VR and consciousness – some truly freakish ideas

The Hard Problem

For the last year I’ve been playing around with Virtual Reality, using the Oculus Rift’s DK1 then DK2, demoing it to hundreds of people all over the world. I’ve seen them scream, shake, fall and have their mind blown, almost replaced by these experiences. Almost to the last person, the reaction has been ‘that’s awesome’. It’s made me think – think hard.

The fact that it can, in seconds, replace consciousness of the world you know with another completely different world, floating around the International Space Station, walking across the bottom of the ocean, getting your head cut off on a scaffold during he French Revolution, bungee jumping, whatever…. led me to a renewed interest in consciousness. Philosophy has long seen consciousness as an intractable problem. What is it? Does it even exist? Theoretically, we seem to have been wandering around in a cul-de-sac of dead-end irreducibility. PS - if you don’t think this is a problem, think again, as this may mean the death of the human soul, a belief that keeps the three major Abrahamic religions, and others, alive.

Chalmers zombie hypothesis

Consciousness gave Descartes his anchor as the irreducible ‘I’ in I think therefore I am’, but science and solid philosophical debate about the difficulty of how separate minds and bodies interact, ate away at dualism. Some, like Daniel Dennett, now think that consciousness is a superfluous epiphenomenon. David Chalmers, a philosopher, rocked the philosophical world, when he came up with an idea that promises to break this age-old problem, the ‘hard problem’ of consciousness. That problem is why consciousness exists at all. Why do we feel anything? Why are we not zombie automatons? It is the subject of Tom Stoppard’s new play The Hard Problem, which received lukewarm reviews. Then again, theatre has never been good at deep philosophical analysis. Chalmers asks us to think of a doppelganger or equivalent of our own selves but without consciousness – just a zombie or Cartesian machine. Then poses a solution – that all networked machines are, to some degree, conscious.

Age of Algorithms

Renewed interest in the problem of consciousness has come from the recent rise of AI in our Age of Algorithms. Many are now practically engaged in replicating human abilities but the dividing line between soft and hard AI is still the notion of deep intelligence and consciousness. Not that AI is not always about ‘replicating’ human abilities and consciousness. We didn’t succeed in conquering the problem of flying by copying birds but by designing a different technology that did it better. Nevertheless, the issue of consciousness remains. In what way do sophisticated ‘thinking’ machines have consciousness? This has sparked a renewed interest in the problem. But another medium is also contributing.

VR as medium of the mind

Chalmers was moved by a childhood experience that corrected an abnormality in his left eye, where the world suddenly popped into 3D. I have the same disorder , and know exactly what he means, but it was my extended experience with VR that blew my mind. Rather than a qualitatively, improved experience of perception, my entire mind was put in another place, through involuntary ‘presence’. My reptile brain forced me into thinking I was somewhere else, doing something I wasn’t actually doing but simple experiencing - doing a real bungee jump. I can only explain it be reference to another experience in my life that was similarly revealing – taking LSD. Stephen Downes and I had an interesting talk in a bar last month on the revelation that act had on us both in terms of the arbitrariness of perception and consciousness. We both agreed that it was a life changing experience that influenced our philosophical view of the world. VR was similar, if not more controlled!

When I first tried VR with a bungee jump using a $350 VR headset and headphones, I was immediately transported to another place, could look around, saw people behind me waving, waved back, walked to the edge of a platform, looked down and it felt real. I jumped and felt myself falling. Then, hanging on the end of an elastic, I looked up and saw the water, down and saw the sky. I was upside down. But I wasn’t – it was all in my mind..

The bold move

Koch has argued that the line has changed over the years, as consciousness has been granted to dogs and higher animals, even insects or anything with a network of neurons. In a bold thought experiment, he extends this further, to include any communicating network. Couldn’t the internet, our computers, our phones – be conscious? The internet has the same number of synapse connections as about 10,000 human brains. Is it in any way conscious?

