Expansionism and the Arts

In 476AD, the world saw the end of the Western Roman Empire.  Nearly a thousand years later, its successor, the Byzantine Empire, likewise collapsed.  Other noteworthy empires–the British and the Ottoman, for example–fell prey to economic outmaneuvering and the ravages of world wars.  Yet what caused the fall of Rome? In comparing the flourishing peace of Pax Romana to the inwards crumble of Rome or the violent collapse of the Byzantines, one clear factor in common was the overexpansion of the empire.  That which too readily ate up its neighbors was in turn too readily robbed of the same assets.  The British Empire had learned this lesson; when the time came in the early twentieth century to de-colonize, they grudgingly yielded to the necessity of downsizing their reach, and thusly preserved what properties they could safely retain.

What does this have to do with anything? Well, I posit the idea that Art is an empire.  Likewise, one can label Science to be the same; however, Art is unique in its freedom to expand as it wishes. Aesthetics are highly subjective, and if one person creates something that they believe to be artistic, there is little room for others to disagree–at least, there will be no changing the opinion of the artist.   Such was seen in the last lecture on the subject of the GFP Bunny; despite many protests to the contrary, Mr. Shanken (sorry if I got the name wrong) was steadfast in his definition of the subject as art. If we were to go back to the Roman model one might connect this phenomenon to the peripheral communities who did not identify themselves as Roman, but were subsumed in the name of the Empire despite this minor detail. This may be taking the analogy a bit too far, but it brings up the point originally intended: Art may be expanding its borders at too fast a rate.

Fortunately there is no true counter-Empire to that of the Arts; were Art to theoretically fall, the void of Aesthetics could only be filled by the very same Art; one might say its immortality is by virtue of its definition.  However, the other ailments of  imperial collapse are not so easily avoided. That is, were there a point at which Art had expanded its boundaries to include too vast a reach of subjects, it could fall victim to (1) lack of governmental support, i.e. a decrease in recognition from the people (which we can already see in a variety of the more obscure or less accessible forms of art); (2) attack from external forces, i.e. a rejection of the Arts by a casual observer, particularly as a result of inaccessible artwork; (3) underpopulation, i.e. a lack of artists, too thinly distributed over so many sects; (4) civil rebellion, i.e. protest within the artistic community; and many more. To be sure, all of these problems occur not only in overgrown empires, but in any State; however, expansionism past maintainable capacity is a catalyst for their geometric growth.

Thus I protest not the liberty of artists to constantly push the boundaries of Art, but instead the propriety of doing so. Although Art clearly thrives on the advantageous aspects of innovative growth, it is not impervious to the less advantageous side effects of doing so. My concern is simply that, while Art has not befallen any great calamity due to its expansionism, it might be on the brink of doing so; or, if there is no sudden cliff to fall off of, we may be on the top of a very long downwards slope, a gradual degradation that accelerates as time goes by.  The empirical evidence goes against me; Art has been expanding since it was first conceived. However, its growth is  exponential, and with every step made in other fields of innovation, such as science, multiple new venues of artistic expression open. I cannot help but worry that we are inevitably heading towards an Artistic carrying capacity–if not an imperial collapse, a Malthusian one.

Since I would be far too long-winded if I were to discuss Malthus, I’ll put up links about him instead.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malthus

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malthusian_catastrophe

http://www.gutenberg.org/catalog/world/readfile?fk_files=6366&pageno=8

AI: Artificial __________?

Amidst the horror-filled dystopian predictions of robots turning against humans, and optimistic dreams of living in harmony with android friends, the term “artificial intelligence” gets thrown around approximately once every three sentences. However, for most of us, our conception of what this actually entails is somewhat flawed.

