doing many many more calculations at the same time, multi-threading. So why can’t the human brain become capable of processing more faster?

As a side concept; I like to think technology and humanity are converging. As computer processing become more “intelligent” human brains are becoming more “effective”. It makes sense that we would strive to create a brain in our own image; it’s what we know, consciously and sub-consciously. In other words organic intelligence and artificial intelligence are converging because they were both born out of the same paradigm. More on that later.

So how do we access the potential power of our brains? Part of me says it’s time and evolution, that there is nothing we can do to accelerate it. I think that even if that’s true, it’s already accelerating exponentially. Think about the timeline of the human race. We’ve probably learned and accomplished more in the last 50 years than we have in the previous 1500 years. Our mind has also expanded and become more effective at that same ratio. I think it’s expanding like the ping pong ball experiment, all of the sudden we will have total knowledge and achieve the pinnacle of our potential.

On the flip side, perhaps we can accelerate it independent of time and evolution. Christopher Nolan in his latest masterpiece, Inception, came up with a very intelligent way to explain how the brain may not be maximized. His way of explaining the concept is that during our dream state, our minds are exponentially more effective and efficient. He shows how it not only has the ability to design and create the world we operate in but also experience that world in real-time. That creation, as evidenced by anyone that has had a vivid and strange dream, can be quite incredible (i.e. buildings falling on each other, or walking on walls). He also suggests that time is accelerated in dreams; 10 minutes in the real world could equate to hours, weeks or longer in the dream world because our minds can imagine and create a dream reality and experience it much faster than we could while awake. It’s such a brilliant way to explain the concept that we aren’t maximizing the potential of our minds… he says, look, why can we do so much more while we sleep with our minds than we can while we are awake. I just love that.

So, yes, there is proof we use 100% of our brains; I’m not doubting that. But is there proof that we can’t use 100% of our brains 1000% more effectively?

Content provided by Pitashi, Jeff Solomon’s Guide to Everything.

Earthquakes are the Closest we can Get to God

I think most people are afraid of earthquakes; quite contrary to that I love them, to a point anyway. To me, earthquakes are the closest I get to understanding God. Sure, that’s a pretty big statement, but if you’ve ever felt an earthquake, you may understand what I mean. Earthquakes grab you from the inside. The feeling is like nothing else on earth; nothing can replicate it. No matter how much you simulate the shaking of an earthquake, the feeling can’t be re-created. Those who have never been in an earthquake think of it as a “shaking” type feeling, that’s true of course, but it’s so much more. Earthquakes start deep in the earth, they don’t simply shake the surface beneath your feet, the grab the entire space you occupy and take control of it. Imagine it more like energy than shaking. The energy from an earthquake grabs everything within a certain radius, in all directions – up, down, left, right and everywhere in-between. You can feel the energy from deep within your soul, it starts from the inside and grabs your organs and shakes them. It is so vastly different than the feeling of someone shaking you that I can’t even begin to articulate it. Your adrenaline fires the moment it feels the earthquake and for that one moment you are connected to the earth, the universe and everything that is out there, explainable and not explainable. You are one with the universe and you feel just how connected everything really is. That’s how I think of God; an all powerful energy that has the capability of moving mountains, literally. If an earthquake is big enough, then the physical danger of falling objects, walls, roofs, buildings, etc. ultimately put you at real risk. But before we had all those things, back when the earth was just dirt and rock, even the biggest earthquake probably wasn’t all that dangerous. If you were in a wide open field, and a huge earthquake struck, more than likely you would be fine, barring a huge fissure opening and swallowing you up in the earth. But the feeling that goes along with an earthquake is unmistakable. The bigger and stronger the earthquake, the more connected we feel to everything. That’s why I love earthquakes. I fear them, and I have concern over my physical safety, but I love knowing that I’m part of a greater system. For that brief moment I’m more connected to God than I’ve ever been. It’s a spiritual experience from the inside out. No matter how holy you are or how much faith you have, nothing produces the same feeling of connectedness. It makes sense that we would feel fear so intensely at that moment. Every feeling comes out, fear, joy, anger, anxiety, love, the list goes on. We are completely powerless over everything. The power of an earthquake makes us feel totally out of control. There is nothing we can do but wait it out. If we just let go, for one moment, we are with God. Next time there is an earthquake I encourage you to try it. Enjoy it. Appreciate it. Don’t underestimate it, but don’t undervalue it. We’re all connected by a common thread that runs directly through out body piercing the soul. When an earthquake hits, that thread is pulled taught and everyone who feels it knows, for a moment in time, that God is within and without us. It’s a pretty fantastic feeling if you think of it that way.

Content provided by Pitashi, Jeff Solomon’s Guide to Everything.

