This is a pretty interesting article on how the brain processes time and whether time really “slows down” during dangerous events: Edge: Brain Time

This is going to lead directly to skynet: Halted ’03 Iraq Plan Illustrates U.S. Fear of Cyberwar Risk. As the military starts writing these algorithms to try to attack other’s computer networks and infiltrate their security, and then start working on ones to defend against such attacks, and then algorithms to outsmart the defensive ones…. this could easily lead to skynet. We could have single algorithms/agents in charge of the military infrastructure and able to adapt and learn. Hopefully John Connor is out there somewhere…

There’s an interesting article in the latest edge on free will and consciousness. Basically confirming what I already believed after reading lots of Dennett and others’ books on the mind. Most of our decision making occurs in the subconscious. Our conscious self either only does the difficult decisions, or is only told after the fact so that we feel that ‘we’ made the decision. This doesn’t mean we don’t have free will: our subconscious decisions are still made based on who we are, our genes, our lives, how we grew up, etc. And Bargh raises another interesting point, do we really know who we are if our decisions are made by our subconscious and not our conscious selves as we believe? Here are some highlights from the article:

All organisms are purposive and have reasons for what they do. We certainly have that of course. So it’s not that will doesn’t exist; it’s that the free part is problematic — a lot of people see free will and say, “Well, you’re showing there’s no free will; therefore, people have no intentions or will.” No.

There is will, and will can be shaped by a host of factors: your genetic background, your early experience with your home and your family, your caretakers, you playmates, cultural influences bombarding us through the media and through socializing with your peers (and, thus what they like and what they think and what they believe from their parents). All this is being soaked up like a sponge by little kids.

…

But there is another question that is more pragmatic and I think it’s a wonderful question, “If all these things are going on without my knowledge, then I don’t really know why I’m doing what I’m doing, and I don’t really know myself that well apparently. So how can I make the right decisions or make the right choices for myself when all these biases are throwing my decisions all over the place?”

Microsoft recently demoed Project Natal at E3. It looks really impressive. Here’s a video. And here’s part of an article from Wired:

Later, Microsoft producer Kudo Tsunoda, who’d demoed this game to us, showed us what was going on “behind the scenes.” He brought up an image that showed what Natal’s two cameras could see. The standard RGB camera in the unit, he says, was watching the positions of our skeletons. Sure enough, crisp solid stick-figures appeared on screen, representing me and Baker. As we moved, the stick figures on screen matched our movements. It wasn’t picking up our individual finger movements, but it could tell when we bent our wrists, picked up our legs, tilted our heads, etc., not to mention tracking us as we moved around the room.

Meanwhile, an infrared camera was tracking our distance away from the television. As we moved forward, our outlines turned red, as we moved back they shimmered blue. By combining both of these sets of data, Natal knows exactly where you are and what you’re doing. And it knows when I step behind Baker, or if he walks in back of me, and it still tracks, separately, the parts of both of us that it can see.

Seriously, the motion capture we used at the hospital required you to wear a bunch of reflective balls, used 12 cameras placed around the room, needed constant calibration, and still would mess up, and miss markers sometimes. If this thing really works this well, it’s really impressive. I really want to see it in a room with lots of people and varying lighting conditions.

David Brooks had a really interesting op-ed in the New York Times on Monday entitled The End of Philosophy. In it, he basically describes how the current view of psychologists, cognitive neuroscientists and philosophers is that our moral judgments are a snap evaluation occurring in the brain; our explanation of them come later and are not the true underpinnings of them. He then goes on to look at the evolutionary process that leads to this emotional morality: namely the need for humans to learn to cooperate in families and groups to survive.

I found the following particularly interesting:

Moral judgments are like that. They are rapid intuitive decisions and involve the emotion-processing parts of the brain. Most of us make snap moral judgments about what feels fair or not, or what feels good or not. We start doing this when we are babies, before we have language. And even as adults, we often can’t explain to ourselves why something feels wrong.

In other words, reasoning comes later and is often guided by the emotions that preceded it. Or as Jonathan Haidt of the University of Virginia memorably wrote, “The emotions are, in fact, in charge of the temple of morality, and … moral reasoning is really just a servant masquerading as a high priest.”

From everything I’ve read and studied on consciousness, this is largely the way it works as well. Our brain makes some decision, our consciousness is informed after the fact, and a story is constructed so we can believe that we “made” the decision, that we consciously thought it out and reasoned about it.

Some of these “rapid intuitive decisions” that “involve the emotion-processing parts of the brain” really confuse me. Whenever I have some strong emotions, I often struggle to find any reason to them. It’s so difficult to reconcile rational thought with emotional intuitive decisions. But perhaps that makes the emotional intuitive decisions more exciting.