We have evidence that consciousness is related to networked activity. The obvious examples are sleep and anaesthetic states, where one can measure the actual decline in networked activity as we lose ‘consciousness’. Could it be that consciousness is simply a function of this networking and that all networked entities are, to some degree, conscious? What Chalmers, Koch and other posit, is an explanation that keeps the physics, neuroscience and philosophy in place. It is an intriguing idea stimulated by my experiments in VR.

They have their critics, such as Daniel Dennett and Patricia Churchland, who simply dismiss consciousness as an illusion. Some even think the problem is insoluble and that our brains are not equipped to solve the problem. But the issue keeps nagging away at me – very time I try VR, which is getting better and better, more ‘real’, more ‘extreme’, more ‘revelatory’.

VR and consciousness

Some experiments in VR may be instructive here. You can easily experience ‘presence’ in VR – the belief that you’re somewhere you’re not. That is commonplace. But consciousness-swap experiments show that you can experience something more – the consciousness of being someone or something else. 

There’s gender-swap experiments where you see your body and external world from a female or male perspective. There’s racial-swaps, disability-swaps, even living the life of someone else for a long period. I’ve been involved in a  social care VR programme where you become an elderly person and see the world from their perspective with blurred vision and a touch of induced memory loss. I’ve also been working on VR ideas that put you in the position of driving while under the influence of alcohol, drugs or distractions, like using your mobile.

Conclusion

We may be no more than super-evolved, networked, operating systems – literally androids. Technology, the internet, AI, philosophical analysis and neuroscience may be coming together t crack the problem of consciousness. I think VR, as a medium, will accelerate this analysis, as it creates a window on consciousness and the opportunity for experimentation that has never been possible before. Indeed, we could be on the verge of seeing consciousness as massively manipulable. I could be lifted from a depressive experience in seconds, see myself as others see me, be someone else. The only limit is the imagination of our own conscious thought to explore these new worlds and new ideas.

Will Apple be biggest watch company in the world?

Scott Galloway, of NYU Stern thinks that Apple will be the biggest watch company in the world. He may be right - they've, surprisingly sold out on release.
But a watch is no longer a watch, it’s an accessory, a piece of jewellery. It has long lost its role as a timepiece, by top-end vendors who market them as often unnaturally large and shiny, status objects. They’re not stupid these vendors. Neither are the people who research and study this stuff. They know exactly what a watch IS and what it is NOT.

Not a timepiece

Wrist watches were developed for military watches, synchronised actions, and moved to mass consumer status at the end of the First World War. But they quickly became status symbols. A watch is NOT a timepiece (that is merely a trivial piece of functionality). A watch is an ACCESSORY. It is a piece of jewellery, something that speaks to others about you. My son has an expensive watch, that shows the mechanical workings of the timepiece. He has to wind it up to make it work! He doesn’t care. It’s the look that counts. It’s unnaturally big, glitzy and looks expensive. Acoording to Scott Galloway and Geoffrey Miller, he’s saying “mate with me, I can afford this, even though it’s functionally useless”.

Binary choices

Scott Galloway of NYU Stern University studies this stuff and has some answers. (Watch this video - it's worth it).Why do young people queue line up round the block to buy Apple products? Teenagers don’t have big income but they still buy luxury goods such as phones, and watches. They want the best and the middle stuff won’t do. He thinks that consumers are over-messaged, so they take binary choices. It’s low-end or high-end. The middle is not the place to be. So we see luxury brands soar and cheap supermarkets thrive.. “Beautiful, ornate items make us feel Godlike” he says. Rich people are boring and predictable – they all aspire to and all buy the same things – the same few, high-end brands. But there’s another, bigger game in play….

Buy this – get laid

At the instinctive level, we think it makes us attractive to the other sex, says Galloway, ” these are basic and eternal human instincts – these have not gone away.” What does a watch brand say about you? Watches and phones have long been indicators of that basic instinct – procreation. The top watch brands say, “If you mate with me I’m more likely to look after your offspring than someone wearing a Swatch Watch.”

