How We Learn to Love Music

Music is the first way we develop to communicate. In fact it happens so early we call this ability of understanding an inborn ability. All over the world parents that speak to their children use the same melodies. Like a rise and fall for approval. Or rising, high pitch to call attention. The words don't matter, it's all in the melodies.
But throughout life we learn and our tastes change. It would appear from the following story that in fact our love and appreciation of music is a learned trait. Give the bit below a listen, but just in case you are in a hurry I am going to sum up for you. In the beginning of the 20th century Stravinsky presented himself in Paris with a new creation: the Rite of Spring. And while the beginning had a very calm and pastoral air to it, it soon changed to develop completely new (at the time) harmonies and a tension-creating repeating background (kind of reminds me of Burzum, if you don't know, you don't even want to know...). What was the result? Did the people herald him as a genius? Nope, they started a riot. Like a regular riot with violence, the likes of which any respectable mob would start on the street, and mind you this was a cultured audience expecting a show of classical music. But, the surprise (to me) is that, just one year afterwards, Stravinsky came back to present the show and this time, with an audience warned they are in for something absolutely special, he was welcome as a hero. And in a way he was, because he challenged human nature, specifically our brain, which loves the familiar and abhors innovation. When presented with something new, like the music of Stravinsky it tries to make sense of the new noise, but eventually releases a large amount of dopamine, which could possibly explain the violent behavior of the audience (in small doses dopamine makes you happy, in large doses it makes you go crazy). This happens when the brain fails to make sense of new sounds and find the patterns. But the brain is also an amazing piece of ingenuity as with time it learns to assimilate the new and integrate it with the all the known information and turn it into something familiar.

Nowadays the music is not that surprising but I still feel it's weird. If you are very curious about the music itself there is a whole book you can read: http://publishing.cdlib.org/ucpressebooks/view?docId=ft967nb647&brand=ucpress

In case you were looking for more evidence in the same vein, and from the same source incidentally, here is another Radiolab piece.  There is a reiteration from min 23 of the idea from the bit above and then a more relatable example, with something as mundane as radio. And how going from something classic to something modern can create an unpleasant surprise. But then of course we quickly overcome it. In this case the transition from Gregorian chants to the 'modern' Bach makes a point in case (starting from 28:34).



If you don't understand what it is supposed to mean here is how a cello can be used in the modern world. I sincerely hope these will be unexpected for you.



And here you were thinking you would never like death metal :) (not that the above is to be considered that, just read on...) It just takes some repeated listens to get into, and even then it's hard (the thing I noticed about extreme metal is that it remove thoughts, so it's good if you want to focus and your mind keeps straying, in situations like learning or programming, but if you are not intellectually engaged, well I think then it just kills what remains, leaving you dumb).

I don't know about how weird-ass classical music is created but here's how you can do death metal. Opeth explain all the riffs and the construction of The Drapery Falls from their Blackwater Park album. Especially part2 is interesting about tension and creating disharmonies (See minute 10: "A lot of people say that [chord] sounds like shit. And it does")

Here is a full performance so you can pay attention to all the things he mentioned about playing live. And you probably want to hear the original too. So go buy the album. The Drapery Falls:

A moral choice: Part 3, the Entertainment

Although choices are hard we seem to be liking them a great deal. Especially in interactive mediums (games), but by themselves too. This time I'll do it a little less wordy and instead give some cool examples. Oh, and here are links to part 1 and 2.

When moral choice would be connected to movies I would immediately think of The Dark Knight. There were two interesting scenes there (sadly, that involved video editing, which you will see is not my main skill):

What will the people on the 2 boats who have to destroy each other do?

That outcome by itself warrants a future entry on optimal group decisions. And the now for less important stuff: who will Batman save? The man who could stop crime in the city or the woman he loves?

That seemed to turn out badly... and it was brilliant. But of course these situations don't let you decide, you just get to watch the outcome. However, you do have these choices in games, especially RPG's. Here is a discussion of exterminating or reprogramming (thus taking away their free will) a race of robots:

However, I reached a different conclusion: reprogram them of course. I mean they had their will already taken from them so I don't feel it's wrong, plus I think it will make Mass Effect 3 more interesting.

However this example just proves my idea that games are dumbed down nowadays. Consider the choices Fallout (and I mean the good old games, not this piece of crap 3 that gets praised nowadays) was modeled on instead:

"You go looking for an orphan’s puppy, only to find that it’s gone rabid and you have to put it down. Then when you try to explain it to the boy, he attacks you. What do you do in that situation? Fight? Run? Disable the boy somehow? That kind of moral ambiguity was the inspiration for many of Fallout’s quests."