This is a great article by Michael Lewis on the current financial crisis that my friend sent me.  It has a great analysis of what’s going on told from the point of view of someone who saw it coming. It’s long, but I’d highly recommend reading the whole thing. In very very short form: the people at the financial companies at the center of this crisis had no motivation to actually understand what they were doing as long as the money kept coming in, since the shareholders (and now, apparently, the US government) were the ones taking on the actual financial risk. None of the people at these companies cared or understood what they were doing.

Tomorrow is election day!!!!  I’m going to follow the lead of some other blogs and make my predictions. I’m predicting Obama will win the election and become the next President of the United States!

Let’s take a look at the states and try to predict who will win which.  According to the New York Times, there are 14 solid Obama states totaling 196 electoral votes and 17 solid McCain states totaling 137 electoral votes. There are then 10 states (Washington, Nevada, Colorado, New Mexico, Minnesota, Iowa, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Virginia, New Hampshire) leaning towards Obama worth 95 electoral votes. There are 4 states (Montana, North Dakota, West Virginia, and Georgia) leaning towards McCain, worth 26 electoral votes. Finally, there are 5 states (Florida, Ohio, North Carolia, Missouri, and Indiana) that are toss-ups, worth 84 electoral votes. So the election could go anywhere from McCain winning all the leaning and tossup states and winning the election with 342 electoral votes, to Obama winning all the leaning and tossup states and winning the election with 401 electoral votes.  If the leaners go their ways and Obama takes the tossups, he wins with 375 electoral votes, if McCain gets the tossups in this case, Obama still wins, but with 291 electoral votes.

I’m going to predict that Obama wins all of the leaning Obama states: Washington, Nevada, Colorado, New Mexico, Minnesota, Iowa, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Virginia, and New Hampshire.  Out of the toss-up states, I’ll predict that Obama takes Florida, Ohio, Missouri, and North Carolina, while McCain wins Indiana. Finally, I’ll predict that McCain takes Georgia, West Virginia, and Montana, while Obama takes North Dakota.  This would mean that Obama wins the election with 367 electoral votes.  I’ll also guess that Obama gets 54% of the popular vote, which would be the most of any President in ages.

In the Senate, the Democrats currently hold a 51 to 49 advantage (if you include Lieberman). There are 15 Senate races that are considered to be competitive, of these, 14 are Republican seats and one is a Democratic incumbent. I’m going to guess that the Democrats will win in Virginia, Colorado, New Mexico, Alaska, New Hampshire, North Carolina, and Oregon and hold their seat in Louisiana.  The really close races are in Minnesota, Georgia, and Kentucky.  The Democrats have a good shot in Minnesota and Georgia, but I’m going to stick with the previous 7, and say they end up with 58 seats in the Senate.

In the House, the Democrats currently hold 235 seats to the Republicans 199. I haven’t really looked at these races at all, I’ll predict that the Dems will pick up 24 seats to go to 249.

So there it is.  A historic election (very long, the most money, the first to take real use of the internet, the first to be on YouTube, a financial crisis, two wars, and a chance to elect the oldest President or the first African American President) all comes down to tomorrow.  Crazy.

I’ve really been hoping that this election is going to move the country leftward. Bush and the Republicans have been in control of the country and I think you couldn’t get a clearer demonstration of the failures of their policies. From Iraq to the economic meltdown, it’s been nothing but disasterous. Why would you think that tax cuts for the rich and de-regulation of everything would be a good idea in the first place? But I digress, hopefully with this demonstration that these are bad ideas, combined with their extra divisive politics this year, we’ll see a change. If the Democrats win big next week, then they’ll have a chance to change the policies of the country and show that in comparison to what we currently have. Although it will take a long time to come out of this economic mess. One of the most drastic movements I’ve seen was Alan Greenspan’s statements in Congress last week. He essentially said his ideology was wrong and his policies had failed:

“Do you feel that your ideology pushed you to make decisions that you wish you had not made?”

Mr. Greenspan conceded: “Yes, I’ve found a flaw. I don’t know how significant or permanent it is. But I’ve been very distressed by that fact.”

“I was shocked because I’d been going for 40 years or more with very considerable evidence that it was working exceptionally well.'’ Greenspan added he was “partially'’ wrong for opposing the regulation of derivatives.

“I made a mistake in presuming that the self-interests of organizations, specifically banks and others, were such as that they were best capable of protecting their own shareholders and their equity in the firms.”