With phones, Blackberry failed because it said, “you’re a middle-manager going nowhere”.  Similarly with Nokia, which lost its early mojo. Being bought by boring Microsoft made it worse.

And it’s not just watches and phones, it’s cars and shoes. Men buy fast sports cars that can’t be legally driven at their designed speed to appear sexually attractive. Women, says Galloway, buy “ergonomically impossible shoes to solicit inbound offers form those same men”.

This is the position, elaborated by Geoffrey Miller in ‘Spend– Sex, Evolution and the Secrets of Consumerism’, who uses evolutionary psychology to explain the allure of the luxury brand. Luxury is about propagation. Miller makes a good point about all of those luxury ads in glossy mags and at airports showing all-too-good looking folk holding their wrists in surprising positions bearing a ridiculously expensive watch. He claims that these ads are not aimed at making you buy the watch. They’re aimed at the people who already have the car, bag and watch, to say ‘you’re above everyone else’. It’s not about aspiration, it’s about confirmation. Until you see the Apple Watch get that smart in advertising, it will remain a gadget.

Apple Watch as luxury brand?

Galloway, therefore, believes that Apple will be the biggest watch company in the world. Why? They’re a luxury brand, own the value chain and can redefine that market. I am not so sure. Here’s why…

1. Glasshole effect

Google Glass, according to Galloway, screams, “you will not conceive a child as no one will get near you”. I’ve tried it and you get a feeling in your gut that says “this is just wrong’. Apple’s Watch is in that territory. It may recover but after the initial lukewarm reviews and worrying pictures of geeks wearing gifts, you’ve lost momentum and it’s hard to recover.

2. Still a gadget

A technology has to transcend gadgetry. It has to be more than one-upmanship in the gadgetry game. It has to become a new medium. VR is not a gadget it’s a medium. The Apple Watch still looks like a gadget.

3. Difficult to use

Apple used to excel at - buy, open box and use products. This takes too much time to learn – witness the steep learning curve mentioned in this new York Times review. That means it will frustrate all but the technically inclined.

4. Speak to your watch?

It uses Siri as input but no one like speaking to their watch in public. Even in private, it’s a geekish stretch.

5. Rotten Apple

Apple has played the status card by launching the $18,000 gold version. This sends a bad message, that tech is not a decentralised, disintermediated democratic movement but a status brand. Apple don’t want to push this too far or the fruit will rot.

6. Mobile still king

The problem with the watch as wearable is its rival the mobile. Anything the watch can do, the mobile does better. And if you need your mobile to make your watch work, what’s the point? You’re using the same hand to use your mobile as your watch. One interferes, in terms of signals, with the other.

7. Reverse a trend

You have to convince a generation who either don’t wear a watch (as they have a mobile) or wear a watch as jewellery. Why bother? This is reversing two trends that are well embedded.

Conclusion

The classic error is to stay within the paradigm of the ‘wristwatch’. Wearables are likely to break free from the old concepts. Apple have successfully positioned themselves as a luxury brand and their stores and marketing ooze class. But this doesn’t seem right. Then again, they have sold out and a sure sign of sucess ifs the fact that fakes are already on sale in China ......

7 secrets you may not know about TED talks

What happened to TED? I liked the early buzz, learned a thing or two, then looking beyond the hype, it all started to get a bit stale. Now it would be wrong to simply decimate TED, as there is much to admire in free videos that try to focus on content rather than celebrities, on substance rather than style. Nevertheless, it is important to see it for what it is and dispel some of the misconceptions.

What is interesting is the new study of 740 people watching TED videos, with and without sound, where the ratings on charisma, intelligence, and credibility were the same for both. It seems as though style trumps substance. Your stance and body language matters as much as what you say.

1. First impressions matter

In the study by Vanessa Van Edwards, they showed one group just 7 seconds, and the other the full TED video. Interestingly, they found that the ratings for smartness, charisma and credibility matched. First impressions, that first seven seconds, really do matter.