Success is Having; Excellence is Being

It seems like we’re taught from an early age the exact opposite though, I think I was. Or maybe it was that success and excellence are synonymous and you should therefore acquire as much as possible. I’ve acquired a lot of shit; literally that’s really what I got. Sometimes I find it hard to stop having and just being; lately I’ve been really struggling with it. I think that it’s a self fulfilling prophecy in that when I’m not “being excellent” I’m trying to fill a void by having more, then I look successful so it’s easier to ignore being excellent. It’s a viscous circle — like a merry-go-round that never stops; it doesn’t even slow down enough for me to jump off. I’d like to know what it’s like to just be. Be me. Be free to enjoy whatever is at that moment. Be happy that things didn’t go my way, or be even happier that they went yours. If you stop and think about it, being is a lot simpler than having; so why do we work our asses of to have when all we have to do is relax to be. What a trick. What would happen if I didn’t get anything for one month; not acquire one thing for a whole 30 days. Could I even do that? I’m not talking about starving myself or buying gas to drive to work. I’m talking about having things, additional things that don’t get consumed or used; kinda like that movie Brewsters Millions. I think that movie said a lot more than people gave it credit for. What would happen if I wasn’t successful for one month, just 30 days of my life all I did was be and not have. It just seems so strange, but I’m going to try. In every situation I’m going to deny having something and if I can’t deny it, I’m going to write down those where I am forced to “have” something for whatever reason and I’ll post it here. An experiment, I wonder how it will go?

Content provided by Pitashi, Jeff Solomon’s Guide to Everything.

Child Development Right In Front of My Eyes

I just got back from vacation with my family and I had some pretty interesting insight about my kids development. My twins Wolf and Dahlia are 14 months now and this is our first vacation longer than 2 nights since they were born. For me, it was the first time I ever spent that many consecutive days with my kids. Even when they were born, I only took about a week off. Ten straight days of constant contact with my kids, in contrast to my normal schedule (see them in the morning and night on weekdays and all day on the weekends). That’s what lead to a fascinating insight.

Child development is exponential and can be observed in real-time. That’s my insight. I think you’re somewhat blind to it if you spend all your time or only limited time with the kids. My wife is a stay at home mom and so she is able to spend every day with them. I’m an entrepreneur which has me see them on a frequent but limited schedule.

I watched my kids evolve right in front of me. One minute they understood how to say “bye bye” and wave when we explained that someone was leaving. The next minute they realized that people leave through the front door. I saw my daughter go to the door, when nobody was there, point and say “bye bye” and wave. She knew that was the place people leave from. We didn’t teach her that, she just figured it out.

They learn exponentially. My kids love their shoes. They love putting them on and walking around. They have many pairs. They know where we keep the shoes and go get them when we say to. One minute they know the concept of shoes. The next minute they know that there are different styles of shoes, different colors, ones for my son and ones for my daughter. I ask my daughter to get her shoes and tell her to get the pink Nikes, first try, nope; it’s my son’s white Adidas. I tell her no, those are Wolf’s shoes. She brings them to Wolf and disappears. She returns with the pink Nikes.

I think they even enjoy learning. They get a certain satisfaction when it “clicks”; it’s just inspiring to watch. When it’s cold, they wear hats. I think sometimes the hat’s itch, especially with the beanies. It was particularly cold one afternoon. We put the beanies on both Wolf and Dahlia. She didn’t like it so she tried to take it off. I said sternly, “no honey, it’s cold, you need to keep your hat on” and she did. About 30 minutes later, we were inside where it was warm. My daughter looked at me and pointed to her head. She friggin pointed at her hat and looked at me with questioning eyes and in silence she said “now daddy, it’s warm, can I take the hat off now?” I nodded and she pulled the hat off. I nearly lost it.

My wife see’s this stuff every day, but I don’t think she appreciates it as much because there is so much going on and she sees it all. Like me she is blind to the little things. It takes a change in perspective to see them. That change happened for me because I went from seeing them a little to seeing them a whole lot; I noticed a lot and I’m so happy to have had that experience and look forward to many more.

Content provided by Pitashi, Jeff Solomon’s Guide to Everything.

Henefer: Week 2

Another week down and more demo, serious demo. It looks like a bomb exploded in our living room!

Next week they start with the foundation work then soon framing, yaaay; here are the rest of the pictures from week #2.

Content provided by Pitashi, Jeff Solomon’s Guide to Everything.

Henefer: Week 1

Finally, permits in hand we break ground. Demolition goes fast and is kinda scary.

I hope it doesn’t take too long; here are pictures from week #1.

Content provided by Pitashi, Jeff Solomon’s Guide to Everything.

Henefer Remodel – Before

So we finally bought a new house. We decided on Westchester again, we just love it here. This time, we moved a bit west to Kentwood. It’s just awesome there. We got luck and found a fixer on Henefer, which is one of the nicest tree-lined streets in all of Westchester. We had made a number of offers for various houses in the area over the past 18 months, no luck. Finally, after switching agents, which is a whole other story in itself, we bought 7818 Henefer, and we’re so happy.

The house could have been lived in, it wasn’t a total tear-down, but it was never really remodeled, so it was perfect to put some money into. It was by far the oldest and least updated (i.e. ugliest) house on the street, perfect!

So I’m documenting the whole thing, here are the before pictures

Content provided by Pitashi, Jeff Solomon’s Guide to Everything.