To begin with, intellect is generally understood as something’s capacity to learn, reason, and understand based on factual information.  Learning has already been conquered; computers have long been able to store and recite information fed in from external sources. Reasoning has likewise been tamed, on a basic level at least; the simplest “IF/THEN/ELSE” statement provides for a simple conclusion based on given factual premises. Understanding is also falling under manmade dominion; the Kansei robot, for example, “reads” facial expressions and “understands” the emotions they convey.  “Intelligence” per se is not, therefore, referring to actual intelligence, but rather to a higher degree of conscience or sentience.

This is where we tend to overreach.  Humankind has long thought itself far superior to other animals based on our advanced mental capacity.   It seems more reasonable to me for development of robot “minds” to focus first on autonomy in baser forms; that is, re-focus our obsession from Artificial Intelligence to Artificial Instinct.  The ability to sense, perceive, and develop reaction to anything around them, even things outside their pre-programmed schematic, is that vital step between machines and those “robots” of the future.

On a somewhat tangential point, the ethical question would spring up around here somewhere; at the point where humans are creating autonomous individuals.  More interestingly, and perhaps more importantly, would be the dilemma when we are actually on the cusp of creating actual sentience.  Sure, these robots wouldn’t be “alive” by a scientific definition; yet if they could act on their own, think on their own, and behave for all intents and purposes like a living organism, then I don’t think ethics should be concerned about the physical makeup of its robotic innards.  After all, the creation of certain types of robots would be technological eugenics; programming a robot is tampering with or creating its genetic code. In a time where stem cell research is so hotly debated, I find it interesting how the issue of robotic life is just about ignored.

Another interesting subject (sorry for jumping around) is what was brought up during discussion in regards to art and robots: is it art if it’s made by a machine?   Before diving into this question, I’d like to say that, in my opinion, art and meaning exist in separate realms. A piece of art can have a particular meaning; a person can draw meaning out of art as well. Yet the absence of meaning doesn’t prohibit a piece from being artistic, if it is still aesthetically pleasing.  The “perfect man” image, for example (http://calvin.st-andrews.ac.uk/external_relations/news_article.cfm?reference=409), was computer-generated. Yet I can find artistic merit.  Thus to return to the original question, I would say that yes, art created by robots is still art. However, I don’t think robots can confer a meaning in the art they create. It can be programmed to do something a particular way; however, any meaning is coming from the person programming, not the robot itself.  And here we come full circle in my attempt to make this entry less scatterbrained: in my opinion, a robot will not be able to create something of its own, with a meaning or message that came not from a programmer but itself, until it has autonomy and sentience.

Now here’s some links to interesting robot stuff:

http://www.livescience.com/technology/071012-robot-marriage.html

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/6200005.stm

http://gizmodo.com/gadgets/robots/remote-control-humans-193817.php

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/9516845/

What’s in a Number?

“So… what’s your major?”

“Math.”

“…Oh.”

‘Oh’ is pretty much all I say; I think it would be rude of me to point and laugh and yell, “WHY STUDY SOMETHING THAT DOESN’T EVEN EXIST!?” Yet for all the people studying it, for all the uses we’ve found for it, and all the faith we placed it in, the concept of mathematics is based on a suspiciously shaky foundation: numbers.

Numbers are so normal, so ordinary, so ingrained that nobody thinks to question their existence; and yet I wonder: do numbers exist? When you count three dogs, the dogs exist and the number is an adjective. When you write ’3′ the numeral exists there on your paper. But what of the actual number three? Two? One? There is no such thing as a one.

Yet here people would protest that it exists as a concept; it may not be tangible, but then, what ideas are? Clearly math cannot be an arbitrary set of rules and principles, else it wouldn’t be so universal. So it exists in our minds. Descartes’s famous ‘cogito ergo sum’ seems appropriate;we think it, therefore it exists. But what if there was no human life left to think numbers into existence?

Many thinkers, more well-known, qualified, and intelligent than myself, have pondered the existence of numbers without coming to a satisfactoy conclusion. To me this crisis of identity, although worrisome to some of us who think too hard. stands as a testament to the power of the human consciousness. Mathematics as a self-existent field of study is uniquely manmade, of equal parts necessity and innovation. By virtue of its basis in nothing but itself, it intrinsically gains the freedom of being bound only by itself.