I found this article about John McCain’s campaign to be very interesting. It starts out discussing a meeting they had about how to respond to the financial crisis. What’s interesting is that his campaign’s emphasis appears to be on what will be best for his political prospects and his election, instead of what’s best for the country. It’s the start of a huge financial crisis, the country needs leadership and a good solution, and McCain, whose campaign slogan is ‘Country First’, is trying to make the decision that will best help his campaign instead of his country. Here’s part of the beginning of the article:

The meeting was to focus on how McCain should respond to the crisis — but also, as one participant later told me, “to try to see this as a big-picture, leadership thing.”

As this participant recalled: “We presented McCain with three options. Continue offering principles from afar. A middle ground of engaging while still campaigning. Then the third option, of going all in. The consensus was that we could stay out or go in — but that if we’re going in, we should go in all the way. So the thinking was, do you man up and try to affect the outcome, or do you hold it at arm’s length? And no, it was not an easy call.”

Discussion carried on into the afternoon at the Morgan Library and Museum as McCain prepared for the first presidential debate. Schmidt pushed for going all in: suspending the campaign, recommending that the first debate be postponed, parachuting into Washington and forging a legislative solution to the financial crisis for which McCain could then claim credit. Exactly how McCain could convincingly play a sober bipartisan problem-solver after spending the previous few weeks garbed as a populist truth teller was anything but clear. But Schmidt and others convinced McCain that it was worth the gamble.

Schmidt in particular was a believer in these kinds of defining moments.

I just wanted to re-iterate and clarify my reasons why I believe Obama should be the next President of the United States (I already wrote about it during the the primary). Here are my reasons:

Policies

I agree wholeheartedly with Obama’s stance on the issues and his policy proposals. Getting out of the financial crisis is going to require economic help for the middle class (tax cuts), and government spending to create new jobs. We need to invest in alternative energy, not just to reduce dependence on foreign oil, but to create new American jobs and make America a leader in this industry. We need to invest in education and innovation so the American economy is strong for generations to come. And we need to end the war in Iraq, so we can focus on our real enemies hiding in the caves of Afghanistan and Pakistan.

Judgement

Barack Obama’s judgement is one of the key reasons I support him for President. He listens to people from both sides of the debate and tries to collect as much information as possible. He is actually curious about how things work, unlike our current President. In a recent article about his economic policies, one Professor said Obama was more interested in research than any other political candidate he had talked to. It’s clear that Obama is interested in making the best, well-informed decisions possible, rather than just towing the party line or doing what is best for re-election. To have a President that is actually curious again, one who wants to understand how the economy works, will go a long way towards having one that understands how it can be fixed as well.

I thought this quote from Michael Cohen of the New York Times to be pretty interesting: “One gets the sense that during the last 18 months, Mr. Obama has thought long and hard about the direction he wants to take the country and the policy initiatives that would form the basis of an Obama administration. Mr. McCain has not; a view that I would imagine even the most hardcore G.O.P. partisans would have a hard time disputing.”

Understanding

Obama understands that the people on both sides of the debates have America’s interests at heart. They just disagree about how to solve the issues at hand. This is the opposite of what McCain and his supporters have been doing lately. Instead of talking about their disagreements on the issues, they have been accusing Obama of being anti-American or a terrorist. I think its completely ridiculous to question Obama’s motives or suggest this is all fake so he can become President and destroy the country. What an absurd way to run your campaign.

Obama knows that he needs to be President for everyone, not just those who agree with him. He has talked about not wanting to be a 50+1 President (with the support of 50% of the electorate plus one), but a Preisdent for everyone. He understands people’s concerns and I believe he will strive to do whats best for everyone and listen to everyone’s ideas.

Nation over Politics

Barack Obama understands how broken Washington is. To face any of the crises we’re at today, we need Washington to work for us. Recently its been too much partisan bickering to accomplish anything. Instead of trying to do whats right for our country, too many of our politicians are worried about what will get them re-elected, what will get their party more seats, and what will make the other party look bad. Obama will hopefully change some of this in Washington, by being pragmatic and listening to both sides. It has even been said that he will pursue his agenda of re-building the nation, even at risk of being a single-term President. While McCain’s campaign slogan is “Country First”, he seems to be putting himself first instead. He selected a VP candidate that is totally unqualified to be President, because he thought it would help him politically, while Obama selected a candidate based on who he thought would help him govern the most.

Summary

I think Obama should be President because he is right on the issues of our time and has the judgement to face any new events that appear. His intelligence, curiosity, and understanding give me confidence that he will make the right decisions on any crisis that arises.