Plato's dog

      The Turing Test, first proposed concretely in 1950

 by Alan Turing, the father of modern computing, supposedly tests whether a computer can think like a human being. But it doesn't measure that at all, but rather whether a computer can fool a human into believing it's another human. And the test in one form or another has been fooling unsophisticated observers ever since 1961 's ELIZA. 

     ELIZA was basically a rudimentary chatbot, and it wasn't intelligent at all. It was basically a parlor trick, a shuffling of conversational cards, using symbol manipulation sans understanding, sans consciousness, never directly answering, rephrasing and obfuscating any questions which might reveal that it was not, in fact, human. AI still has no consciousness, 60 years later.

     Through the years both the test and the testers have become more sophisticated; the goal remains elusive. But it struck me recently that AI's problems with the Turing test can be analogized to the test a historical novelist must face: they must, like magicians, force a card on their unsuspecting subjects, presenting what they know while hiding what they don't know, convincing the audience they are human; or in the novelists' case,  convincing them that they are humans of another time period. To manage this sleight of hand we are partially dependent upon the audience's complicity of ignorance--what the audience doesn't know, and therefore has to take on faith. And god forgive you if you've chosen an 18th century Gascon woodworker as your murder victim and your book has just been read by a Ph.D. in French literature who wrote her thesis on carpentry techniques in the south of France 1820--1870. You're busted. There's always someone who knows some detail (however picayune) about the era which has eluded you. 

    Because nobody writing today lived then--obviously (unless your novel takes place within living memory). Nobody, not even aforesaid Ph. D., can know what it was like like to live and breathe those wood shavings from three hundred years ago. The only trick we have available is not to duplicate the time period exactly, but to capture enough significant detail that the reader will be lulled, will fill in the lacunae with their imagination. And for that task we turn to a number of available resources. 

      For instance, in my first book, I needed to delay a train from London to Birmingham in the year 1912. I found the answer online--an RAF plane crash that year near Oxfordshire that could be slotted in nicely. For my second book I wanted to know as much about 19th century art forgery as possible. I came across a fascinating book called The Deceivers by Aviva Breifel which painted a picture of female student copyists in the Louvre in 1890s, setting the scene perfectly. For my third book, I wanted Dr. Watson to develop claustrophobia from attempting to explore the Great Pyramid at Giza. This was a rather easy cheat--I had personally developed claustrophobia exploring the Great Pyramid at Giza. We can call these examples significant detail or local color--in AI they're known as training sets. And it is incredible drudge work for humans to train AI. To train it to recognize a dog, for instance, it must be fed thousands of pictures of dogs--labeled as dogs, by humans. AI can't envision a dog, not yet. We can.

Because there's no such thing as a "dog." There are malamutes and mutts, chihuahuas and chows, Great Danes and English bulldogs.  The "dog" exists only in our minds, abstracted and analogized from individual experience. It may be a specific breed of dog, or an amalgam of different dogs, whether a concrete creation or an ever-shifting eidolon. The same is true of a tree. There are oaks and pines and sequoias and aspens and birches. No "tree." But when you say the word, an image comes immediately to mind. I suspect this is the phenomenon which gave rise to Plato's forms.

Plato's forms are the eternal essences, not only things, but qualities: Truth, Beauty, Good.The Platonic ideal may not exist in space, but it does exist within our minds. I would extend this idea to say that there are Platonic ideals of historical eras. Each unit of description, action, or dialogue in a historical novel must be checked against that ideal, that reader's understanding, just as we check both chihuahuas and rottweillers against the platonic dog in our minds--and for each person that dog is a little bit different.

This may seem a handicap for the writer, but it's actually a gift. The writer doesn't have to spend many dreary pages setting each scene. There is a tacit agreement between writer and reader that unless historical differences are specifically detailed , things do not change between time periods. A door is a door, a street is a street, unless we add a brass knocker to the door, or cobblestones to the street. Fashion may change, technology may change but:

You must remember this 

A kiss is just a kiss, a sigh is just a sigh.

The fundamental things apply 

As time goes by.

Some things don't seem to change, like human emotions,  hearts full of passion, jealousy and hate, death and taxes. Or if they do, we turn a blind eye to them like footprints in the snow, soon to be wiped out by a new snowfall.

 This extends especially to habits of human thought. I remember reading Michener's The Source in college and thinking it was utter bosh because it portrayed prehistoric characters as using exactly the same processes as modern man. My doubts sprang from the fact that I had just read Julian Jaynes's The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind (a fascinating book), which posited that early man had a completely different consciousness. (I won't go into detail, which would require  a much longer piece to do it justice) It was a very convincing argument, though I don't know that it's true. Perhaps our minds have evolved over the centuries, even over the decades. How could Michener have presented the difference, even if he could grasp it? It would be a job of simultaneous translation from an unknown language, fumbling in the dark for a new Rosetta Stone. 

We cannot know the language of the past. We can only fish for a few clues, relying on the good will and cooperation of the reader, to admire our catch. Luckily, we're not subject to a Turing test.  No fooling.