2. You are what you wear

TED talkers who wore ‘business’ and ‘darker’ clothes scored higher than those whose dress was ‘casual’. Note the dark, business suited Mitra and Robinson. This saddens me but I'm not surprised, as the audience may be far more conservative, and subject to groupthink, than we think. Note that this does not imply that what Mitra and Robinson say is shallow or weak but it supports the idea that ratings are not all about content.

3. Show one’s hand

Successful TED talks had far more hand gestures, used to emphasise points, make the speaker seem natural, relaxed and confident. As you can see above, Mitra and Robinson score very high on these gestures.

4. Smiley faces

Smiles in TED talks result in much higher ratings for intelligence, so tell funny anecdotes, give wry smiles and you’ll boost your ratings. At least 14 seconds of smiling seems to be the threshold to cross.

5. Vocal variety

The more variety in terms of volume, tine and pitch, the better. This means telling tales, ad-libs, jokes, good pauses, changing gear. This really does matter. Monotone, scripted talks score badly.

6. Expensive & elitist

Even back in the day, attendance was pricey at $4400, now an annual $6000 membership fee. To be fair it takes money to organise, run and distribute the talks but there’s the smell of deliberately selective pricing. Like some less than classy men’s club, it is by invitation only, which means that the audience is either rich or again on someone else’s dollar. That does explain some of the fawning behaviour. When they whoop and clap, there’s a sense that they’re clapping themselves on their collective back.

7. Not THE Chris Anderson

This often surprises people but the TED Chris Anderson is not ‘the’ Chris Anderson of ‘WIRED’ and ‘The Long Tail’ fame. The TED Chris Anderson is a magazine publisher. Also, it was not his idea. That Chris Anderson did not start TED. The idea came from Richard Saul Wurman, who organised the first conference in 1984. It wasn’t until 2001 that TED was bought by the publisher Chris Anderson. In other words, it’s not run by a digital visionary but a magazine publisher.

Conclusion

TED pretends to be a contemporary open, free thinking, ‘web’ thing. In practice it’s a closed, invitation only and more than a little elitist. What is far more interesting is the findings that show that it’s all ‘fur coat and no knickers’. I like TED but what I don’t like are TED talks that over-promise through tall tales (see this critique of Mitra) or where shallow style masks substance (see this critique of Robinson). After many years, it has become apparent that some (not all) of TEDs stars become celebrities and start to believe in their own sainthood. The stars tend to be those with a good story to tell. But as we know a good tale, delivered with panache, is the tool of the snakeoil salesman. For me, in education, Sugata Mitra and Sir Ken Robinson are the two exemplars. Sugata with his utopian ideas, which are in fact mask failures, Robinson with his shallow ‘creativity’ shtick.

Sir Ken Robinson: ‘Creative’ with the truth?

Do schools kills creativity? Sir Ken Robinson (we’ve learnt to be wary in the UK of anyone whose first name is ‘Sir’) has achieved saintly status through his three TED talks, RSA animation and very many keynotes at 45k a pop, on this very subject. It is difficult to go to any educational conference without being assaulted by the accusation that ‘Creativity’ has been sacrificed on the altar of traditional education and schooling. Robinson’s main thrust is that all children are born ‘creative’ and that school knocks it out of them. I'm not so sure.

1. Not new

This is hardly new. Rousseau (my summary here) wrote an entire novel on the subject, the rarely read Emile (On Education), defining the concept of the essentially good ‘noble savage’ corrupted by civilisation and schooling. You may question the wisdom of a man who handed over all five of his children at birth to an orphanage, but the idea has endured and Robinson is just the latest in a long line of Rousseau acolytes.

Teachers may be surprised to learn that Rousseau’s concept is to largely avoid teachers and schooling until around the age of 12, even then the book is largely negative about ‘teaching’. Children should not be taught but rather learn from the natural world and through problem solving. He also puts forward a strong, if not progressive, case for women being essentially different, needing a different approach to education, from men.