And therein I find at least one fiber connecting the realms of math and art. Art is aesthetics; aesthetics are independently defined, with no laws to govern right from wrong. While it is true the attractiveness is partially biological–we seek traits in mates that are advantageous, for example–that is simply one schematic of appraisal. Just as geometry can break free of its Euclidean roots, the evolution of artistic appreciation beyond the ‘norm’ is the essence of the similarity between art and math.

This perhaps is why I don’t regard math as a ‘regular’ science. The sciences concern themselves with sets of rules and laws to govern the world. For those worlds that exist, this creates a natural limitation. For the world of numbers, imaginary as they are, there is no such barrier. This places mathematics into a sort of intersectional limbo, with both roots and branches so far-reaching, its ubiquity transcends that of any other language. It is clearly present in the other realms of science; field theory, for example, is nearly purely mathematical. Equally is it present in the artistic world, where even aesthetics will recognize the significance of phi.

Who needs a third culture when you have math?

Here’s some people who are a lot smarter than me discussing math. It’s really quite interesting:

http://www.blackwell-synergy.com/doi/pdf/10.1111/1467-9213.00079

http://www.math.hawaii.edu/~lee/exist.html

http://platosheaven.blogspot.com/2005/12/do-numbers-exist.html

Divergent Cultures

A chicken is not a head of lettuce. One is an animal while the other a plant. One’s cells are turgid while the other’s lyse. One squawks and lays eggs while the other vegetates. Clearly, the two are, for practical purposes, completely separate. It would be strange, then, to hear that some people could believe the two to be fundamentally the same. How can one compromise the glaring differences to arrive at this conclusion?

This is a chicken.

This is a head of lettuce.

As I subscribe to the theory of evolution, in one form or another, I can accept that chicken and lettuce could share a common ancestral pool; perhaps one set of eukaryotes provided the initial sets of DNA that eventually developed into the organisms we have today, including both chicken and lettuce. Yet in the same way we regard our own species as different from the rest of animalkind, we likewise don’t treat animals in the same fashion as vegetables—or, to consider earlier evolutionary branches, bacteria and other protists. In scientific research, the treatment of lab animals and human patients are incomparable; I’ve never heard of someone raising domesticated beets as pets; and I’m fairly certain the international community would hold even less respect for the Universal Declaration of Amoebic Rights than they do the rights of other humans. It seems therefore that the origin of species, while illustrating a deeply buried common thread among the living world, seems to have little to do with the accepted schematic of ‘what’s what’ on planet Earth.

This is not to say that the two cannot live in harmony, even collaborating once in a while to produce something that neither could do alone. Yet as much as we all enjoy a Caesar salad, as far as I have heard, we have yet to successfully interbreed plant and animal to create a third, uniquely delicious walking salad. In the culinary world, various ingredients can and should be combined, and it is very rare that you find a single ingredient that can single-handedly constitute an entire dish. But as much as the combination of the two should be celebrated, I still believe that it is proper to regard each ingredient as an individual entity. Reverting our paradigms to accept all living things as fundamentally equivalent would disregard the progress made by each divergent branch of evolution; would obscure the breadth of the living world; and could very well replace the Caesar salad in our diets with e coli bacterium. But being the gourmand I am, if people can find ways to properly cook e coli, I’d be happy to try a plate.

E coli is not particularly appetizing, but we don’t hold that against it.

 

(By the way, sorry for not following the two questions format. But here’s some links)

http://www.nature.com/nature/focus/index_scicult.html

http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?chanID=sa006&articleID=E6C48417-E7F2-99DF-3C663F8599E57021&colID=12

http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9A0CEFDF123EF934A15757C0A961958260

http://www.istitutoveneto.it/twocultures/abs_miller.htm

http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/279/5353/992

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