This was said by Tim Cain about a quest from Wasteland in an interview. And here you have more. Do yourself a favor and play these games, they are the best I know of at creating a morally ambiguous world, like, you know, the one we live in. I think such a dilemma showcases a lot more than the one from Mass Effect 2, which is grand in scale but not very emotionally involving. Moreover there seem to be no shades of grey.

I am still waiting for a game to successfully implement a 2D system like the alignment in AD&D for example (did I mentioned they dumbed it down in 2008?). In Mass Effect getting Paragon or Renegade points basically doesn't change much and it is random at times anyway (see the example above, both outcomes should give you Renegade points), while in the Knights of the Old Republic games going dark-side meant you would have to be a mindless, violent brute. Their combination however would turn up interesting results. I wish for the creation of characters like the Emperor from Star Wars, who would be Lawful Evil. That would add some depth to behavioral and moral choices in games. That would be awesome!

A moral choice: Part 2, the Freedom

Last time I posed some moral questions about killing and such nasty stuff. And looked at them from lets say a practical point of view. Now let's switch to looking from the perspective of freedom. Basically this is something like the other side of Utilitarism vs Kantianism. You would be very well off reading Kant's (who is probably the greatest philosopher, IMHO) books. And you will see that he is highly practical too, just smart about it.

We will be revising the dilemmas from the first part in this new light.

So let's start off with the first question: would you kill the guy on the tracks? Remember the discussion about guilt? and conscience? Well, Kant thinks that listening to our conscience is the only means of being free. It is the most intimate part of ourselves giving us advice on how we should behave. How can we even begin to imagine that if we do anything else than listen to ourselves we are really free? Here's a quote from Heinlein that might help you in your struggles:

I am free, no matter what rules surround me. If I find them tolerable, I tolerate them; if I find them too obnoxious, I break them. I am free because I know that I alone am morally responsible for everything I do.

Then what about the uneasy part? Why do we usually associate conscience with a negative sentiment? With a preacher-like figure making reproaches instead of a helpful advisor? Well because we are not perfect and we are ashamed of it. But of course this implies we do have an image of our perfect self, and we should do everything we can to fulfill that image of ourselves. Whenever there is something to decide a good advice would be to ask yourself: What would Jesus the perfect me do?

Remember the other guy from last time? The fat guy you have to push? Of course it is immoral to push the guy. The moral problem with killing him being that the fat guy was not involved. He only gets involved if you push him, meaning you take away his freedom. People should not be used as means to an end. Did you see a flaw in this argument? I'll tell you my take on it anyway. How does this differ from the other guy? the one who is already on the tracks? He is not involved and I would guess he sure as hell doesn't want to die. The answer is: you are not in his shoes. Think about it for a moment, you cannot switch places with the guy on the tracks, but you could switch places with the fat guy. If it is moral for you to push the fat guy to save 5 people, it would be just as moral for the fat guy to push you. Frankly, your chances are pretty slim compared to the fat guy :P

And that is a highly condensed but pretty usable lesson on Kantian morality: A thing is moral if you would want it to become an universal law. Have fun with it, you just won the gold ticket of being a better person. Well unless you have inhuman views like killing all the Jews (and there you have what's wrong with the answer to the Hitler question).

But are we free to choose? or are we conditioned by our biology and surroundings?
We, generally, seem to be tricked. Here's Dan Ariely explaining it with a couple of amusing examples:

Did you like the metaphor about illusions? It looks like scientists like it a lot. I stumble upon it time and time again. Here are some more examples. Ok, so this guy likes illusions too, but he did something even more interesting. He made an experiment that tests people's willing. He measured brainwaves while instructing people to wiggle their fingers at any given time. You would expect first to see an impulse of willing to do the action and then see the waves that actually carry out the action. Actually this looks more like:

 To hear the interview about wiggling go to the last part (about min 15) of this:



Their results says that our conscious will is just a rationalization. Think that this takes away your free will? Maybe. But is it bad? Well, freedom implies making choices and if you need reminding about how terrified we are about decisions scroll a little bit up and watch Dan Ariely talking about doctors giving people a hip replacement. I'll elaborate about making decisions and if that's good or bad in some future installment I haven't planned out yet. If you are confident about making decisions, go back and read the books referenced in the previous post. Freedom is often an illusion, not always having freedom could be a blessing. And I leave you with another insightful Heinlein quote:

You can have peace. Or you can have freedom. Don't ever count on having both at once.