Having encouraged the idea of romantic naturalism and the idea of the noble and good child, that merely needs to be nurtured in the right way through discovery learning, he paints an over-romantic picture of education as natural development. The Rousseau legacy is the idea that all of our educational ills come from the domineering effect of society and its institutional approach to educational development. If we are allowed to develop naturally, he claims, all will be well. This is an over-optimistic view of human nature and development, and although not without truth, lacks psychological depth. Emile, as Althusser claimed, now reads like a fictional utopia.

This romantic naturalism has led to a more recent form of hopeless utopianism, as espoused by the likes of Sir Ken Robinson and Sugata Mitra. Robinson, at least just talks in abstract generalities with anecdotes, Mitra is far worse, as his hole-in-the-wall projects are dangerous fictions (my critiques here), that really do undermine teaching and teachers.

2. Elusive concept

Creativity has proven to be a remarkably elusive concept, used in a wide range of senses and contexts, sometimes to describe a process, product or person. Often confused with innovation, it is a chameleon term. The word has received extra impetus in these rapidly evolving, technological times, boosted by the Silicon Valley narrative of teenage millionaires and talk of the relentless push for entrepreneurship and innovation. This dangerous fiction is our 21^st C form of romantic naturalism. It is now expressed in educational circles as the need for 21^st C skills, but beware of big, abstract nouns, being expressed as skills. ‘Creativity’ has become a cipher for almost everything and, I fear, nothing.

Attempts have been made to pin ‘creativity’ down but even these tend to be ignored in favour of a vague ‘let things rip’ idea of artistic creativity. For example, the often used ‘Standard Definition for Creativity’ invokes both originality AND effectiveness (or usefulness). In other words, originality is a necessary, but not sufficient, condition for creativity and innovation. Even this definition is open to doubt, as other factors such as judgments and decision-making come into play. In other words, dreaming up lots of uses for paperclips is not a reliable indicator, on its own, for creativity.

3. Creativity not correlated with age

Are Robinson’s anecdotes (as his talks are largely anecdotal) really anything more than the simple denial of the reality of child development? As Sawyer notes in his key text, Explaining Creativity (2012), it is easy to get sucked into the romantic notion that young children, because they come out with odd verbal statements and do things that seem off-beam, display essential creativity. In fact, it may only reflect normal child development and attempts to keep children back in that developmental process may do more harm than good. The problem with Robinson’s Rousseau assumption, that we become less creative as we get older, is that the research suggests otherwise. We seem to become more creative as our brains develop and we become more capable in terms of flexible options and better judgements. It’s no use pushing for an educational system that produces lots of idiot savants, without the ‘savant’.

4. Tests for creativity

Most people simply take the word ‘creativity’ at face value and see it as an intrinsic good. But that is not enough. Robinson mentions the “alternative uses test”, which was developed by Guilford in 1967. You’ve probably been subjected to this at some conference or condescending training course. I have and it was excruciating (the full tale told here). You’re asked to find as many uses as you can for say - a brick or paperclip, usually accompanied by some statement about being a ‘genius’ if you tip over a certain threshold number. That number, in practice, is hugely variable, but let’s not quibble.

It is clear that the famous ‘paperclip test’ is not as useful as it seems. Research shows the common confusion between quantity and quality that such tests assume. In this study 'Productivity is not enough' by Rietzschel et al. (2006), they found that quantity of ideas was negatively correlated with feasible ideas. This is interesting. In other words, this test of creativity may merely be a test of wild imagination. I’m not saying this is a bad thing but let’s not confuse it with effective, productive and sustainable innovation. Another study by Kudrowitz et al. (2012) shows that a test for ‘creativity’ was influenced by the quality of presentation rather than the quality of the ideas. In fact, idea generation in itself seems not to be the key to innovation, building on early ideas, with knowledgeable iterations, seems to work better.