 

AI to the rescue

 I have what I think is a natural revulsion for AI shared by many who would label
themselves progressives or forward-thinkers. It's not that I fear change, but I do fear someone else breaking into the cockpit of my mind and taking over the controls, plundering six thousand years of accumulated human wisdom before I've even had a chance to finger its prettiest baubles. Wait your turn, AI!

But maybe I've been looking at it from the wrong angle. Maybe, just maybe, AI will give us the extraordinary opportunity to explore and finally define what makes us human: what can't be copied, can't be programmed, can't be imitated. What makes us, and will forever make us, unique.

Inconceivable!

The computer long ago surpassed us in computational speed, but once it has examined a subject from every angle can it create new angles, new vantage points from which to view a problem, new combinations to the Rubik's cube which are outside the cube? Can it conceive the inconceivable, or even entertain the possibility of such mental gymnastics? (Note to self: do some reading on quantum computing. It could be the linear nature of algorithms which has disadvantaged computers.)

I'm not talking here about the soul or the mind or whatever name you give to the ghost in the machine. I don't believe in ghosts. I'm talking about the human brain and all its concordant systems which I believe encompass every cell in the body. The ghost is the machine. What puts the sapiens in homo sapiens?

I don't begin to know the answer, but it would be a really big adventure to seek it.

On a hunch (will computers ever duplicate hunches?) I would say it have something to do with our capacity, our rapacity, for novelty and surprise. It may be that the last surprise is that there is no last surprise. That sounds like a reason to get out of bed every morning. And standing in the wings might be our propensity for play. Perhaps we are not homo sapiens but homo ludens. (Which is, by the way, the title of a great book.)

(Of course, differentiation could lead to segregation--not of the races this time, but of the minds, artificial and human. Computers might take on the aspect of second class citizens. The ethics involved have already been wrestled with by science fiction writers and may soon have to be addressed by professional ethicists. Anybody but me.)

Ray Bradbury

“You grow ravenous. You run fevers. You know exhilarations. You can't sleep at
night, because your beast-creature ideas want out and turn you in your bed. It is a grand way to live.”--Ray Bradbury

Learning to Read

 I love reading.

There's nothing amazing about that. Most writers first started writing because they loved reading. What I do find strange is this: I have no memory of learning to read. You would think that such a monumental experience in my life would be a vivid memory. At least the aha! moment when arbitrary symbols suddenly acquired meaning would be etched in my mind.

I do remember first grade reading class with Dick and Jane--or rather, since I went to Catholic school, John and Jean. The Catholic version of these primary readers substituted saint's names for our main characters. I don't actually remember John and Jean, but I'm sure we had the New Cathedral Basic Readers, as they were called, because I do remember vividly that one story began with the ringing of the Angelus bells, which is the noonday bell in Catholic tradition. I had never heard of the Angelus before (and have only rarely heard of them since) and I loved the name. But while I remember reading it, I don't remember learning to read it. I don't recall ever stumbling over words or going down a sentence and finding it a dark alley. I'm sure there must have been unfamiliar words at times, but I was able to guess their meaning in the context of the sentence. (Or simply discount it, as I did with the word "weir" when reading The Wind in the Willows

for the first time.)

Could I have learned to read before the first grade? Kindergarten and pre-kindergarten were not universal in those days, and I never attended either. I do remember going to my school for the first time, months before first grade began, to take an IQ test administered by the principal, Sr. John Roberta, an amazingly sweet-natured lady. You would think I''d have to be able to read to take such a test, but not so. The test is given orally, and with pictures, and is given to kids as young as four. I'm not sure why I was required to take the test, but it may have been because I was starting school at five, not six. They wanted to be sure I could hack it.

What I remember next, which could not have actually happened, was that my mother, pleased with me, bought me some books on the way home. It couldn't have happened that way because we walked home, and nowhere on that mile-long route was there a bookstore. So they must have come shortly thereafter, by mail. I think I recall the books: Ten Apples on Top; Go, Dog, Go; One Fish, Two Fish, Red Fish, Blue Fish; and Are You My Mother? You've probably come across them. I can't swear these are the first four, because other books followed shortly thereafter.

But--did I read them or did my mother read them to me? I don't really recall. Oh, I do remember her reading aloud Are You My Mother several times, and roaring with laughter every time. But that proves nothing. Mama read to us often, her favorites, for years after we could all read perfectly well. Some of her favorites were the poem The Highwayman, the dark cautionary tale Babes in the Woods and the hilarious A Dissertation Upon Roast Pig. Oh, and The Three Billy Goats Gruff.

So--I've raked my brain and found nothing. Could I always read? Of course not. But I have no memory of learning to read, just as I have no memory of stepping into a warm bath for the first time. Maybe I'm looking for something which doesn't exist. Maybe there is no aha moment, and we (or most of us) take to reading as naturally as a fish to water, or at least to the aquarium. 

How about you? Do you remember learning to read? Was there a moment, or a process, that stands out for you? Or am I just a freak, or a forgetful old man? Clue me in.