A moral choice: Part 1, the Science

What got me going this time is a debate about what is right and what is wrong. And how people make these decisions. It's from this Radiolab episode:

It has an interesting and not so interesting part. The interesting parts are the ones dealing with this guy's research, which luckily is summarized on his homepage. I'll just go ahead and copy/paste the first problem:

A runaway trolley is hurtling down the tracks toward five people who will be killed if it proceeds on its present course. You can save these five people by diverting the trolley onto a different set of tracks, one that has only one person on it, but if you do this that person will be killed. Do you turn the trolley and thus prevent five deaths at the cost of one?  Once again, the trolley is headed for five people. You are standing next to a large man on a footbridge spanning the tracks. The only way to save the five people is to push this man off the footbridge and into the path of the trolley.  Do you push the fat man?

What struck me as odd is that there seems to be a consensus. Something like 90% of people answered Yes to the first and No to the second. If you did too, than congratulations you fit in. If not you are a monster and should be put to death. Well not exactly, but you get the point. I have to admit I was confused at both questions, because you do not have enough information: the life of that one man can be infinitely more worth than those of the 5 put together, but who are you to judge that? Anyway, adding such information I guess says more about the one answering the question...

What still leaves me confused is that being right by being consistent, a thing which is believed we do subconsciously, is socially unacceptable. I felt that asking the first question right before asking the second would condition people to realize that the two cases are the same and thus make them give the same answer in order to keep consistency (see the Influence book). Obviously I was wrong. By being right I mean of course doing the rational thing, calculating and killing the 1 to save the 5. That is after all what separates us from animals, right? Our rationality... and we will see what role it plays in the choices that we make (for an alternative take a look at part 2: Freedom). But first let's look at the second dilemma and our options. Here it is:

It's war time, and you are hiding in a basement with several other people.  The enemy soldiers are outside.  Your baby starts to cry loudly, and if nothing is done the soldiers will find you and kill you, your baby, and everyone else in the basement.  The only way to prevent this from happening is to cover your baby's mouth, but if you do this the baby will smother to death.  Do you kill your own baby?

A rational answer (so rational it becomes inhuman) would be: sure, you could always make more; but I am pretty sure I couldn't be able to, already at theoretical level, not to mention the emotional response triggered by holding the little one in your hands. And you should be aware that the emotional response is much stronger than you predict the emotional response to be (see the Predictably Irrational book). On the other hand the cynical point of view is: what do you care if the whole village dies? when you weigh it against your child, there are enough people in the world anyway... 

I don't like these lose, lose questions but apparently we can't help but find them fascinating. The child scene was analyzed in the last episode of M.A.S.H. Very powerful moment (for more on the use of moral choices in media stay tuned for part 3: Entertainment).

Now lets look a bit more at what they did here: What if it was someone else's baby? Specifically, let's take a look at this popular quiz, often found told as a joke (don't know why, maybe people think this is dark humor):

If you knew a woman who was pregnant, and she had 8 kids already, three who were deaf, two who were blind, one mentally retarded, and she had syphilis; would you recommend that she have an abortion?

If you answered yes you just killed Beethoven. (Ignore the fact that this is totally bullshit, meaning the facts are not right, the idea is that you might have killed Beethoven. I think the point here is that it is not for you to decide)

This question often goes together with another:

It is time to elect the world leader, and your vote counts. Here are the facts about the three leading candidates:

• Candidate A associates with crooked politicians, and consults with astrologists. He's had two mistresses. He also chain smokes and drinks 8 to 10 martinis a day.
• Candidate B was kicked out of office twice, sleeps until noon, used opium in college and drinks a quart of whisky every evening.
• Candidate C is a decorated war hero. He's a vegetarian, doesn't smoke, drinks an occasional beer and hasn't had any extramarital affairs.

Which of these candidates would be your choice?

Now for the revealing: Candidate A is Franklin Roosevelt, Candidate B is Winston Churchill, and Candidate C is Adolph Hitler. Anyway, I would say this only proves one thing: Hitler is the man people really want, why do people say he was evil? And you get what you deserve. Or was it more like: careful what you wish... ?

It's time to be wrapping up, don't you think? Instead of a conclusion we will be looking at the most important question of all: how do we decide? What are our moral choices based on? Is it society, upbringing etc or is it something deeper? something that is in our nature... maybe in our genes or in the place we usually go to look for answers: the brain.