5. Education sometimes needs to be non-creative

At this point I become a heretic. In many cases in education, avoiding the ‘creative’ may be beneficial. Having taught maths to teenage boys, I’m pretty confident in saying that it is a narrowing down of options you need; a clear idea that the learner feels capable, intense focus, being on task, patience and persistence. Divergent or creative thinking tends to lead to cul-de-sacs and repeated errors. In maths, it is often the elimination of intuitive thought that leads to success, as this is the commonest cause of failure. In teaching physics you may also find that much of what the uninformed mind thinks is true, is in fact false, because physics can be counter-intuitive. For example, inertia is not a force, gravity pulls objects toward earth at the same constantly accelerating rate regardless of differing masses and so on. Even in subjects that are assumed to have ‘creativity’ at their heart, such as art, music and design, learning to draw, read music and have precise mathematical and technical skills may be the key to success at this stage, not the endless promotion of creativity.

6. Useless brainstorming

Let’s also consider creative activity in adult, workplace learning. Brainstorming, it seems, was doomed to succeed. The commonest form of supposed creative thinking in the workplace is the ‘brainstorm’. I’ve attended far too many of these, often organised by quangos, government agencies or departments, to harvest innovative ideas around policy and strategy. They’re unimaginative, follow a tired old script, and are largely a huge waste of time and money.

Brainstorming was introduced to the world by Alex Osborne in 1948 through his book ‘Your Creative Power’. De Bruyckere, Kirschner & Hulsof, in Urban Myths (Learning & Education) expose its subsequent popularity, despite the fact that the research tells us it doesn;t work. Again, Sawyer comes to our rescue in Explaining Creativity’ (2012); “Decades of research have consistently shown that brainstorming in a group produces fewer ideas than if the same number of people had thought up their own ideas individually, before sharing them collectively.” Wow! That’s a damper on all those crap training sessions run with round tables, facilitators, choose a chair for each table and feedback to the middle nonsense. Here’s the bad news, it gets even worse. The research shows that the quality of generated ideas in brainstorming is worse than by using other methods. Nemeth’s study ‘The liberating role of conflict in group creativity’ (2003) shows that vigorous debate and evaluation help with creativity and innovation, not avoiding evaluation and conflict (that staple piece of advice given in brainstorms).

7. Creative with the evidence

Of course, Sir Ken Robinson himself is not afraid of being ‘creative’ with the truth. In his attempt to show that children in the US are being drugged to the eyeballs by Ritalin he shows this graph in his RSA video:

Robinson blatantly uses data selectively and edits a graph is his memorable ‘Ritalin’ image from the RSA Animation talk at 3.47.

Compare Robinson’s graph with the true source here:

Robinson’s graph has no legend and he’s recalibrated the white states to look as if there’s zero prescriptions. With this data you have to look at the source to understand that the white areas represent states that did NOT participate in the study or did not have reported prescription data. It’s a distortion, an exaggeration to help make a point that the data doesn’t really support. This is a specific lie but the main problem with Robinson’s more general propositions is that there is no evidence or data at all.

Conclusion

So often in education, shallow unsubstantiated TED talks replace the real work of researchers and those who take a more rigorous view of evidence. Sir Ken Robinson, is the prime example of this romantic theorising, Sugata Mitra the second. Darlings of the conference circuit, they make millions from talks but do untold damage when it comes to the real word and the education of our children.

Bibliography

Sawyer R.K. (2012) Explaining Creativity Oxford: Oxford University press.

De Bruyckere, Kirschner & Hulsof (2015) Urban Myths (Learning & Education) pp77-81

Rietzschel, E. F., Nijstad, B. A., & Stroebe, W., (2006) “Productivity is Not Enough: A comparison of Interactive and Nominal Groups in Idea Generation and Selection”. Journal of Experimental Social Pschology, 42, pp. 244-251.

Kudrowitz, B. & Wallace, D., (2012) “Assessing the Quality of Ideas from Prolific, Early Stage Product Ideation”. Journal of Engineering Design: Special Issue on Design Creativity, 1-20.

Nemeth C. J et al. (2003) The liberating role of conflict in group creativity. Institute for Research on Labor and Employment.