Remember Joshua Green? Here's what he found: different parts of the brain light up when we do rational choices, compared to those that light up when something more instinctive is involved. For the first question, about 1 guy on the rails vs 5, only the rational parts fire up. However, when the fat guy is concerned, we "know" that it is wrong to push to kill one of our own kind, so the other parts light up more intensely. It is basically a shouting match between different parts of yourself. But what happens in the case of the baby, where they are almost evenly matched? Scientific answer: you "exhibit increased activity in anterior regions of the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex" (or something like that, just listen to it on the Radiolab episode at the top, it's clearer). You know, the part of the brain that is more developed in humans. This gives it a nudge toward the rational side.

The distinctly human nature manifesting itself is the one making us kill our own child. And here I was thinking that the highest expression of human nature is a cat giving its life to protect its young.

PS. I'm sure this cat stuff is paraphrasing some famous quote. And I thought it was from Heinlein, but it seems I can't quite trace it.

A Quiet Place

I thought to myself: I need to start writing. Hence this little thing here, called a blog.
It's funny actually how the idea came to me. I was discussing with my friends how we should be starting an anti-blogger movement to counteract the annoying little voices twittering in our heads the whole day. But that idea seems rather useless, without even considering the petty, sad side of it. So if you can't beat'em, join'em right? So stand back cause here comes the noise, a mash of everything you may find on this blog, hope you enjoy.

So do I think I have something better to say? You're damn right about that. I mean it would be hard not to. Like with everything else 90% of writing is crap. Well then surely this is a good idea. Ummm, maybe not so. The other factor which got me to writing is this little bit of insight: this would just mean creating more noise.
As I see it the problem with noise can be one of two things:

1. You stop listening. Which is what I would expect most people to do
2. You start to like it... you know, like the music on MTV or that you hear at the radio or in clubs

Now the biggest problem is to get people to realize that they have a problem. If people don't know they have a problem they're not going to solve it. So why throw more clutter to make clutter go away? Well, because I hope to figure out on the way the means to get people to solve their problem.
Go ahead, watch this video in which Seth Godin talks about clutter:



Now, don't you feel just a tiny bit smarter for having watched that? Doesn't it get you to thinking?
So what I'll be trying to accomplish here is to stimulate thinking, by following Seth's receipe. Get people to start talking about something, give them something worth talking about (more on TED at some later time). The thing is I am trying to go about this from a different angle. Your average Joe Blogger writes about day to day stuff, random thoughts, starts a blogroll where he puts a link to his friends so that his friends put a link to him, so that they can Hi five! each other... well isn't that swell? I on the other hand will be starting by writing for myself, because thoughts encourage other thoughts to form. The idea is to link previously unrelated stuff in your mind, simple thoughts to form ideas, and in the end maybe even a way of looking at life (and I mean a philosophical system, and here you thought that was some complicated shit...).

The thing is we call these connections THINKING. I was wondering why my dog is so stupid, why can't he close the door behind him? I mean he surely knows the concept of door (he opens them when he can and he calls for us to let him out by looking out the door) and he knows about cold too, that's the reason he wanted to get inside in the first place. The problem is he can't connect the two. He literally cannot. Just as mice cannot form the idea left of the blue wall, although they know what blue is and what a wall is, strange thing is humans can't either until they are about 6. I got this revelation about my dog from a pretty cool show which I will be generous enough to share with you:



The point that the people talking there are making is that thoughts first start out not in the mind, but in the channel, in speech. Then you get to talking to yourself, and finally to talking to yourself silently. While social media in general tends to stop at the first, let's try to go a bit further. So if you want to join me on this journey go ahead, I am going to go sit in a corner quietly.

Actually, I was lying. I'll try to do some persuasion work here too. What I suggest is that we learn more. Now if the thought of MORE INFORMATION scares you as much as it does me, remember we are not the first to have these problems. They are just normal manifestations of a sort of revolution. Take the printing press, it scared and annoyed the hell out of the brightest people of that age.
But what can you do? The world is evolving. Due to printing we evolved to a society of readers, now we are evolving to a society of writers (thought it may take a shorter time than a few centuries). Also that may not be exactly what we should be doing.
I don't expect you to buy the book (although if you do, it would be nice if you followed this link so that in couple of years I can buy myself a kebab), I just think these links from amazon are pretty cool :) but you should read the summary from the link above, just for the idea of evolution of societies from an information point of view.
What I am upset about is that while to me blogging seems to be "real writing" it is a part of social media instead. And that makes me shudder. Really? social media?

I call bullshit.

PS. I promise I will not subject you to random jumps of thought anymore. At least, to the best of my ability, I will try.